I had been meaning to write about this story for two weeks now, and all sorts of things kept coming up. The short summary is that the Cleveland Plain Dealer decided to hire two progressive and two conservative bloggers as an experiment in open source journalism.

It was working out fine until Mr. LaTourette, the authoritarian, panty-assed Congressman from the Cleveland area, found out a blogger named Jeff Coryell was one of the progressives. Coryell had, in the past, written things critical of LaTourette (Heaven's To Betsy!). He had also given a small amount of money to his opponent (there were never any preconditions at The Plain Dealer about this).

In any case, Latourette cried like the little wus that he is, and Coryell was told he couldn't write about LaTourette if he wanted to stay on. Mind you, none of the other bloggers had these kinds of conditions set.

Coryell, like anyone with integrity would do, refused. So he was fired, which led to the other progressive blogger walking (the very talented Jill Miller Zimon of Writes Like She Talks), and the experiment's crashing and burning.

(If you want Jeff's version of events, off you go - And our friend OhDave, the Ohio blogging king himself, is also worth checking out on this).

Obviously, this story is a big one for a number of reasons. But one of them, which I covered on Republican Sexcapades last week, is LaTourette's unbelievable hypocrisy.

So, he thought there was a conflict of interest, did he, with Coryell writing about him? Well, in my capacity as a writer, I just happened to break a story for Salon in 2004 that LaTourette had left his wife of 21 years with only a phone call, so that he could be with his former Chief Of Staff (who he had been having an affair with). 

You want more sleaze? Ok. LaTourette was living with this woman, Jennifer Laptook, by night, and they were using a loophole in Congressional rules so she could lobby the very committee he sat on by day (Transportation). For clients HE GAVE HER.

(If he sounds a little like Jack Abramoff to you, he should, as he also has strong contacts to the bribery king himself).

So what was that you were saying about "conflict of interest" Stevo? Yeah, I thought so.

Don't worry though, we'll be sure to remind people about your moral failings and over-the-top hypocrisy during the upcoming election cycle (who knows, maybe I'll even write an op-ed for the Cleveland Plain Dealer!).