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Olesker Out Wednesday, January 04, 2006 - The Associated Press Columnist Michael Olesker has resigned two weeks before his 30th anniversary with The (Baltimore) Sun amid allegations of plagiarism, after an alternative weekly found instances in which he used the work of other journalists without attribution.Olesker resigned Tuesday, a day before the City Paper article hit the streets."I hope that people will understand that in the course of deadline pressures and trying to take a jumble of facts and boil them down to something understandable that I made errors of sloppiness and inadvertence that were human mistakes and certainly...

A longtime columnist for The Baltimore Sun resigned Tuesday amid allegations of plagiarism from other newspapers, The Sun said early Wednesday. Michael Olesker, who wrote a column that appeared twice a week in the Maryland section of The Sun for 27 years, quit two weeks before his 30th anniversary as a Baltimore columnist. His most recent column had appeared in Tuesday's Sun. "I made mistakes," Olesker said as he cleaned out his desk in the newsroom, according to an article in The Sun's editions published Wednesday. "I am sorry to say that in the course of doing those columns, I...

IN THE continuing saga of Official State Dirtball Joseph Steffen, a new name enters the mix: Kendel S. Ehrlich. It turns out, the day before Steffen was to be outed for spreading filth about Mayor Martin O'Malley, he turned to the first lady of Maryland for a shoulder to cry on. Relax, Kendel Ehrlich told Steffen, we need you. The next day, Steffen was shoved offstage. As Shakespeare didn't quite say: Out, out, damned Dirtball. The Kendel Ehrlich e-mail was the most fascinating item uncovered by two dozen reporters scrounging through 14,500 pages of e-mails and other documents the Ehrlich...

Jervis S. Finney, chief counsel to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., has questioned members of the media - including two Sun reporters - about "MD4BUSH," an anonymous contributor to a Web site that posted adultery rumors about Mayor Martin O'Malley.Finney said he was asking the questions as part of his investigation into the activities of Joseph Steffen, an aide to the governor who was fired February 8 for his involvement in spreading the rumors about O'Malley's personal life, The (Baltimore) Sun reported.O'Malley has denied the rumors.MD4BUSH had several Web log exchanges with Steffen about the O'Malley rumors and gathered a number...

ON THE DAY Official State Dirtball Joseph Steffen admitted spreading stories to humiliate Mayor Martin O'Malley and his family, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. appeared on WBAL-TV news, where he was asked by reporter Dave Collins, "Have you known about this rumor?" "No, absolutely not," said Ehrlich with a straight face. Imagine the effort that must have taken. Imagine the faith in people's sheer childlike naivete to stand in front of a TV camera and say such words in an effort to distance yourself from this disgrace. If the governor of Maryland did not hear the rumors about the mayor...