I knew there would be additional shoes to drop. First came Armstrong Williams, and now we learn about Maggie Gallagher.

The otherwise detestable Howard Kurtz, "media reporter" at the Washington Post, a man who also takes a regular paycheck, incongruously and unethically, as the host of a CNN program going by the astonishingly dishonest name "Reliable Sources," today reported that Gallagher, every Republican's favorite hitched -- With children! -- gal, received more than $40,000 from the Bush administration to promote the regime's bizarre initiative best known as "Everybody -- except those creepy gays -- should get married!"

You have to read Gallagher's incredibly lame self-defense, "A Question of Disclosure," available at Townhall.com. Here's the gag line, in which Gallagher attempts, unsuccessfully, to distance herself from the disgraced Armstrong Williams:

[T]he reason Howard Kurtz of the Post is interested is the now-notorious case of conservative columnist Armstrong Williams, who signed a very different sort of government contract: to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind Act on his television show.

"Very different," Maggie says, because, if I'm reading her awkward prose correctly, well, Williams promoted Bush administration policies "on his television show," unlike third- or fourth-ringer Gallagher, who makes her party-line views known through her syndicated newspaper columns and "frequent media appearances." Now that's very different.

Unknown fact: Gallagher once sent me an e-mail, co-authored by a lesbian Catholic blogger, seeking my participation in some sort of "defend traditional marriage" web site or weblog they were planning. I have no idea what became of the project -- it may well be up and running, perhaps even successful -- but, frankly, I couldn't care less.

[Post-publication addendum (February 1): See also "$5000 An Idea, Full Service, by Michelangelo Signorile in the latest issue of the New York Press. Pull quote: "Gallagher's crime is far more egregious than Williams'[s], despite the latter having made $240,000 for his efforts, while Gallagher only made off with a little over $40,000 ($21,000 for writing the government's marriage initiative brochures, and a subsequent payment of $20,000). What few media reports noted last week was that Gallagher, in addition to writing the Bush administration brochures and pumping up its policies in her columns, testified before a Senate subcommittee in support of the federal marriage amendment that the White House eventually backed and pushed throughout the presidential campaign. But Gallagher was not identified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights as the individual who wrote the White House's policy on marriage, but rather as the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, an independent think tank. She was thus a paid witness on behalf of the Bush administration, testifying before the Senate."]

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