So here's what we've got: an energetic Texas republican running a privately-held corporation promoting the conservative point of view, as well as an attached "news organization," places a reporter in Washington who gets clearance on a dialy basis to press briefings from the White House. This reporter/operative lobs obvious softballs and participates in the exposure of a CIA operative (a felony, fyi). He's a tough guy, an ex marine, maybe reminds the old hands of G. Gordon Liddy. Anyway, about a month ago when he gets called on by El Presidente himself, he asks a supendously loaded qustion and some interested parties started looking into who this character was.

Then the plot really takes a turn for the bizarre. Turns out he used to be (still is?) a male escort. It's something of a commentary on the state of the Conservative Movement that they either didn't realize this was the case, or knew it and assumed that this information wouldn't come to light. Kind of a fascinating study in power, really.

The Long Story:
There's this guy who's been lobbing softballs at White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan for the past couple of years, Jeff Gannon. Turns out, he's not really Jeff Gannon, or a journalist. In fact, his real name is James D. Gukert and in addition to "broadcast journalism training" from the leadership institute, he also has a background as a male prostitute.

His journalistic employ (and White House passes) come through "Talon News," a web-only publishing operation supported financially by GOPUSA, a "privately held corporation" run by an enterprising Texas Republican named Bobby Eberle. Bobby's bio recently went off the GOPUSA homepage, but google still has it in cache. It states "Bobby is a member of Texas Christian Coalition and Texas Right to Life, and he spends considerable time promoting these conservative ideals." Apparently that means arranging for a military-themed male hooker to get into White House press briefings (on repeated daily passes which don't require as much oversight as long-lasting "hard" passes) so he could "report" for Talon and offer a lifeline when questioning from real journalists needed some "balance."

Toping the pile of dirty tricks you probably shouldn't run via someone with such a questionable past, workin' girl Gannon was, along with other such luminaries as arch-conservative/ veteran operative Robert Novak, given a memo blowing CIA operative Valerie Plame's cover, an act of political retribution against her husband, diplomat Joe Wilson, who had refused to prop up part of the administration's rationale for war with Iraq by demonstrating that evidence suggesting Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase nuclear materials from Niger was forged.

Only people in a really big rush or in the throes of hubris (or both) would bother to use an agent so prone to compromise for these kinds of things. Oh man. Oh man, indeed.