The blood is in the water....

....and the media will be circling, looking for more "victims".

I haven't commented at all on the Armstrong WIlliams fiasco. There's been plenty of that in the blogosphere. Now Michelle Malkin reveals that another conservative writer was accepting payments from a government agency to promote the Bush administration's initiatives.

You all know how I feel about the Bush administration's media "pay-to-pander" scandal. (Go here and here and here for a refresher.) In two word: absolutely disgusted. When I first blogged about the Armstrong Williams payoff, I wrote this:

Any other pundits who accepted money from the Bush administration, whether from the Education Department or any other bureaucracy, should come forward now and disclose. And then they should immediately return the money.

Williams refused to return the money he took to promote Bush's education and now he's crying "witch hunt." No other conservative commentators volunteered to come forward and disclose whether they had taken Bush administration money--tax dollars--for similar schemes. So now, Drudge has a preview of Howard Kurtz's Washington Post article tomorrow exposing a conservative writer I have long admired, Maggie Gallagher.

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families. But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal...

Can't tell you how deeply disappointed I am to read this, especially given that Gallagher has been a fearless and independent (or so I had thought) voice in defense of traditional marriage.

Suffice it to say that I agree completely with Michelle, both on the writers taking payment and the government for paying them.

Stupidity comes in both colors — blue and red.