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I felt the need for the disclaimer. (I am even a little afraid I've let my party dues lapse, though I'm not entirely sure.)

This is because Jessica McBride thinks I write the Dems' press releases, or something, which, of course, drives the media narrative. She's even put it in handy diagram form, for her listeners who can't read between the lines:

Blogs ----> Democratic Party/Doyle campaign press releases ----> MSM stories

There you go, boys and girls. All those nice Republicans who took campaign money from the Republican leadership that protected and promoted a sexual predator (for years, people, not just a few months) wouldn't have to face any awkward questions in the press about it if it weren't for me. Absolutely nothing that they would have to say or comment on at all if I hadn't gone mucking around in publicly accessible websites looking for dirt.

And now, for my next feat of massive influence: Jessica McBride should retire from public life. (Just give that a week to sink in.)

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Less serious response: What? Bloggers driving the media narrative? Why, conservatives would never do that. (*cough* danrather *cough*)

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More serious response: I'm going to believe that, after I posted twice on Sunday about Wisconsin Republicans' ties to the Mark Foley scandal, the press releases that showed up in my inbox Monday (like this one) mirroring my posts were more a case of Great Minds Thinking Alike than anything else. It was low-hanging fruit, after all.

But there is a legitimate question for Republican Congressional candidate John Gard, despite what Dennis York thinks (scroll down to Hasselhoff), about whether the ten large from John Boehner, who knew about Foley but didn't call for the kind of investigation we've seen in page scandals of the past, would affect a hypothetical-Congressman Gard's vote for the leadership in January. Does Gard think that Boehner--or Hastert, who dropped $5k to him--is the kind of man who should be leading the Congress he wants to belong to? That is not an unreasonable question at all; and the follow-up--if not, why keep the money?--is also reasonable to ask. Jessica McBride is, in theory, someone who knows journalism and, as such, should know that those questions would have come regardless of my writing on this blog about it.

Gard is welcome to make the case to the press that Dennis York does for him, but it's not wrong to ask, and certainly not unexpected that the Democratic Party of Wisconsin would press the issue.