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"The site has accomplished much in its seven years. Congressmen and Senators who were first reported on here are no longer in office. Political operatives who worked against us are now on our team. The mainstream media has been educated and it’s no longer considered off-limits to report on the hypocrisy of closeted, anti-gay politicians. (Outlets like the Philadelphia Inquirer and Superstaion WGN now take BlogActive reporting as a primary source — times sure have changed.) What a wild ride it has been. Now it’s time to close a chapter on the site and to move in a new direction. I will no longer be blogging at BlogActive." - Outing kingpin Mike Rogers, announcing the end of the site that terrorized political closet cases since 2004.
Take a bow, Mr. Rogers.
Now that his two year post-Senate "cooling off" period is over, totally not gay toe-tapper Larry Craig is once again trolling the halls of Congress, but this time it's as a lobbyist.
Craig's firm, New West Strategies, wouldn't actually confirm lobbying was now part of his portfolio. "I didn't say that," said Mike Ware, a principle at New West, adding, with emphasis, that "the cooling off period IS over." But the mere spotting of Craig back on the Hill was enough to raise alarms from those good-government groups who see danger in the coercive influence former members can have on old colleagues. "This is sort of the way of Washington right now. It is not the exception to the rule but more or less a rule itself," said Dave Levinthal, Communications Director at the Center for Responsive Politics. "When you get out of federal office you think about how you can cash in that experience you gained from working in the public sector by going into the private sector."Former members of the House and Capitol Hill senior staffers are only required to wait one year before that revolving door grants their corporate clients access to the very legislation their new emissaries once authored. According to the above-linked story, so far this year 90 former members of Congress and former Hill staffers have already registered as lobbyists.
