Free Republic

Here's a piece that might irritate our fellow bloggers--especially the folks who uncovered (so to speak) Jeff Gannon's secrets. I just posted it in my "Capital Games column at www.thenation.com. (If you've already seen it, scroll down to other original items on this blog, including a posting on Howard Dean's latest dumb remark.) In brief, I'm being a worrywart about the journalistic implications of the Gannon affair, and I note that two key aspects of the story--that Gannon is a gay GOP hypocrite and that Gannon was handed classified information regarding the Wilson leak investigation--are not fully supported by the...

Oh brother. I just received an email saying that on the Sean Hannity radio show, Congressman Maurice “Rove Rules the World” Hinchey (D-NY) has stated that Jeff Gannon broke the Rathergate story. (Hat tip: JammieWearingFool.) I didn’t hear it myself; but if true, Hinchey has passed the orbit of Pluto and is boldly going where no moonbat has gone before. UPDATE at 2/24/05 2:39:31 pm: Check it out now before the moderators have an embolism and delete it: Democratic Underground says “Kudos to Little Green Footballs” for breaking the story of Rove’s Master Plan! Bwa hahahaha! UPDATE at 2/24/05 3:00:40...

The Guckert affair I would like to thank Rob Rogers and the editors of the Post-Gazette for printing a reference to the James Guckert/Jeff Gannon affair (Feb. 22 editorial cartoon). A scandal involving a gay prostitute having free access to the White House pressroom would have been all over the media if this were 1995 instead of 2005. The printing of this cartoon gives me hope that real journalists are trying to uncover the truth in this sordid affair. Please stay on this story. The American people deserve to know the truth about the shenanigans this administration pulls on an...

Before Gannon: New Book Spotlights White House Press Corps Incidents By Joe Strupp Published: February 24, 2005 10:00 PM ET NEW YORK While the Washington, D.C. press world keeps following the daily revelations about controversial reporter James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, some historical perspective is probably necessary. A look back at more than 200 years of Washington press corps activities and their relationships with previous presidents shows that relations have never been as even-handed and unconflicted as many would like them to be today. So says Donald A. Ritchie, a former U.S. Senate historian and author of the new book,...

For the last two years, the Old Media figures at the White House thought of me as a gadfly, a right-winger with an agenda, harmless, someone to be ignored.

Bruised but not broken I'm baaaaaaack! If you thought I was going to slink away - then you don't know much about me. Someone still has to battle the Left and now that I've emerged from the crucible, I'm stronger than before. Despite all the pleas from the Left to go over to the 'dark side' and expose the 'corrupt Bush administration' simply isn't going to happen. My faith and my ideology are rock solid. Still, the last few weeks have been difficult for my family and my associates. To them I offer my apology and gratitude for their support....

He has become infamous in Washington. A conservative White House reporter with a past he wanted to keep secret. NBC’s Campbell Brown talked with Jeff Gannon about his time in the White House and how he was so easily able to gain access to one of the country's most secure places. He says he has been exposed by left-wing Internet bloggers who are trying to destroy his career. But at White House press briefings, Jeff Gannon was a regular: Jeff Gannon: Since [there are] so many questions about what the president was doing over 30 years ago, what is it...

Lawmakers: Writer May Have CIA Leak Info Thursday, February 24, 2005 WASHINGTON — Two lawmakers have sent a letter to the U.S. attorney saying a White House reporter who recently resigned following questions about his identity and background may have information vital to the investigation into who leaked a CIA operative's name to the press. Reps. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., and John Conyers, D-Mich., the ranking Democrats on the House Rules Committee and House Judiciary Committee, respectively, wrote a letter to Patrick Fitzgerald (search), the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, saying the Chicago attorney's office may need to...

In response to the public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan, liberals are directing their fury at the blogs. Once derided as people sitting around their living rooms in pajamas, now obscure writers for unknown Web sites are coming under more intensive background checks than CIA agents...How did Gary Hartpence, Billy Blythe and John Kohn (Gary Hart, Bill Clinton and John Kerry) run for president under invented names? Admittedly, these men were not reporters for the prestigious "Talon News" service; they were merely Democrats running for...

The Senate Democratic leadership is privately circulating a letter calling for other senators to join a call for an investigation into discredited White House reporter Jeff Gannon, RAW STORY has learned.The letter, issued from Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-IL), calls on President Bush to order a full inquiry into how a fake journalist working for a sham news organization got access to the president.The letter was leaked to RAW STORY this evening. A decision on taking action on Gannon has been brewing for about a week, since Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) called on the White House to turn over all...

Thoughts on Jeff Gannon and the squeamish mainstream media.... THE SORDID TALE of Jeff Gannon, the conservative activist masquerading as a reporter who was driven from his perch in the White House press room earlier this month, is exactly the sort of story that makes the mainstream media intensely uncomfortable. Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, resigned from his position at Talon News — a right-wing Web site associated with the frankly partisan GOPUSA site — after it was revealed that he had posed nude for gay Web sites, and that he had apparently worked as a $200-an-hour...

Two leaders of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee want the federal prosecutor investigating the Valeria Plame case to subpoena a personal journal of controversial White House reporter James Guckert, following Editor & Publisher's disclosure yesterday that Guckert claims he kept the journal for the past two years. "It is clear that a primary obstacle to the ... investigation is uncovering a precise chronology of when, and to whom, classified information was leaked," Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), one of those seeking the subpoena, told E&P. "The revelation by Editor & Publisher that Mr. Guckert kept contemporaneous records of his 'reporting' activities...

Posted: February 23, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 Universal Press Syndicate In response to the public disgrace and ruin of New York Times editor Howell Raines, CBS anchor Dan Rather and CNN news director Eason Jordan, liberals are directing their fury at the blogs. Once derided as people sitting around their living rooms in pajamas, now obscure writers for unknown websites are coming under more intensive background checks than CIA agents. The heretofore-unknown Jeff Gannon of the heretofore-unknown "Talon News" service was caught red-handed asking friendly questions at a White House press briefing. Now the media is hot on...

There are some lessons to be learned in the Jeff Gannon-Jim Guckert scandal – for the press and for the politicians. Guckert is a right-wing political activist with a seriously compromised personal life. Somewhere along the line, he decided the best way he could make a name for himself or help spread his "conservative" political ideology was to pose as a journalist. He got a boost from a conservative political organization that founded a faux news organization called GOP News. GOP News arranged with Guckert to become its White House correspondent under a pseudonym, Jeff Gannon. Once the organizers of...

Three members of the D.C. Chapter of Free Republic braved the ice cold winds of the political gulag Friday night to make a public show of support for former Talon News White House Correspondent Jeff Gannon and the rights of reporters to do their jobs without fear of being destroyed by the political establishment.During the course of our hour-long freep outside Monica's Gate in front of where the TV networks do their standups, a hard pass holding member of the White House press corps stopped and spoke with us at length about the situation.The member of the press corps was...

Dear Mr. President, At a press conference in the White House on January 26, you stated that “there needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press.” In that same press conference, you called on a reporter then known as Jeff Gannon, who worked for an organization called Talon News. Since that time, the public has learned that the real name of that reporter is James Dale Guckert, not Jeff Gannon, and that he had regular access to the White House press facilities for more than a year. We have also learned that the questions...

WASHINGTON - A conservative ringer who was given a press pass to the White House and lobbed softball questions at President Bush quit yesterday after left-leaning Internet bloggers discovered possible ties to gay prostitution. "The voice goes silent," Jeff Gannon wrote on his Web site. "In consideration of the welfare of me and my family, I have decided to return to private life." Gannon began covering the White House two years ago for an obscure Republican Web site (Talon-News.com). He was known for his friendly questions, including asking Bush at last month's news conference how he could work with Democrats...

Everyone knows of Jeff Gannon now. He's the chap who wanted leave a sordid sexual past behind him and become a reporter. Fine and dandy, except that it turned out he was pro-Bush. We can't have that in the White House Press Corps, can we? So the left-wing (a.k.a. mainstream) media set out to destroy the fellow. PowerLine recounts the whole dismal story here. The presence of a Bush-friendly journalist in the White House press corps was taken by the left as a deep affront. A study conducted a few years ago found that the White House press corps is...

(Talon News) -- A radical Islamic web site containing a death threat against a New Mexico-based Talon News writer remains on line at its Chicago-based Internet service provider -- at least for now. In a Friday phone call from Alex Korneyev, the owner of Host for Web (www.hostforweb.com), Talon News report Jeremy Reynalds understood him to say the site will be taken off line shortly. In a follow-up e-mail to Reynalds, Korneyev said the reason the site has remained available is "because we were working with ... law enforcement agencies." However, in the same e-mail, Korneyev emphasized to Reynalds, "I...

Web Site Owner Says He Knew of Reporter's 2 Identities By RALPH BLUMENTHAL OUSTON, Feb. 19 - The operator of an activist Republican Web site and news service said Friday night that he had known for two years that his White House correspondent went by two identities. But the operator, Robert R. Eberle, denied in an interview that the correspondent, Jeff Gannon, whose real name is James D. Guckert, was an administration plant or was given preferential treatment as a Republican partisan to ask soft questions at briefings. Mr. Guckert, who wrote for the Gopusa.com Web site and its offshoot...