Redstate

I expected nothing from left wing bloggers. They have always been dishonest in their beliefs; It has always been about the distruction of the United States and power.

Okay, I could go for the cheap laugh and clraify that I'm talking about Gannon...

Seriously, doesn't it bother anyone around here that someone so sketchy had such access to the WH?  And, though you'll dispute it and claim there's no evidence, potential access to the CIA/Plame memos?  Would you be at all concerned if it was demonstrated that ther was a link between McLennan and Gannon, i.e., that Gannon's "role" during daily briefings and press conference was to get McLennan out of a jam?

You're absolutely right that the sex aspect should be irrelevant to the discussion, but I'm troubled that someone with a ... shall we say "checkered" past wasn't vetted more thoroughly. This is akin to the Kerik fiasco.  This is MUCH worse than blowing up Jordan's off-the-cuff, poorly articulated comments out of context.

It took three weeks and a few segments on CNN to break this part of a story - note, the Ameriblog guy found this stuff when an old web designer recognized the coverage. Any expectation that the standard background check would have turned this up? Um, I don't think so.

As far as Plame - I've said before - if he had a role in that he ought to be arrested, not humiliated. I've just not seen any evidence (including the ginormous KosScoop that Gannon had referred to the contents of the memo - THREE weeks after the WSJ reported those very contents. The horror!) to that fact.

Role? You mean, like, when clinton needed a break from intellectual questions and called on Helen Thomas?

. . .Condi Rice runs for President, or ends up as the running mate of the Republican nominee in 2008 or later.  It won't be long at all before we see the same party that's been shaking its finger at Republicans for their "backwards" views on gay rights to start a whispering campaign about Condi, as she's a never-married woman in her fifties.  Bob Mulholland down in California has had some lean times lately, but when it's time to slime Condi, his phone will start ringing--mark my words.

I was unaware that liberals considered prostitution "a different kind of normal."

But clearly I'm referring to homosexuality, not the allegations of prostitution.

Aravosis over at Americablog may, like kos, try and justify the sliming as a small piece of a larger puzzle. But this is by no means the first time. They have been trying to find evidence of Ken Mehlman being homosexual since before the election. They've even posted open requests for testimonials from former lovers!

Aravosis thinks this is OK since the objective it to highlight some supposed hypocrisy. So in other words, the ends justifies the means. His bottom line is, it's ok to use people's sexuality as a weapon against them, as long as they are conservative. Just ask Ken or Gannon, or even the Cheneys!

She just needs to marry Gene Washington already.

But clearly I'm referring to homosexuality, not the allegations of prostitution.

Yes, exactly.  You are referring to the portion of the allegations which best squares with your partisan aims.

Can you purchase that sort of incoherence online, or is it mail order only? Just curious.

That's an incorrect comparison. Krempasky specifically addressed the leftsites using homosexuality as a weapon. Gannon is the example but not an isolated incident. You then replied that the left never considered prostitution "a different kind of normal". Krempasky replied with correct clarificatin of his original remarks, which you hoped to spin into the same type of partisan selectiveness the leftsites are guilty of.

But it's an incorrect comparison when he clearly and specifically objected to their use of homosexuality as a weapon with which to bludgeon conservatives.

This illustrates an actual hypocrisy on the part of the left, and what's more exposes the increasingly common Machiavellian outlook on the left. It would seem no practice is too low to be engaged in. Places like americablog not only indulge, they brag about it.

Why are you referring to homosexuality?  That's not the scandalous part.  Gannon's websites (and even the domain names they were hosted on) make it very clear that Gannon was not your average gay man with a ho-hum online dating profile.  He was an escort-for-hire who was actively marketing his (illegal) services online.

Exposing a fraudulent White House "reporter" who used a fake name and had a sordid history as a paid homosexual escort is all about the distruction of the United States.  Go figure....

Of this story - you'll see a hell of a lot of glee from the left - especially commentary surrounding a story he supposedly wrote (I've not seen it) bashing the 'homosexual agenda' long before the prostitution allegations came to fruition.

A standard background check would have turned up absolutely nothing if the White House didn't even bother to verify this guy's identity.

If they had done a background check, they should have been able to find all this stuff.  All the details were there online in well know online databases.

If you knew his real name, you could find his corporation.  A quick search would have turned up the domains registered to him and his company, and another quick search on the Wayback Machine would have turned up the old websites, pics and all.

As a side note, this guy wasn't even using adult check to prevent minors from viewing the pics.  If he had hidden them behind some sort of age verification service, they would not have ended up at Archive.org in the first place.

I believe the first discovery (at least the first one I read about) was related to the domain names registered to his corporation.  They were things like "militaryescortm4m.com" (or something along those lines), so the story was immediately bigger than him just being gay.

The suspicion that he was using a fake name led to the discovery of his real name.  That led, almost immediately, to the discovery of his registered domains, which pretty much busted open the homosexual and escort issues at the same time.

Let me try again:

You seem to be pretending that Guckert's apparent homosexuality is the most significant issue here, rather than his apparent selling of pornography and of his own body.  I do not believe this to be the case.

But let's say we confine ourselves to the issue of homosexuality.  As you no doubt know, Guckert posted an article whose headline was:

Kerry Could Become First Gay President

and which read:

Inasmuch as Bill Clinton is considered by some members of the African-American community to be "the first black president" because of their perception of his positions with regard to minority issues, Democratic Sen. John Kerry might someday be known as "the first gay president" were he to win the White House in November.

The Massachusetts liberal has enjoyed a 100% rating from the homosexual advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), since 1995 in recognition of his support for the pro-gay agenda.

Unfortunately this article seems to have  been pulled from the Talon News website.  You should, however, be able to find it on Google. I leave it to your perspicacity to determine whether this piece was meant simply to inform readers about Kerry's views, or whether it was intended to use anti-gay bias as a political weapon against Kerry.  

But if hypothetically you were to come to the conclusion that it was the latter, would you agree that Guckert's history of selling gay porn and apparent past as a gay prostitute was relevant to a critique of him as a journalist?  Why or why not?  (And did Talon News think it was relevant?  If not, why have they pulled this article from their website?)

I think that privacy is tremendously important.  However, when you make yourself a public figure, as Guckert did, your privacy will certainly suffer. I believe Guckert had his Talon News gig, a blog, and a radio talk show. No one forced him into the spotlight. And no one made him sell gay pornography or (apparently) himself.  

Forgive me if I don't feel too sorry for Guckert's public humiliation.  It seems to me that if you don't want your homosexuality and your past as a pornographer and male prostitute to be revealed, right-wing pundit is not the best line of work to pursue.

Public figures and opinion leaders cannot have the same privacy expectations as ordinary people. I felt that it was fine to ask Al Gore why his children went to private school if he was such a keen supporter of the public school system. I feel that it's okay to wonder whether a guy who makes millions selling a "Book of Virtues" is a compulsive gambler.  

And I think it's fine to want to know whether this self-proclaimed conservative icon and apparent exploiter of anti-gay bias was, in fact, gay.

Apologies if that seems shameless to you.  

I'm trying to go through the archives of some leftsites to find that out too Eastlake.

I'll dig up the Mehlman stuff too I guess, though there's no question about the order there since they've only ever used the fact of homosexuality against him, not in conjunction with other sexual allegations.

Might take awhile.

and that's a lot of .etc.

The Gannon story without the gay escort angle would still have been a story. It's a bigger story because it exposes, once again, the rank hypocrisy of the Republican playbook. I'm not calling every Republican a homo-hater, but it's clear that it's something they've used to their advantage over the years.

Take a deep breath and read your comment to yourself out loud.

Still have a straight face?

had the common decency to run his prostitution ring out of the home of a sitting Congressman, the left would, given precedent, have nothing to complain about.  Pity that he had such poor foresight.

kudos ahead of time on doing the leg work on archives on leftsites.  

Guckert did NOT - repeat, did NOT - register for press credentials with the White House under his pen name, eastlake.  He gave them his proper name.  I find the fact that many people (mostly on the Left) are getting this aspect of the story wrong to be irksome.  

You don't think the Republican's use the anti-gay angle to get whip up their base (the FMA)?  

Hey, I don't think exposing Gannon's sexual procilivities was necessary or even appropriate, but the titillation factor does explain some of the interest. Sex sells.

Aravosis has been controversial since before he had a blog.  He has used the practice of "outing" people before and has been critisized extensively for it, even by many gay-rights activists.  I think he was the one who was trying to out members of Congressional staff (not the Congresspeople themselves), even though the staffers were not "public figures."

to make the stretch to connect those who want the law of the land to remain as it is with those who feel that trashing a personal life is ok, as long as it's a Republican.

Actually, I am much more ambivalent about the case of Mehlman (or, say, Scott McClellan, whom I've recently seen mentioned in this context).  

On the whole I recoil from the phenomenon of "outing" people-- though I sympathize with the desire to move sexual identity into the public realm, and hence reduce the stigma of homosexuality.  As long as a stigma does exist, this kind of forcible exposure is too harmful to the person involved.  

Even though I agree with another poster that the Republican party has made and continues to make hay out of anti-gay sentiments, I don't think that's necessarily grounds for outing any prominent Republican.  

On the other hand, where the hypocrisy is particularly rank (as with Andrew Sullivan decrying unsafe homosexual sex while advertising for it), the privacy calculus probably changes somewhat.  I suspect even most conservative partisan would agree that if, say, James Dobson or Jerry Falwell were a sexually active homosexual, revealing this fact would not be a reprehensible invasion of privacy. Would it?  Was it shameful to expose the hypocrisy of Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart?  I don't think so.  

Of course anti-gay law and rhetoric is hardly as central to the Republican Party as it is to Focus on the Family (though it's hardly peripheral).  If Republicanism were synonymous with being against homosexuality, I think it would be defensible to expose closeted Republicans.  But it isn't synonymous-not yet, anyway.

Guckert seems a bit less complicated to me.  He's a blatant hypocrite and apparently quite a sleaze.   He tried to make a media spectacle of himself, forgot to cover his tracks, and ended up making a different kind of spectacle. Soon he will fade into well-deserved obscurity.  

Didn't know that about Aravosis-- useful background to his actions on this issue.  Outing Congressional staffers certainly seems beyond the pale to me.

if the FMA was only to keep the law of the land as it was, why has Bush pretty much abandoned it after the election?

is not prima facia evidence of [drumroll, please] H O M O P H O B I A

nothing like framing a debate in order to smear the reasonable people who take a view opposite of yours (keyword - reasonable)

Well, someone already mentioned Barney Frank, so I'll bring up something even more contemporary.

Good old silly Wonkette and her "back door" obsessions and the "friend" who got regularly paid for the same. Anyone pull her credentials on that score? No? Hypocrisy thy name is the "religious" Left.

I don't give a flying fig what Guckert (pen name Gannon) did in his past of an adult consensual manner. If he plagarized or was sloppy in his articles, thats the part that nails him as a mere hack rather than reporter.

Wow, so we're going to blast people with pen names, too. Thankfully Kos et al weren't around when Samuel Clemmons was accessing members of Congress. WooEEE...and a man who used the "n" word in his writings, too!

I assume you aren't, so your statement is just patently false.

State of the Union

Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage.

The FMA is just like the hydrogen car or the mission to Mars Bush touted. Is he going to spend any effort to make it happen? I doubt it. He's brilliant at speechifying, but when it comes to action, he moves on to what he really cares about (tax cuts, big spending programs). I'll stand behind my assertion that's it's wedge politics.

Took awhile, I had about an hour away from the desk heading from work to home.

It was at the same time, but clearly based on the domain names and the escort services. Hard to extract the two since it was gay escort services.

From what I can tell, the source posts for the primary websites are:

here and here.

Those two. Now there are some previous posts at eschaton and kos, but not substantive and not truly on point. These two source posts break down the links and sources and are thus my source posts.

As far as sexual allegations against Gannon, it would seem the first were about prostitution, not homosexuality.

Now, as for Mehlman and Americablog, the earliest and most comprehensive post I could find was here. There's no way to make a list of the other references in one night and post it here. To say they are numerous would be an understatement. And though he sometimes tries to say it's about the hypocrisy of Ken's gayness, he is undermined by his own ongoing and vicious outing campaign that is well beyond merely addressing a hypocrisy. He is further undermined by his own history with other outting campaigns.

His attitudes toward out homosexual republicans speak volumes about his Machiavelli attitude.

Reading only the three links I posted will demonstrate that. Google site search him on some of these keywords and the scope of his brutality cannot be missed. Or dismissed.

can you provide evidence that proves him/her wrong?

absentee's post appears above on my screen.  my bad.

I've previously documented how the Oregon Republican party has provided staunch support for anti-gay legislative measures...

is now broken -- hopefully you can reach google's cached page here.

And just for the record the water is a bit muddy. A lot of stuff came out in a single day, many posts not containing the time of day for comparison. Like the title of my post, the best bet is to call it simultaneous.

Although I will point out, the fact that there is prostitution involved did not stop americablog from wielding the mere fact of his (potential) homosexuality as a weapon.

Which goes back to the question of why does John Aravosis find that so acceptable if the person in question is a conservative. The fact that the Gannon controversy ALSO contains more salacious charges of escort services in no way takes away from the mounds of evidence that americablog and friends feel no remorse using homosexuality and private sexual information as weapons for political gain on a regular basis.

Still, it's safe to say there are better examples of victims out there. Ken Mehlman being my choice.

...who exactly he's attacking or, correspondingly, provided evidence for the things he's railing against, it'd be ok.  

However, he's recently been using incredibly broad brushes to talk about actions of 'the left', essentially accusing us all of being irresponsible and gay-bashers, with

a) no proof, and b) less accuracy.  

Which is tiresome.  

I orginally started coming here to read reasonable defenses of conservative policies, because while I usually disagree, it's good to know what people of good faith on the other side are thinking about.  However, good faith is something that is in short supply around here recently...

I think his point was preserved actually. The assertion is that left blogs felt free to bash based on sexuality. That such practice is hypocritical. That the hypocrisy is compounded by the fact that the left is crying hypocrisy as the basis for using sexuality as a weapon in the first place.

This all seems preserved to me.

at least as stated directly above, was that people were bashing Gannon/Guckert based on his sexuality long before there was any indication he might be a pornographer/escort.  

Which isn't true.  As you showed, people knew he was affiliated with sketchy escort websites at the get go, which is actually how I think his sexuality came to light.  For example, the first front page post on this on dKos is explicitly titled 'Jeff Gannon aka Jim Guckert, and gay smut'.  The smut angle is right in the title.

I don't read Ameriblog -- they might very well be engaging in gay-bashing, and if they are, it's reprehensible.  But if that is who you are attacking, it'd be better to name them explicitly instead of defaming all liberal bloggers.

Well in the context of the initial post it would seem the objective is one of comparison. As in, look what the major liberal blogs are doing as compared to what the major conservative blogs are doing. Or put another way, the legitimate and measured outcry against Jordan hardly compares to the vicious and malicious attacks on the perhaps-deserving Gannon.

Which is to say, the liberal blogs that are bitching about the conservative blogs regarding Jordan should stop ignoring the Gannon-(or Mehlman-) shaped beam in their own eyes.

But like I said, you are correct that Gannon doesn't make the best victim. And of course, sweeping overgeneralizations are never right, so certainly I don't think Krempasky intended it to be "all" liberal bloggers. Though I don't speak for him of course, I am speaking for me.

I hope you stay to hear the good faith debate for conservative positions.  But that is not the only, nor main, purpose of Redstate to my knowledge.  There are internal debates and strategic debates, but this isn't a bipartisan debate site.  I respect and admire many of the center-leftists we have on this site, but they are not the audience or main customers here.

That being said, it is hard to argue that Redstate comes anywhere near rivaling Free Republic, Dem Underground or the media-respected Kos.  And it's hard to see accusations of "good faith... is in short supply" from the left just after seeing things on Kos like this.

I'm a republican. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I have my own pile of money.  Fuck you.

I'm a republican.  My kids go to private school. I don't care about your kids, or public schools. When my kids are better educated than yours, they will get better jobs and make more money than your kids. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I have a job with health insurance. If you were not so lazy or stupid, you would have a good job with health insurance too. It sure is sad when you go bankrupt after a catastrophic health crisis, but its probably your own damn fault anyway. Fuck you.

Diaries :: Sue in NH's diary ::

I'm a republican. I'm a Christian. You are either a heathen, a raghead Muslim, or the wrong kind of Christian. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I'm going to heaven and you're going to hell. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. It is not only my right, it's my duty to spread freedom and democracy around the world.  If you don't understand that, Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I have a condo in Vail, a summer home in Maine, and a beach house in Florida.  We don't need any National Parks or protected forests. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I'm white. I'm perfect, and I'm not like all those brown, yellow and black people. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I live in a gated community. It's too bad about all the crime out there on the city streets, but that's your problem.  Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I hate taxes. Its my money.  I earned it.  I don't want to pay to support all you lazy, uneducated, pathetic poor people, least of all you teenage mothers (whores), you drug addicts and all you black boys. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I hate homosexuals.  When I think of gay people, I think of of man-on-dog, horse on woman, threesomes, and other sexual fantasies, and that frightens me.  If you are queer, or have a queer friend, Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I was born rich, and I've become more rich, and damn it, since I can't take it all with me, I'm going to make sure my kids are just as stinking rich. Fuck you.

I'm a republican.  I'm never wrong.  I know everything, never make a mistake, and can't learn anything from you, you damn ignorant pussy democrats.  Fuck you.

I'm a republican. My rights and civil liberties should be protected, but not yours, you terrorist loving, America hating, pansy liberal.  Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I hate you and everything you Democrats stand for, you f--king communists. Fuck you.

Rage, rage, rage against the lying right.

Damn that felt good! Do you have anything to add?

And in case you think it'a an aberration, there were 300+ comments on the thread that are almost universally supportive.  That's a lack of good faith in my book.  The discussion we're having here is called "civil" in the same way the Simpsons is not vulgar when compared to South Park.  And yes, this sentiment is seen more on liberal sites although it exists on some conservative sites (Free Republic).

This is partly due to more liberals being online and partly due to a feeling of morally superiority that liberals have begun to embrace en masse.  It's the Michael Moore left taking over more of the activists.  I respect those who resist it, but I cannot hide behind the illusion that it is a mere sliver of the most extreme liberals.  It is no longer shameful to think and express thoughts like the one posted above.

As a gay man, I find the issue of 'outing' completely revolting.  

I also think it is amazingly crass to bash Republicans for being homophobic while simultaneously trying to use the fact of someone's homosexuality as a tool to hurt their reputation.  

As a straight man, I agree. What you choose to make public and what you don't is your own freaking business. It's certainly not a convenient club for your enemies.

It seems one of the Kossites has taken issue with the liberal hypocracy on the issue.

"Guckert seems a bit less complicated to me.  He's a blatant hypocrite and apparently quite a sleaze.   He tried to make a media spectacle of himself, forgot to cover his tracks, and ended up making a different kind of spectacle"

There you have it.

Cheers -

This Gannon affair is nothing more than a psychological pathway on the left of "stay on the reservation", and has been applied to Blacks, Latinos, women etc.  If you are not mindlessly loyal to the DNC then they will attack you, sometimes using your 'minority' status against you.

Simply put, it has come about because many people of minority status  are realizing that their best individual interest is with the GOP.

That's my psychoanalysis of the Moonbat psyche. :-)

There may be folks who exploit what appears to be Guckert's homosexuality against him.  To the degree that that is so, it's wrong.

However, above and beyond the issue of Guckert's sexual orientation, we have:

1.  He has acted as a more or less obvious shill for the administration's policies.  Yes, there are reporters in the WH press pool who are partisan Democrats also, but most of them also have actual track records as journalists.
   
2.  Guckert may or may not be gay, and frankly it's noone's business if he is or not.  He has, however, both participated in homosexual prostitution, and written articles appealing to anti-gay sentiment for partisan advantage.  The word for that is, at a minimum, hypocrisy, and IMO deserves to be exposed.
   
3.  Guckert may have been given access to classified materials related to the Plame case, which may in turn involve the felonious (and despicable) exposure of an active undercover CIA agent's identity.  This deserves investigation.

In short, the folks at Americablog may be obsessing about Guckert's sexual orientation for their own odd purposes, but the Guckert affair is most definitely NOT simply a matter of outing a gay Republican.

Cheers -

A White House background check is NOT for the purpose of uncovering any and all potential dirt on a reporter who is to sit in on briefings. Indeed, if it was, the media would, and rightly so, scream about the violations of the First Amendment by the chilling effect of the Bushies and the Secret Service knowing, for example, that Terry Moran was arrested for diddling himself in an adult theater at age 16. (Just as a hypothetical)

So it's amusing that liberal bloggers are harumphing about the alleged security threat to the President from a guy who is nothing more than a glorified partisan pro-Bush blogger-cum-White House correspondent with a history of homoerotic web postings and website registrations. I mean, do liberal bloggers really want to say that Log Cabin Republican friendlies in the briefing room are a grave threat to either the office of the President or the security of that office's occupant?

Russell Mokhiber?

considering that the sleaze diggers are in a hole and still cheerfully digging, I'm hoping that very soon they learn the meaning of the term "libel per se."

My comment was addressed more to the frequent comparison of Guckert to Helen Thomas.  

Thomas is definitely clearly to the left in her views, and her questions at WH news events demonstrates that.  She's also been a reporter for extremely credible news organizations for about 60 years.  I don't see comparisons of Guckert to Thomas as holding much weight.

I didn't recognize Mokhiber's name so I googled him and found he's the guy who publishes the "Scottie and Me" stuff.  He's definitely using his WH press pass to have fun at McLellan's expense.  To be honest, I've actually gotten many a laugh from the Scottie and Me, and before that the Ari and Me, columns.  He also has a pronounced, sort of Chomsky-lite anti-corporate point of view.  You're correct to note that Mokhiber's participation in WH news conferences is more about point-making, and less (perhaps not at all) about substantive reporting.

I couldn't find out anything about Mokhiber's background.  I don't know if he has any professional training as a journalist, if he's written for anyone other than his own "Corporate Crime Reporter", or if he's really anything more than an annoying troublemaking pain in the backside of Scott McLellan.  Where the comparison with Guckert falls down is that, to my knowledge, he hasn't been given access to classified materials, and doesn't have a history as a participant in prostitution.

Cheers -

A final point.

Regarding libel and libel per se, if I'm not mistaken the statement made has to be false.  Lemme know if that's not the case.

Cheers -

As noted by Rigorous Intuition:

<div class="blockquote"> Spence was a conservative lobbyist during the Reagan-Bush years. The New York Times called him "Washington's ultimate power broker." He was also running a gay prostitution ring which employed adolescent boys. As perks of the job, he treated his boys to after-hour tours of the White House. In The Washington Times of August 9, 1989, Spence "hinted the tours were arranged by top level" persons, including Vice President Bush's National Security Advisor Donald Gregg, whose name also figures prominently in the October Surprise story. The paper added that "Spence, according to friends, was also carrying out homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA."

David McGowan writes that one of the White House tours "occurred just after Spence stopped by the Nightline studio to see his friend, Ted Koppel. Spence reportedly introduced Koppel to a 15-year-old boy, whom Koppel later claimed Spence had introduced as his son. Koppel though had been a close friend for over 20 years and surely knew that Spence did not have a teenage son."

Any wonder why this scandal - a sex scandal, even - died one of the quickest and quietest of deaths? Only briefly, and not everywhere, was it was front page news. As when it broke, on June 29, 1989:

[image of Washington Times p. A1]

From a follow-up story of June 30, 1989:

Among the clients identified in hundreds of credit-card vouchers obtained by The Washington Times - and identified by male prostitutes and escort operators - are government officials, locally based US military officers, businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides, media representatives and other professionals.

Mr. Spence's influence appeared unlimited, aptly demonstrated by his ability to arrange midnight tours of the White House, according to three persons who said they took part in those tours.

...

After arriving in Washington in the late 1970s, Mr. Spence was hosting parties during the early Reagan years attended by, among others, journalists Eric Sevareid, Ted Koppel and William Safire; former CIA Director William Casey; the late John Mitchell, attorney general in the Nixon administration; conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly; Ambassador James Lilley; and Gen. Alfred M. Gray, the commandant of the Marine Corps.

...

According to many current and former friends, Mr. Spence was a dangerous friend to cultivate. Several former associates said his house on Wyoming Avenue was bugged and had a secret two-way mirror, and that he attempted to ensnare visitors into compromising sexual encounters that he could then use as leverage.

...

Several friends said Mr. Spence bragged that U.S. military personnel, for whom he had built a gymnasium in El Salvador, had smuggled cocaine back to him when they returned to the United States.

...

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials said this week they had no evidence of any such operation.

...

[An acquaintance] described Mr. Spence as "strange," saying that he often boasted that he was working for the CIA and on one occasion said he was going to disappear for awhile "because he had an important CIA assignment."

According to the businessman, Mr. Spence told him that the CIA might "doublecross him," however, and kill him instead "and then to make it look like a suicide."

It should probably be noted here that it wasn't until November of that year that Spence's body was found in a Boston hotel room, his death ruled a suicide.

From David McGowan's Pedophacracy:

The Spence story never really registered on the national media's radar screen. Despite being a largely Republican scandal, it was completely ignored by such pillars of the purportedly liberal press as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The story soon disappeared entirely and Washington and the media proceeded to pretend as though nothing had ever happened. According to a Washington Times reporter, the paper trail was quickly covered up. Some 20,000 documents pertaining to the case were sealed by court order and the U.S. Attorney's office issued a gag order on the release of information. By the time that Craig Spence turned up dead in a Boston hotel less than five months after the story first broke, he had been all but forgotten. He had earlier told a friend: "I may be disappearing soon. It will be sudden. It may appear to be a suicide, but it won't be."

Spence was reportedly found lying on his bed in room 429 of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, wearing a tuxedo and with a telephone cradled to his ear and a Walkman headset around his neck. He had, according to the Independent, "no obvious signs of injury," and "police refused to comment on the cause of death." The door to the room was barricaded. Written on the mirror were several messages, one of which read: "Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always said, you can't ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America." Another was an apology to the hotel: "To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience." A third was an unexplained Japanese phrase: "Nisei Bei." The hotel registry showed that the room the apparent suicide victim was found in was occupied by "C.S. Kane."

Spence had been subpoenaed by a grand jury but had not yet been called to appear. As it turned out, very few witnesses ever did appear before that grand jury. Spence had also reportedly agreed to provide Penthouse magazine with "lurid details of Washington's bisexual wonderland." His story, needless to say, was never told.

Penthouse didn't get its story, but Spence left a legacy of questions, which have been soundly ignored by virtually everyone in a position to answer them. For instance, this one, raised by The Washington Times after his death:

Mr. Strasser, according to the witness, also asked during the private discussion and before the grand jury about the gift by Mr. Spence of an expensive Rolex watch to a U.S. Army sergeant. The sergeant, who also participated in the July 3 White House tour, allegedly was asked by Mr. Spence for information on Delta Force, a special forces counterterrorism unit based in Fort Bragg, N.C.

"They asked me what I thought Spence wanted to know about the Delta project," the witness said. "I said it could mean he was just interested in the young guys there or something else."

We should also note that Spence was an associate of Lawrence King, whose own juvenile prostitution ring enjoyed special privileges and the protection of authorities. King ran it out of his Franklin Credit Union, and in the course of its whispered history, implicated prominent Republicans in Nebraska, Washington and elsewhere in the sexual abuse of minors.

John DeCamp, in The Franklin Cover-Up:

According to a Washington, DC investigative journalist who researched the Spence ring, "The way we discovered Larry King and this Nebraska-based call boy ring, was by looking through the credit card chits of Spence's ring, where we found King's name." Another investigator, with personal knowledge of the call-boy rings operating in Washington, put it this way: "Larry King and Craig Spence were business partners. Look at two companies, "Dream Boys" and "Man to Man," both of which operated under another service, "Bodies by God."

The Gannon scandal may not be that he was undeserving of accreditation, or a shameless cheerleader, or even a prostitute. (It ain't for nothing that members of the press are called "media whores.") The scandal may be that "Jeff Gannon" was a honey pot: a lure, floated in the press pool by the White House to compromise persons of influence. Something Gannon, or rather Jim Guckert, certainly was not.

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To Aravosis employs, the ends seems to justify the means.  He has a history of outing people as a political stunt.

Here are some links to his history of "scorched-earth" outings.  These articles were published just a few months after he started AmericaBlog, but he had a history of outing people before the blog.

Outing on Capitol Hill Stirs Debate (GayCityNews)

Outed Hill staffer condemns campaign (Washington Blade)

I think his obsession with outing is counterproductive to his political goals.  It's one thing to expose or out a public figure who is being publicly hypocritical about his or her behavior.  It's an entirely different thing to out a private citizen (and, in some cases, jeapordize their employment).

Not entirely, anyway. But that's not my specialty, so I'm open to correction or expansion.

I'm not going to deal with the Gannon example here.  But the fact that someone worked for one of the old media conglomerates for 60 years is not a strong defense in my eyes.  The hiring biases of those organizations lock out evangelical Christians and many other conservatives.  That is one reason I think the internet and other media sources are so important today.  This leads to the problem of establishing what a "credible news organization" is.  Talon News is a pretty conservative site with an obvious bias.  But most people see the New York Times as a pretty liberal paper with an obvious bias.  Just because one is older and has more readers doesn't mean it is more "objective" in any sense.

I am still not sure where we should be drawing the line of "credible news organization."

Even if a person is being perceived as hypocritical it is pretty low.

First of all, who determines what is hypocritical? By Aravosis standards, merely being republican is sufficient.

But secondly, his campaign concedes the point that sexuality is fair-game. All it leaves up for dispute is the 'on what grounds" part. At the least he is exposing a double standard, at the most he is maliciously hypocritical.

Most importantly though, it implies that a person who is gay who opposes the gay rights movement cannot have a valid argument and that is an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy.  Just because he perceives someone's actions as in conflict with their argument doesn't mean their argument is automatically invalid. The argument should be judged on its own merits, not those of the presenter.

The two top-rated comments in that diary were implicitly critical, here.
 and here.

Moreover, the author of the diary applauded those comments and claimed she was just venting.  I think your right that such diaries are harmful and uncalled for.  But you should be able to distinguish between someone venting her anger and someone trying to make an articulate point.  The real danger, the real problem is when anger twists reasoning.

Moreover, because some one poster at Dkos (or even 300 out of the 40,000 members) were not arguing in good faith proves very little.  Most importantly, it proves nothing at all about whether red-staters are arguing in good faith.

(BTW I think redstaters generally are arguing in good faith).

Call me biased, but I am happy to call Helen Thomas' 60 years of work with UPI credible, and I am less inclined to give the same name to Guckert and Talon.

I'm not talking about political slant.  I'm talking about credibility.  The WSJ has a very conservative editorial policy, but they are a credible source of information.  Conversely, I would not go to the Disinformation site, a far left news site, for accurate information.  The WSJ is credible.  Disinformation is not.  In neither case does it have anything to do with their political slant.

What makes for credibility is a commitment to honesty and fairness, and at least a rudimentary level of critical insight and intellectual rigor, regardless of point of view.  While I take the basic point you are making about news organizations' institutional bias away from conservatism in the sense of traditional religious values, I would, frankly, be very suprised if you were unable to distinguish between an organization like UPI and an organization like Talon, or between someone like Thomas and someone like Guckert.

Cheers -

If so, then I stand corrected on that point, and I appreciate the correction.

Cheers -

Maybe I was unclear of my point.  That post would be banned as would the user on this site.  That is the good faith I speak of.  We don't promote hate here.

I think you are basically correct in this case and I refuse to defend Gannon in any way.  My question is a little more esoteric.  Where is that line?  Should Kos or RedState or Instapundit be allowed credentials?  Are they "credible"?  The extremes in this case are easy to label.  What about Drudge or Air America?  Where is the line?

Was that link supposed to prove something?  %95 of those posts were certainly not promoting hate.  I'm not surprised that in the vast libraries of diaries and comments put up by Kossacks, the words 'hate' and 'Republican' show up every now and then.

Perhaps Redstate has a more stringent posting standard than dkos.  That's fine, admirable even.  But it is not 'arguing in good faith' to suggest that  the 'f--k you' post above was representative of dkos, at least not by judging from the comments on that very diary.  Nor that because dkos allows the post to go up that it is 'promoting' the message of the post.  

It seems that Kossacks are a bit more self-regulating than redstaters, trusting in the marketplace of ideas.  Liberal libertarians.  Scary.

he hasn't been given access to classified materials, and doesn't have a history as a participant in prostitution.

Source? Got any conviction records?

At this point, my wish is that Gannon start slapping lawsuits against all those "he was a prostitute" sites. Libel is not covered by "free speech."

This is WAY beyond the pale. For the Left, Gannon is an apostate since gays, or even "alleged" gays, are never to leave The Cult of the Personal is the Political.

And we all know how cults (Jim Jones, Islamists, et al) deal with apostates.

But, as I said above, I think most of us would agree that if, say, Jerry Falwell were gay, that would be a level of hypocrisy worth exposing.  Do you agree?  It's a question of where to draw the line.  I don't agree with where Aravosis draws it.  

 On the ad hominem point, when the issue is one of personality morality, and choice vs. biology, as is the case with gay rights, I'm not so sure that the merits of the presenter are always out of bounds.  If an anti-gay polemicist is actually gay, this may suggest that

1.His argument comes from some sort of internal psychological conflict,

2.Homosexuality may not be a matter of choice, or

3. Public attitudes toward homosexuality are  permeated by hypocrisy and denial.    

I think all of these points may be relevant to the merits of arguments about gay rights.

Similarly, I think the revelation of Strom Thurmond's mixed-race child would have been relevant to an evaluation of his segregationist beliefs.  

If you believe that segregation and racism are inherently objectionable in the first place - is a person's private conduct really relevant - or does that just make them extra bad?

If it's already established that an argument is wrong, then of course there's no need to look for further evidence.

If you were still on the fence about the merits of the segregationist position, evidence that its main proponents were seemingly incapable of acting in accordance with their stated ideals might be relevant to your judgment of those ideals' validity.    

It is alleged, not proven, that Gannon has been given access to classified materials:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/politics/11gannon.html?oref=login

If the NYT doesn't do it for you due to it's obvious liberal bias, I'm sure you can google up some citations of your own.

It is alleged that Gannon was involved in homosexual prostitution based on his ownership of male escort websites, and his presentation of himself on those sites as someone whose services were available.  I won't include a link, you can find all that for yourself if you like.

To the point: krempasky's assertion is that folks who criticize Gannon are hypocrites, because they claim to be tolerant of homosexuality, but they are using Gannon's apparent gayness to humiliate him.  If you're talking about Americablog and some other blogs, you have a point.

However, there are other, more substantive issues involved in the Gannon case that go beyond his sexual orientation.  And, his apparent participation in homosexual prostitution is also relevant because of his own public writings on the topic.

Finally, I would like to point out that the reason Gannon's sexual history came into this at all is because of his own public advertisement of himself on the Internet.

So, in short, the claim that Gannon is the victim of a hypocritical smear campaign, based on intrusive attempts to "out" him as gay, is pretty thin.

Thanks -

Not relevant, really. A thing is worthwhile or not in its own right, regardless of the acts of its advocates.

It seems we might be seeing a slight difference here between finding something pertinent to the controversy as opposed to finding something that is a good counter-point. Even if the hypocrisy can, in general terms, be considered relevant, and even if, in general terms, it may cause you to doubt the foudation or motivation of an argument, it nevertheless doesn't serve to disprove an argument. The mere fact of the hypocrisy can only point to the character of the presenter or the potential motivations. It may even give us an idea of the source of a belief. But it is still not a disproof per se.

Nevertheless, as Krempasky rightly suggested this morning, the question to ask oneself is how they feel about recent conduct in either case.

I can't imagine everyone visiting wonkette, americablog and dkos find the recent eviscerations to be tasteful. Even assuming the necessity of belaboring both the prostitution and the homosexuality, it could have been done, to equal effect, without being so maliciously, gleefully offensive.

... "well, I don't know for sure, but there's been talk."

Gannon quit and the Left hasn't turned off the steamroller.

His sex life is not fair game. Period. It is no more fair game than it was for the self-serving Kewards pointed remarks about Cheney's daughter.

Notice that the non-Left who have been on E. Jordan's case have not gone to the personal where it concerns rumors about HIS sex life but have stuck to the issue of his unsubstantiated charges against the US military and the stonewalling of release of the transcript or tape.

And if any non-Left blog decided to cover EJ in the same manner, out to completely destroy the man's life even after he has resigned in the same manner that the indecent Left has gone after Gannon, I would most definitely denounce that, too.

There is no, none-nyet-nada, excuse for this attack.

Darleen -

We are, evidently, speaking past one another.  I think we've both made our points.  Time to leave it.

Cheers -

Well Democrats.com thinks so. Glenn Reynolds got the press release.

Now, what is that I keep hearing that this is not about Guckert being gay??

Yeah, right, uh huh.