Paul Kiel’s got some more details about Rep. Ryun’s (R-KS) sweetheart real estate deal. Short version: his answers to the AP raise even more questions. Rep. Ryun doesn’t seem to want to address the fact that he apparently negotiated the deal with the now-disgraced lobbying firm Alexander Strategy Group.

So, member of Congress purchases a house from a lobbying firm, doesn’t use a realtor but negotiates the deal privately. Final price about a hundred grand under market value. Sounds clean to me.

(ed.note: To the AP, guys, Paul’s got some more material available to steal if you guys are still game.)

Late Update: Rep. Ryun’s hometown paper, the Topeka Capital-Journal picks up the Ryun story (registration req.)

Abramoff skybox regular joins Michael Steele’s Maryland senate campaign.

More fun at Kaloogian’s expense. And it’s actually pretty funny.

Earlier in the day a number of readers wrote in to say that the Kaloogian debacle hadn’t been picked up in the local San Diego Union-Tribune. That’s actually not true. The UT actually did a really good run-down of what happened and explained how the sleuthing work started at Kos and then bounced from one blog to the next. They even quoted yours truly on what it all means.

Murray Waas has another great piece in National Journal. This lengthy piece details how Karl Rove told the people at the White House that President Bush’s 2004 reelection prospects would be severely damaged if the truth came out about what he knew about the bogus uranium story — particularly, the fact that he’d personally been warned that the Niger story was probably bunk.

Here’s what I can add to this story.

We saw this and the cover-up it spawned first hand. While I and reporters from CBS were working on this story through 2004 it was clear that folks on the Hill would agree to talk and then suddenly un-agree when they got the call from the White House. The White House worked doggedly at almost every turn to get the story killed or delayed beyond the election, which they of course did.

That’s not all.

Various arms of the US government actually have been trying or at least been interested in trying to get to the bottom of the story. But that would require the cooperation of the Italian government. And that, of course, is not likely to be forthcoming since at least some elements in the Italian government are responsible for or participated in the scam. The problem? The Bush administration has not lifted a finger to get the Italians to cooperate. That’s the hang-up. Why wouldn’t the White House want the Italian government to cooperate with US law enforcement and intelligence agencies on getting to the bottom of this? Go back and read Waas’s description of Rove’s analysis — the Niger case was kryptonite for the president.

The cover-up on this one is deep. Really deep. And much of it has yet to be uncovered.

Ahh, a thing of beauty. Wikipedia says there’s a new noun: ‘Kaloogian.’ It describes “the use of a false or out-of-context image in order to advance an idea.”

Sigh. When will it end. California GOPer accuses Kaloogian of new ‘endorsement’ bamboozle.

Okay, I know we can’t talk about this bozo Howard Kaloogian forever. But this is just too good to pass up.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a piece about about Kaloogian’s bamboozle. And it includes his latest excuse …

The candidate said he hadn’t recognized the error because “the military asked us to use our discretion and put things on the Internet that were nondescriptive … (because) if we posted something that was easily identifiable, it could be a target.”

In other words, it’s the Army’s fault. Or maybe the Marines. Who knows?

Maybe someone can help me even with the logic here. The military told us to use non-descriptive stuff. So we ended up putting up a picture from Istanbul. Believe me, I’m not trying to be dense. But I’m not even sure this new bamboozlement stands up on its own terms. I guess maybe they’re saying that they looked for something so generic and non-descript that they didn’t even recognize it. And that led them to posting a picture from a different country. Sounds like exactly the kind of doofus you want in Congress, right?

And, so if Kaloogian is walking down the street in Baghdad and snaps a few pics, the U.S. military doesn’t want those man-on-the-street photos on the web because terrorists might use them for targeting? I really doubt insurgents are using this joker’s website for targeting information.

They might not want him posting pictures of military installations and secure zones — which seem to be the only places Kaloogian set foot. That makes sense. But obviously that’s completely different from on the street snaps.

Let’s face it. This guy’s awash in a sea of his own bamboozles. He’s fallen and he can’t get up.

Earlier this evening, the Associated Press ran a clarification to their story about Rep. Jim Ryun and his house purchase from the now-defunct U.S. Family Network.

“The Associated Press,” they wrote, “should have credited the blog TPMmuckraker.com, which first reported the sale.”

The reporting in question was by TPMmuckraker.com’s Paul Kiel.

That was classy and we appreciate it.

We’re in a period of often uncomfortable flux in the news business. And as the containers into which the news is poured and the structure of the industry itself both change, it’s understandable that stuff like this happens. My point in flagging this yesterday was not to zing the particular reporter or news organization. I’m not in this business to rack up ‘as first reported by’ lines. But reporters and news outlets that do solid, enterprise journalism should be credited for their work. And we shouldn’t lose sight of that even as the formats we write in change.

Okay, it seems like I really dropped the ball on my most recent Kaloogian post. But in my defense, the guy is ridiculous on so many different fronts it’s just not that easy to keep up with all of them in real time.

As we mentioned this afternoon, Kaloogian’s latest excuse for his Baghdad-Istanbul bamboozle is this (as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle) …

The candidate said he hadn’t recognized the error because “the military asked us to use our discretion and put things on the Internet that were nondescriptive … (because) if we posted something that was easily identifiable, it could be a target.”

Now, as an almost limitless number of TPM Readers have written in to point out, this is a rather self-defeating explanation.

Things are much calmer and safer in Baghdad than the Bush-hating press will tell you. But we can’t actually show you any pictures because our military handlers told us that any place identified in a photograph in my dinky little campaign website runs a serious risk of being blown up.

Sounds like things are going great over there, doesn’t it?

And however things are going in Baghdad, isn’t this guy’s status as a clown up to something like a moral certainty at this point?