Poor Jeff Gannon

So used. So abused. It turns out our buddy Jeff Jim Guckert Gannon not only was a WH presstitute (in every nuance), and not only was he used by the WH to try to destroy Joseph Wilson's and Valerie Plame's careers (and maybe get at least her killed), but he somehow managed to forget to pay the state of Delaware some $20,700 dollars in personal income taxes. Whoops.

The Washington Post finally picks up the story.

The Scoop has a collection of Guckert's "planted" questions designed to turn attention away from the Abu Ghraib tortures to what Saddam used to do, to connect Teresa Heinz Kerry to a group that protested on Karl Rove's lawn, and to smear John Kerry during the campaign. But I'm sure Bush's supporters will excuse Mr. Guckert-Gannon all his foibles, including his man-on-man solicitations.

LaBelle has been reading up on this story, as well. She points us back to Rigorous Intuition, where the story takes an even creepier turn - right into the Reverand Moon - the man who believes himself the Messiah and was coronated in the Dirksen room in our nation's capital recently - the man who owns the Washington Times and several other papers - the man who's money seems to come from some very unsavory sources. And the Reverand Moon circles us right back around to the Bushes.

Bush has largely excused the rich and powerful from the onerous burden of lightening their wads a tiny bit for the public weal -- with a resulting plunge in Treasury receipts. Yet he still needs mucho boodle to pay for his wars, and for the corporate welfare he doles out by the barge-load to his friends and family. Not to mention the billions in public funds he's passing to his favorite religious sects -- including the sex-crazed, anti-American cultist Sun Myung Moon, whose front groups have been set loose in the nation's schools to teach "sexual abstinence," Salon.com reports.

(But then, Moon -- who requires his followers to fornicate in front of his picture, with precise instructions as to timing, positions and even postcoital cleanup -- is a long-time Bush Family patron, having slipped millions of dollars in hard cash to George I and Babs for public appearances on behalf of his organizations, Consortiumnews.com reports. Meanwhile, according to investigator John Gorenfeld, Moon's media empire and innumerable front groups have relentlessly pushed L'il Bush's political agenda. It's a match made in heaven, really: Moon made his pile through arms peddling, covert ops, murky business deals and a self-confessed strategy of "divine deception" masking his amoral power lust with pious blather -- just like the Bushes!)
  Information Clearinghouse article

"In the early stages of the Reagan Revolution that embraced the Washington Times and Moon's anti-Communist movement, it was embarrassing to be caught at a Moon event," wrote The Gadflyer last year. "Until George H.W. Bush appeared with Moon in 1996, thanking him for a newspaper that 'brings sanity to Washington.'" That was while on an extended trip to South America in Moon's company. A Reuters' story of Nov 25 of that year describes the former president as "full of praise" for Moon at a banquet in Buenos Aires, toasting him as "the man with the vision." (And Moon helped Bush out with his own vision thing, paying him $100,000 for the pleasure of his company.) Bush and Moon then travelled together to Uruguay, "to help him inaugurate a seminary in the capital, Montevideo, to train 4,200 young Japanese women to spread the word of his Church of Unification across Latin America."
  Rigorous Intuition post

Be sure to note in the Rigorous Intuition article the following quote from Sydney Blumenthal last October:

Even now, the White House is being redecorated for President Bush's second term -- or at least one room, the Lincoln Bedroom. The famous long bed will remain; so will the original Emancipation Proclamation in its glass case. But dominating the room, above the bed, will be a large carved crown from which will flow, ceiling to floor, royal purple satin drapes. The crown has been sent to be gilded with gold in anticipation of Bush's triumphant return from his campaign.

RI ties this into the Moonie coronation and Moon's Unification Church push to have religious groups replace the cross symbol with a crown. They're pushing that as a need to get away from symbolism of bloodshed. But I can't help but make the connection to the Crusades, which BubbleBoy continues to reference in his speeches about America's activity in the Middle East, albeit more subtly than at the lead-up to invading Iraq. The Knights Templar's (Freemasons) icon was a cross within a crown.