A House vote earlier this week got

A House vote earlier this week, got almost no play in the media, though it concerned a pretender to their Estate: Jeff Gannon aka James D. Guckert.

The House Judiciary Committee rejected a resolution put forth by John Conyers' that would have required the Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department to reveal documents regarding "security investigations and background checks relating to granting access to the White House of James D. Guckert."

Conyers went to his colleagues on the Hill because the Bush administration had ignored previous requests via letter. His earlier White House missive is one among many letters from Dems that, according to Times' columnist Maureen Dowd, likely ended up in the Oval Office trash bin.

Having failed on Pennsylvania Avenue, Conyers went to Congress, telling his Judiciary Committee colleagues that "It simply defies credibility that a phony reporter, operating under an alias, who couldn't get privileges in the House or Senate press gallery, could receive scores of consecutive White House day passes without the intervention of someone very high up at the White House." The majority Republican Committee voted along party lines, striking down Conyers request while citing a Secret Service finding that the same Secret Service had done "nothing inappropriate" granting this partisan shill access to the press room.

Tim Grieve at Salon.com writes that Gannon himself declared the vote against the bill a victory for journalists of every stripe. In a statement posted on his website, Gannon said: "It appears to me that a strong majority on the committee has decided that investigating the background of journalists beyond the standards already in place is unnecessary and perhaps poses a threat to a free and independent press."

It's amusing to see Gannon now defend an institution that he had devoted much of his "career" to tearing down.

Gannon's feeble star refuses to go to black. Emboldened by the heavy traffic on his website, He's taken to whoring of a different sort. Like so many others awash in the media, Gannon's attempting to cash in his sad 15 minutes for a lifetime of high-paid punditry. In an interview to appear this Sunday, he tells the New York Times' Deborah Solomon that he’d like to get back into journalism: "I’m hoping someone will offer me a job as a commentator or one of those political analysts that you see on the news shows all the time.”

Ummmm . . . I doubt even Fox News Channel would touch that one.

Who's "divorced themselves from reality" now?