With his conservative suits, white shirts, and narrow ties, Glenn Greenwald looks more like a Mormon missionary than a political commentator who can bring opponents to their knees -- and then get in a good kick while they're down. In one memorable TV appearance last fall, he reveled in an on-air shouting match with Lawrence O'Donnell (the Senate staffer and West Wing producer turned pundit) over what had caused the Democrats to bungle the midterm elections. O'Donnell seemed to blame progressives; Greenwald made a strong case that it was the Blue Dog Democrats -- timid, Republican-imitating centrists -- who had doomed the party. On air, Greenwald called O'Donnell's contentions "absurd," but that wasn't enough. Over the next few days, on his popular Salon blog, he attacked both O'Donnell's demeanor ("adolescent&quot and substance ("trite," "superficial," and "empirically false&quot .

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Like Watson, Greenwald, 44, seems hardwired to best his opponents. Just six years after he wrote his first blog entry, he is consistently listed among the most influential pundits in the country (by mainstream media outlets like Forbes, The Atlantic, and New York). And, as a sign of his audience's loyalty, two of his three books -- supplements to the thousands of words he produces for Salon each day -- have become New York Times best-sellers. (The fourth, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, will be out in October.)

Given Greenwald's intellectual fecundity and argumentative ferocity, being gay may be the least interesting thing about him. But even Greenwald doesn't claim that his sexual orientation doesn't matter. After all, if he were straight he would be living in Manhattan, his home for most of the last 20 years. Instead, he lives in Rio de Janeiro, barred from moving to the United States with his Brazilian boyfriend, David Michael Miranda.

"Brazil recognizes our relationship for immigration purposes, while the government of my supposedly 'free,' liberty-loving country enacted a law explicitly barring such recognition," says Greenwald, referring to the Defense of Marriage Act with the disdain he typically shows for policies he believes are eroding Americans' freedoms. Greenwald's attacks on the powerful make him a tempting target for reprisals. So it's no surprise that, soon after he started blogging, critics sometimes tried to out him in a game of "gotcha." But what upset Greenwald was the implication that he had been closeted in the first place. "There was nothing to out," he says. "I've been as out as I can be since I was 20."