Ed Cone has been all over this tempest in a teacup surrounding the Dean campaign’s hiring of Jerome Armstrong and Markos Mulitsas Zuniga. Read what he says. I find it disappointing that the perception is that people can toss some money at webloggers and buy their support, but that’s all that’s going on here. The controversy being cited by Bill O’Reilly and others is completely ginned up.

Update: Salon has a War Room post explaining why the equivalency drawn between the Armstrong Williams dustup and the blogging for dollars scandal is specious. Scott Rosenberg also comments.