Dan Gerstein responds to Sargent's piece.

Dan Gerstein has responded to my post below. He says there's no problem at all with the fact that The Politico published a piece by him attacking some of Joe Lieberman's high-profile foes at the same time that he was collecting money from Lieberman...

What happened here is this: Gerstein used The Politico as a platform partly to settle the old scores of -- and to advance the current agenda of -- a paying client, but without mentioning the "paying" part. Is that really what Harris and VandeHei envision for something they're hoping to establish as the preeminently credible Web-based political publication?

As Duncan says:

For years it's been news, an almost obligatory reference in any article about bloggers, that Markos got a few bucks from the Dean campaign, something he fully disclosed at the time. Then it was big news that Markos had a friend who worked for Mark Warner which, again, wasn't exactly a big secret and the mere fact of this friendship was an existential taint of some sort.

Now the hot insiders at the Politico are letting paid flacks for politicians write articles without disclosing that information. And it's us unethical bloggers who have issues. What a bunch of wankers.

Apparently it's just fine by The Politico that they gave Gerstein a platform to bash bloggers without disclosing the fact that Gerstein is paid by Lieberman now and yes---it makes a difference,. The Politico knew exactly what he was going to say and it appears to me that Gerstein was given the platform to settle old scores for Harris and VandeHei as well in my opinion. Way to go. And you wonder why people turn to blogs.