Lots of us believe that O'Malley
1) really screwed up on Feb 8, 2004 in a speech before many of the country's mayors
2) had the swirl of ugly rumors about infidelity over his head for months
3) dropped the dime -aka NCPAC/MD4BUSH freepmails - to Matthew Mosk on the evening of Feb 8, so that the next news cycle would be covering an offended Mayor and his wunded wife standing sympathetically in front of City Hall blaming Ehrlich's nefarious "prince of Darkness" for spreading malicious rumors.
This cost Joe Steffen his job, and did stop everybody in Baltimore from talking about the O'Malley rumors.
A page from the Clinton playbook --get bad news out early - remember the discussion ofJennifer Flowers on 60 minutes after the Superbowl of 1992 - than which there is no greater prime time. For the rest of the primaries that year Clinton was inoculated against the bimbo eruptions because "it had already been discussed" - old news - moving on - marriage stronger - etc
Who is this Matthew Mosk?
A dartmouth class of 92 graduate, and the grandson of liberal California supreme court judge Stanley Mosk. The senior Mosk considered running on the democratic ticket as the first jewish President of the USA. According to his obit he was "wrongly" labeled a lib.
Matthew Mosk lives in the midst of political intrigue, Annapolis Maryland with his wife Karin, who happens to be a therapist in Baltimore. Interesting, it seems O'Doherty's wife Katherine is an art therapist.
These people are potentially all very close to each other, there lives seem to interweave.