Who is Colleen Carroll Campbell?

A few days ago, I sent an as-yet-unacknowledged tip to Joshua Micah Marshall's TPMMuckraker addressing an overlooked connection between the Florida Sec. of State's website and Knowledge Connections, a multi-million dollar federal contractor which, since 2000, has apparently been organizing all of this contract work out of a suburban bungalow in Tallahassee. As I mentioned before, however, the Muckraker has yet to acknowledge this story.

But enough about that. What I've got for you today is arguably more important, if not more relevant -- particularly considering the work that Bill Moyers has been doing on PBS.

This morning, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch -- a historically liberal paper, and St. Louis' only daily -- announced that they've hired a new columnist. Yes, she's just a columnist on a larger editorial board -- which would be okay, if she were just a columnist. As it turns out, she's not -- and it's clear (at least to me) that the Post-Dispatch knows it. They're doing everything they can to toss the "liberal" label at her, hoping it sticks; anyone reading her introduction would see that this is readily apparent and, in fact, transparent.

The columnist is Colleen Carroll Campbell, a former GWB speechwriter and evangelical activist, and a St. Louis fellow with Rick Santorum's evangelical think-tank, Ethics & Public Policy Center.

The issue here is not that the Post-Dispatch has hired a partisan hack, or even -- and this is telling -- that they've hired a Bush administration shill. The issue is that the Post-Dispatch is trying to ignore, and, arguably, OBSCURE the fact that she's either of the two.

Obviously, we'll see where this goes. I've got calls, emails, and messages in to most of the editorial board and the managing editor. If I don't get any answers by later this afternoon, I'll head down to the Pulitzer building looking for some answers.

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