Don’t you just hate unsubstantiated rumors on the Internet? I know I do.
But you know what I hate even more? When you’ve been hearing the same unsubstantiated rumor in the real world for months on end from several “insiders” who should know (or should know better), when you are told flat-out by elected officials (not to be quoted, to be sure), that the rumors in question are “an open secret,” when you are even aware of newspaper columnists who have been hinting around the periphery of the story for quite some time and suspect strongly that they can not go on record because none of their sources will, and then you are told that the culmination of the series of rumors is “imminent.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that this is how unsubstantiated rumors on the Internet get started: By people like me who are sick of all the dithering around from individuals who either have the dirt and are so afraid of the powers-that-be that they refuse to go public, or are bound by some journalistic standard, or are just not able to name a source themselves, due to the excellent record of the powers-that-be in question for doing nothing that is strictly illegal, or for that matter written down. Which none of this really is.
Well, screw all that, here’s the rumor.
, author Sanford Gottlieb tells the story of Chris Van Hollen’s successful grassroots campaign for Congress in 2002, and the lessons Van Hollen, and others, took away from that campaign in subsequent election cycles. 
