Were Tony Snow's Online Columns Erased From Conservative Website?

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's name still shows in the line-up as a columnist among the array of right-leaning pundits whose musings appear on the popular conservative Website, Townhall.com. But if you hunt for any of Snow's commentaries there, you probably won't find anything. All that I could locate today when I searched through www.townhall.com was a short biography that pre-dates Snow's April 2006 appointment as official spokesman for President George W. Bush.

Oh, and there is a tiny mugshot. But zilch under the tagline, Columns by Tony Snow.

I stumbled over the melted Snow phenomenon while trying to look up a column by another conservative, Jack Kemp, the former HUD secretary and 1996 Republican vice presidential candidate who occasionally contributes at Townhall.com. Searching through the site, I found plenty of work by Ann Coulter, Bill Bennett, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Tony Blankeley and a long list of others. But there was no Snow. Global warming perhaps?

It definitely looks like Snow had written some columns that once were posted on the Website. Searching across the 'net via Google, I found titles for four pieces between Sept. 30, 2005 and March 17, 2006, but I couldn't read them as they all linked back to Townhall.com, where there was no Snow. The titles I came across were: The jury's still out on Bush team; Turmoil inside the Beltway; Lessons from Virginia, and Losing ground.

Townhall.com was started in 1995 and says "it was the first major investment in online activism made by either side." It is now part of Salem Communications Corp., and describes itself as an entity that is designed to amplify conservative voices in America's political debates.

All to the good if you believe in a vigorous First Amendment; all to the bad if Snow's columns were scrubbed because they could put him in a bind in his job as the President's mouthpiece. Another possibility: Maybe Snow was a Townhall.com columnist who never contributed anything. In that case, he still shouldn't be on the list as one of its writers. It smacks of false adversiting.

Snow is an Ohioan who went to Princeton High School in suburban Cincinnati, then began a journalism career that took him from newspapers to FOX News, where he was a political analyst and host of a weekend show.