Deadly Analogy

Is 9/11 becoming just another epithet to throw at political opponents, like Hitler and McCarthyism?

Martin O'Malley apparently thinks so.

Who is Martin O'Malley? He's the mayor of Baltimore, and will probably run for Maryland governor.

What dastardly act was he talking about that warranted a comparison to terrorists flying planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000 Americans?

Bush's budget cuts.

His proposed $2-billion slashing of community development programs.

This is simply hard to believe. The budget cuts may be terrible, unfair, reckless, unnecessary. But to liken them to 9/11?

Don't accept my characterization. Here's what O'Malley said at a news conference at the National Press Club, according to The Washington Post: "These cuts, ladies and gentlemen, are sad. Irresponsible. They are also dishonest.

"Back on September 11, terrorists attacked our metropolitan cores, two of America's great cities. They did that because they knew that was where they could do the most damage and weaken us the most. Years later, we are given a budget proposal by our commander in chief, the president of the United States. And with a budget ax, he is attacking America's cities. He is attacking our metropolitan core."

Wow.

I had just started to feel sorry for O'Malley because of another story, a front-page story, in the papers yesterday in which he was smeared. Here's the Baltimore Sun account after The Post broke this seamy tale:

"Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley today denounced rumors of infidelity, as his wife stood by his side and described how the accusations spread on the Internet by a longtime aide to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. were having an effect on their young children.

"'These are despicable lies. These are falsehoods,' O'Malley, a Democrat who is thinking about running for governor in 2006, said in front of City Hall after emerging hand-in-hand with his wife. 'I have always been faithful to my wife from our first date until this date. She is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. . . .

"According to the rumors, O'Malley fathered a child with a television news reporter and separated from his wife, who is a city District Court judge and the daughter of Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran. . . .

"Ehrlich, a Republican, asked for and received the resignation of Joseph Steffen, who confirmed Tuesday that he had discussed the rumor on the conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com and in private e-mails, which were given to The Washington Post. Today, Ehrlich said he first heard about the issue at 8 last night when communications director Paul E. Schurick called him. 'As a result, we dismissed the employee last evening,' said Ehrlich, who has insisted he didn't have anything to do with spreading the rumors. 'There were two things wrong here. One, the act itself and two, the act on state time with state equipment.'"

So the mayor, in this case, was clearly wronged. Too bad he went on to unleash his 9/11 comparison.

The Sun this morning offers this rumination on the role of the Web:

"Rumors of O'Malley's alleged infidelity have long circulated in Baltimore but were not printed in such daily newspapers as The Sun or The Washington Post. It took postings on the Free Republic site, based in Fresno, Calif., to bring that gossip into the local papers of public record, as part of the story of a state official's resignation for helping to spread such chatter.

"Free Republic, a conservative discussion site, was also among the Web sites that took the lead in casting aspersions on a now-discredited 60 Minutes report on President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service. . . .

"The Web site's treatment of the O'Malley rumor and the 60 Minutes report underscores the dual nature of this new form of communication, which traffics in unsubstantiated rumors but can also serve as a check on the mainstream media."

(To complete the Baltimore cycle, the NYT has a front-page piece on how the city is becoming the new homicide capital.)

The other much-buzzed about story involves White House reporter Jeff Gannon, the Talon News guy I wrote about in Monday's column. Here's my latest report:

The conservative reporter who asked President Bush a loaded question at a press conference last month resigned yesterday after liberal bloggers uncovered his real name and raised questions about his background.

Jeff Gannon, who had been writing for the Web sites Talon News and GOPUSA, is actually James Dale Guckert, 47, and has been linked to online domain addresses with sexually provocative names. He has been under scrutiny since asking Bushhow he could work with Senate Democratic leaders "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." The information about Gannon was posted on the liberal sites Daily Kos (www.dailykos.com,) Atrios (atrios.blogspot.com) and World o' Crap.

Under the headline "A Voice of the New Media: The Voice Goes Silent," Gannon wrote on his personal Web page that because of the attention "I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News" and that he is quitting "in consideration of the welfare of me and my family." Gannon added in a brief interview that "my family has been victimized" and that he wanted to "put some separation between Talon News and the White House."

Gannon's resignation highlights the no-holds-barred atmosphere of the Web, which both enabled him to function as a reporter -- his stories appeared on a site founded by Texas Republican activist Bobby Eberle -- and produced a swarm of critics determined to expose him.

Among the domain names registered by Gannon's company several years ago, but never launched, were Hotmilitarystud.com, Militaryescorts.com and Militaryescortsm4m.com, along with Exposejessejackson.com. The bloggers have also linked to a since-withdrawn America Online photo of a man who appears to be Gannon, posing in his underwear, with a screen name bearing the initials "JDG."

Markos Moulitsas, a San Francisco liberal who writes the popular Kos site, said of Gannon: "He has been extremely anti-gay in his writings. He's been a shill for the Christian right. So there's a certain level of hypocrisy there that I thought was fair game and needed to be called out."

Asked if digging into someone's personal and business activities was proper retaliation, Moulitsas said: "If that's what it took to really bring attention to him, it's one of those unfortunate facts of reality in the way we operate today. It's sex that really draws attention to these things."

Gannon, whose past postings have been removed from his site and by Talon and GOPUSA, denied taking position s against gays. "I have not written any anti-gay articles," he said. "I have written stories on the White House position on the gay marriage amendment."

In 2003, when Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told the Associated Press that legalizing gay sex could lead to judicial approval of "man on dog" activities, Gannon wrote a Talon article headlined "Santorum Won't Apologize; AP Reporter Has Kerry Ties." Gannon quoted gay activists offering what he said were "predictable responses," then questioned the role of the AP reporter, who was married to John Kerry's then-campaign manager.

In a story last year, Gannon wrote that Kerry "might someday be known as 'the first gay president.' . . . 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."

Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor who writes on InstaPundit.com, said the tactics used against Gannon "seem to me to be despicable."If I were a member of the White House press corps, I'd be really worried," Reynolds said. "If working for a biased news organization disqualifies you, a lot of people have a lot to be worried about. If being involved in a dubious business venture is disqualifying, I suspect a lot of people have a lot to be worried about. I guess I don't see what all this has to do with his job."

Eberle said in a statement: "I understand and support Jeff's decision, and have accepted the resignation," adding that Talon is looking for a replacement.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), welcomed the news. In his question at the Jan. 26 presidential news conference, Gannon had said that in an effort to disparage the U.S. economy "Harry Reid was talking about soup lines," which is not accurate and which Gannon later acknowledged was a characterization he picked up from Rush Limbaugh. "New media or old media, the fact is the question he asked was based on a lie, and that's unacceptable," Manley said. "Fundamentally, what he was reporting was not truthful."

In a letter to Bush, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) said that "it appears that 'Mr. Gannon's'presence in the White House press corps was merely as a tool of propaganda for your administration." She asked the president to explain why Gannon "was repeatedly cleared by your staff to join the legitimate White House press corps."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the propaganda charge as "just a wild conspiracy theory." As for whether Gannon should be admitted to White House briefings, McClellan said Slaughter "must not have been watching the briefings lately, because she'd see a number of advocates in that briefing room."

Several White House correspondents say they saw Gannon wearing what appeared to be a permanent White House pass with his picture and pseudonym -- legal names are generally required because of the Secret Service background check -- and that McClellan sometimes called on Gannon when he wanted a softer question. McClellan disputed this, saying he calls on reporters "row by row." He also said Gannon did not have a permanent pass and was admitted on a day-to-day basis like many other journalists, adding that he does not meddle with the process on political grounds.

In an interview last week, Gannon explained the pseudonym by saying that some people prefer to use more "commercially appealing" names. He complained about "nuts" on the left and said he had been stalked and threatened. He has told colleagues he was willing to shrug off the threats but became upset when relatives were contacted and harassed.

In a posting on another Gannon site called the Conservative Guy, which has since been taken down, he says he has been "a preppie, a yuppie, blue-collar, green-collar and white-collar. I've served in the military, graduated from college, taught in the public school system, was a union truck driver, a management consultant, a fitness instructor and an entrepreneur. I'm a two-holiday Christian and I usually vote Republican because they most often support conservative positions."

His mission, Gannon wrote, is to "help people to realize that they have conservative core values and are therefore conservatives" and "to expose the liberal lies perpetuated by the media, Hollywood, the teachers' unions and the Democratic Party."

Salon's Eric Boehlert frames the Gannon episode this way:

"The Talon News fiasco raises serious questions about who the White House is allowing into its daily press briefings: How can a reporter using a fake name and working for a fake news organization get press credentials from the White House, let alone curry enough favor with the notoriously disciplined Bush administration to get picked by the president in order to ask fake questions? The White House did not return Salon's calls seeking answers to those questions.

"The situation 'begs further investigation,' says James Pinkerton, a media critic for Fox News who has worked for two Republican White Houses. 'In the six years I worked for Reagan and Bush I, I remember the White House being strict about who got in. It's inconceivable to me that the White House, especially after 9/11, gives credentials to people without doing a background check.'"

As for Scott McClellan's assertion to me that he can't be a media critic policing which reporters get access to the White House: "'That's like [McClellan] saying, '"'m chief of staff at a hospital and when a patient dies in surgery and it turns out the guy operating wasn't a doctor ... [it's] not my business to be a medical critic,"' says Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has written extensively about the inner workings of the Bush administration."

Slate's Fred Kaplan dissects the proposed Pentagon spending:

"Two things are striking about next year's military budget, which President Bush sent to Congress Monday. First, it's a lot larger than the published numbers show -- at least $20 billion and possibly as much as $40 billion larger, not including the hidden costs of the war in Iraq -- and the undercounting seems to be a deliberate ploy to make the deficit look smaller and the budget less weighed down with armaments than they really are.

"Second, whatever the budget totals, tens of billions in defense spending could be slashed if the president followed the principle he laid down in his State of the Union Address last week -- to "substantially reduce or eliminate" all programs that "do not fulfill essential priorities. . . . "

"A supplemental budget request is an accepted way to deal with the uncertainties of military operations. A year goes by between the time a budget is proposed and the time it goes into effect. If a war is going on, no one can predict a year ahead of time how many bullets will be fired, bombs dropped, fuel consumed, wheels replaced, tank-treads patched, and so forth. So, at some point, the Pentagon might request an extra sum of money -- a supplemental -- to accommodate the extra requirements.

"However, this year, the Pentagon is using the supplemental option for purposes that go way beyond standard practice. First, Donald Rumsfeld and his comptroller's office are not even taking an educated guess at how much the Army might need in Iraq next year. For the budget, they are requesting peacetime levels of funding and intend to put all war costs into the supplemental."

Why hasn't there been more online chatter about the budget? Washington Monthy's Kevin Drum is honest:

"To budget blog, or not to budget blog? It's hard to work up the energy.

"What is there to say about George Bush's latest effort, after all? It's a grandstanding budget because it includes lots of flashy cuts that Bush knows perfectly well aren't going to be implemented. It's a meanspirited budget, because the cuts that will be implemented mostly strike the working poor and their children -- and don't really have much impact on the deficit anyway. And it's a dishonest budget because it excludes the enormous costs of Iraq, AMT reform, and Social Security transition."

Well, USA Today and CNN beat the rest of us with a big fat 2008 poll, and Hillary is way out front:

"Among Democrats, 40% favor Clinton in a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken last weekend. Last year's Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and his running mate, John Edwards, trailed with 25% and 17% respectively. . . .

"In one respect, the results are not surprising: Clinton, the only former first lady ever to be elected to office in her own right, is one of the most prominent and controversial people in American political life.

"But her poll status also represents a historic breakthrough: No other female candidate has had such a serious chance of winning a major party's nomination for the presidency."

What? Too early to be meaningful? Who would possibly think that?

Finally, Bill Cosby in a bit of trouble again, according to the New York Post. There are tapes.