This did not come as news to me.

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - In a stunning declaration, Gov. James E. McGreevey announced his resignation Thursday and acknowledged that he had an affair with another man. "My truth is that I am a gay American," he said with his wife by his side at a nationally televised news conference.

"Shamefully, I engaged in adult consensual affairs with another man, which violates my bonds of matrimony," the twice-married father of two said. "It was wrong, it was foolish, it was inexcusable."

McGreevey, a Democrat, said his resignation would be effective Nov. 15.

I don't think it's any more interesting than the scandal involving Illinois senatorial candidate Jack Ryan. People's private sex lives are really no one's business but their sex partners. In McGreevey's case, the guy was closeted, corrupt, and blackmailable, so it caught up with him. But in a six page extravaganza with two inch headlines, the Philadelphia Inquirer is spinning this as if McGreevey is a victim:

"Lives are ruined because people can't be who they are," said Nancy Piserchia, 46, of Haddonfield, sitting at a table at the Grooveground coffee shop in Collingswood and shaking her head.

Her friends, all from Haddonfield and there for a poetry reading, nodded. That was what people of McGreevey's generation did, they said: Hid things. Dissembled. Used a wife and children as a cover.

"It is so completely tragic," said Lisa Howard, 46. "But I actually think he handled it really well, considering."

The 1970s, folks! Free love, wild parties, orgying, and coming out of the closet.

This line about the "McGreevey generation" is almost as bad as the claim (shrieked in a front page headline) that McGreevey is in the "front of the culture war."

Speaking frankly about his lifelong inner turmoil, and declaring that "I am a gay American," he attributed his imminent resignation to an "intensely personal decision" and the unnamed "circumstances" of his liaison.

And, by doing so, he placed himself on the front lines of the nation's ongoing culture wars, in a presidential-election year when gay marriage has often dominated the dialogue, in an era when many closeted pols are still grappling with conflicting allegiances to their personal lives and to the public realm.

Where the hell do these lying, spinning bastards get off? I agree with Larry Sabato's analysis (which the Inquirer, to its credit, reported):

Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of a book on governors, said McGreevey's speech was the ultimate in political spin.

He called McGreevey a "brute" for having his wife at his side when he announced he had been living a life of lies.

"What a jerk," he said. "This is a guy who is just totally, utterly political."

He predicted McGreevey would go down in history as a poor governor.

McGreevey's resignation is the latest in a series of tumultuous events that have rocked New Jersey politics over the last three years.

In 2001, acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco - viewed as the heir apparent to former Gov. Christie Whitman - pulled out of the governor's race amid allegations that he mixed personal and government business.

The following year, Torricelli abruptly ended his reelection campaign to the U.S. Senate amid continuing disclosures in connection with a federal investigation into his financial relationship with a campaign donor. The Democrats replaced Torricelli with former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who went on to win Torricelli's seat.

So much for "gay rights." Spare me.

What I want to know is why McGreevey's crooked penis occupies most of the front page (and six full pages inside), while for two days now, nothing -- NOTHING -- has been reported about the biggest lie of John Kerry's career?

And I do mean nothing. Read Glenn Reynolds's indictment of the media's Kerry Cambodia closet. (And Will Collier does a particularly good job of blasting this official silence.)

There's of course nothing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I doubt there's anything in the New York Times. All I can find is this story, in the New York Daily News:

The issue is not whether the charges against Kerry are politically motivated (they obviously are) or who is paying for them. There's just one relevant question: Are the allegations true? Specifically, is it true he lied about being in Cambodia.

Unlike the debate over Kerry's medals, this is a matter that can be checked and verified. If it turns out Kerry was there, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth are liars and their charges are, in the words of Kerry's friend John McCain, "dishonest and dishonorable." But if he wasn't there, the Kerry campaign is saddled with a problem it can't solve by calling Republicans names, threatening TV stations or even bringing up President Bush's less than stellar war record.

Kerry has staked his candidacy on Vietnam. His running mate has publicly invited the country to judge Kerry by listening to his comrades in arms. A lot of them, to Edwards' obvious chagrin, are saying that John Kerry is unfit for command.

If it turns out he made up the story of Christmas in Cambodia, they could very well be right.

I'm sorry, but that won't wash, and this isn't a game of "gotcha." The latter implies a picky, picky tussle over technicalities. This isn't just a one time slip of the tongue or a drunken comment at a partisan ceremony. Kerry made the United States incursion into Cambodia -- and the denial thereof by Richard Nixon -- a major cornerstone of his antiwar leadership and his political career.

The Cambodia lie is much more than a slip of the tongue. People who see it as political grandstanding or military bragadoccio miss the point. The Cambodia canard was calculated political rhetoric, because a primary goal of the left has been the deliberate inculcation and maintenance of the fiction that Vietnam was "Nixon's War." In reality it was LBJ's war. When Kerry went to Vietnam, it was still LBJ's war -- something the politically motivated young Lieutenant Kerry knew full well. Thus, it suited his interests later to have been in Cambodia in Christmas of 1968, and to realize -- as a turning point in his political thinking -- that Nixon and the Republicans were responsible for All That Went Wrong.

Factor in the antiwar explosion over Cambodia. Kent State. Nixon, Nixon, Nixon.

Kerry might just as well have been in Cambodia in 1968.

Nixon might just as well have been president.

The Cambodia lie is no ordinary lie, but a cornerstone of Kerry's thinking.

Comparing this to the questions about Bush's National Guard sevice is preposterous. Far from making that service a turning point in his life, Bush never put it at issue at all. (And unlike Kerry, Bush never attacked the National Guard.) Instead, the Democrats screamed about decades old gaps in military pay records as if they were impeachable offenses.

By comparing the media treatment of McGreevey to their treatment of Kerry, I do not mean to make light of this matter. But at least McGreevey did not make his sexuality the central focus of his political life.

Kerry's war record -- especially his "service" in Cambodia -- has been invoked time and time again. And in such a way as to give Kerry the moral high ground in major policy debates. Such as Nicaragua. Am I the only one who remembers "lying before Congress"? And who knows what else might be buried in Cambodia?

Kerry's Cambodian lie has been proved beyond all serious dispute. It's more than relevant; it's an indictment of his whole political life, his ethos. A far more serious thing than an indictment of his penis.

So what entitles Kerry to have an outrageously large closet?

Maybe it's homophobia after all.....

UPDATE: More (via Glenn Reynolds) from Tom Maguire here. The sheer volume of non-reporting just grows and grows.

Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer sees a downside to the focus on Kerry's military record:

Politically, though, I think the whole Swift boat campaign is not very smart. It focuses attention on Kerry's one strong point. The man has nothing to say about his next 30 years. His own emphasis on his Vietnam days is a brilliant distraction from his mediocre Senate career and his unbroken string of misjudgments about the national security requirements of the United States: supporting the idiotic nuclear freeze, opposing crucial Pershing II missile deployments in Europe, opposing support for the Nicaraguan anti-communist insurgency, voting against the Persian Gulf War, trying to cut post-Cold War intelligence funding. The list is long.

The Swift boat campaign will not affect swing voters. People will believe what they believe about Kerry at war based on what they previously thought about Kerry. But by drawing attention to Kerry's service, the anti-Kerry vets are playing precisely into his strong suit. If the issue becomes which of the two candidates went to the front in the Vietnam War, Kerry wins.

(Unless, of course, Kerry can prove he was in Cambodia.....)

If he can, the word "Cambodia" will be all over the news. (The argument would then become whether it was Christmas or January, thus reducing the whole thing to a partisan game of "gotcha!") If he can't, the closet will, I think, remain closed.

MORE: As comparisons between Bush's service and Kerry's service go, this is the most damning I've seen. (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

AND MORE (08/15): I'm on vacation, but Dave Kopel did a masterful job of discussing this in Denver's Rocky Mountain News. With journalists like Kopel in print, maybe there's hope for the mainstream media! This via Glenn Reynolds, who also links to a potentially devastating revelation from Ed Morrisey that "Kerry's crewmate" David Alston never served a day under Kerry's command:

If this gets out to the mainstream media, this story kills Kerry's campaign. This isn't just a guy embellishing his war record -- this is a deliberate and longstanding attempt to mislead and defraud people by creating his own witnesses after the fact. That he could have done such a clumsy job should disqualify him for higher office on that basis alone.

Democratic Underground has linked back to this post with a suggestion that they dig up dirt on one of my readers who did research for this series.

Meanwhile, I'm running up an Internet bill and neglecting my vacation, so that's it for today.

I think this stuff is damned important, and thank God for the blogosphere.

UPDATE: Attempting to occupy what he must imagine is a "middle ground," Bill O'Reilly is ignoring Cambodia, instead charactering the controversy as an improper attack on Kerry's war record.

Sorry, but if Kerry said he was in Cambodia when he wasn't, and embellishes the myth for years as a cornerstone of his political philosophy, discussing evidence contradicting that claim is not an attack on his war record.

If Kerry wasn't in Cambodia, then how can it even be said to be part of his "war record?"And if he did spend Christmas in Cambodia after all, where's the record? Until there's a record, there's no record to attack; just Kerry's so far unsupported word.

Should I be surprised at the "fair and balanced" O'Reilly?