SO HOW CORRUPT IS JOHN McCAIN? IT'S NOT ABOUT THE YOUNGER VERSION OF CINDY

Huckabee may be praying today. McCain's carefully crafted image as Mr. Clean is rapidly unravelling. The McCain PR Machine Campaign is on a full throttle attack against the NY Times, although today's Washington Post names the names that the Times was keeping confidential. Americans are learning this morning what McCain has spent a career covering up: he's a tawdry fake and a hypocritical and crooked political hack. Had they only been reading DWT for the last few years, yesterday's revelations wouldn't have surprised them. I doubt it surprised Huckabee either. After spending over $40 million out of Tagg's inheritance fund, Mitt may have jumped out of the race a little too soon. Huckabee is still in, still hopeful that the Republican conservative base will turn to him as their savior. Yesterday he lashed out at Republican Insiders demanding he bow out and pledge allegiance to McCain. Prescient:

"I'm going to tell you something. That smug, elitist, arrogant attitude toward many of us who are in this race is going to backfire on a lot of Republicans"

It's not like the scandal that the Times broke last night is the first whiff of massive impropriety on the part of one of Washington's most successful political manipulators. In 2 weeks it will be the third anniversary of McCain's promise to crooked Republicans that he could and would guarantee that they will be safe from the investigation into the Abramoff-related Culture of Corruption.

When McCain investigated he found the already self-confessed Republican rainmaker and briber, Jack Abramoff, was bribing. But, apparently, he was bribing theoretical congressman, not actual congressmen. McCain turned the investigation into a farce and a protection scheme for his guilty colleagues. According to an article by Paul Kane in the March 10, 2005 issue of Roll Call, McCain assured GOP congressmen and senators, many of whom had been on the take from Abramoff, "that his expanding investigation into the activities of a former GOP lobbyist and a half-dozen of his tribal casino clients is not directed at revealing ethically questionable actions by Members of Congress."

At a Senate Republican luncheon last Wednesday, McCain told the gathering that his own probe, being run through the Indian Affairs Committee, is simply looking into potential "fraudulent" activities perpetrated against the tribes by Jack Abramoff and his associates.

"It's not our responsibility in any way to involve ourselves in the ethics process [of Senators]," McCain said Wednesday, explaining the comments he made to his fellow GOP Senators. "That was not the responsibility of the Indian Affairs Committee."

McCain's comments to Republicans, made at the weekly lunch of the GOP's Steering Committee, came on the same day a trio of stories landed in Washington newspapers raising questions about the legislative actions taken by two GOP Senators and political donations to an interest group established in 1997 by Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

McCain promised them he wouldn't air their dirty laundry. And he didn't. The only GOP legislator to go to prison for taking bribes from Abramoff, Bob Ney, just got an early release from an already extraordinarily light sentence yesterday! Tom DeLay (R-TX)? Conrad Burns (R-MT)? Tom Feeney (R-FL)? Don Young (R-AK)? John Doolittle (R-CA)? Jim Talent (R-MO)? John Ensign (R-NV)? Ken Calvert (R-CA)? Jerry Lewis (R-CA)? Duncan Hunter (R-CA)? Dick Pombo (R-CA)? Phil English (R-PA)? Denny Hastert (R-IL)? Virgil Goode (R-VA)? David Vitter (R-LA)? John Sweeney (R-NY)? Robin Hayes (R-NC)? Charlie Taylor (R-NC)? Heather Wilson (R-NM)? Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)? Cathy McMorris (R-WA), Mike Rogers (R-MI), Jim Gerlach (R-PA)? Although these were all members of the House and Senate taking bribes from Abramoff, not a single one was called to testify by McCain. Some have been defeated by enraged voters but most of them are still in Congress, still part of a Culture of Corruption McCain triangulates against while benefiting from.

As Roll Call reported last Wednesday, [Montana Senator Conrad] Burns and his political committees received at least $134,000 in contributions from Abramoff and his tribal clients in 2001 and 2002, during which he had hired a former aide from Abramoff's firm to a top Senate position. The Washington Post reported that Abramoff later hired another of Burns' top aides. The Post also reported that Burns, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior, with spending oversight of tribal issues, helped send $3 million for a school project to one of Abramoff's tribal clients in Michigan.

On Wednesday, Burns said he has instructed his staff to start an internal review of all actions that the Senator and his office conducted related to Abramoff or any of his associates at the lobbyist's former firm, Greenberg Traurig, which pushed Abramoff out a year ago as the controversy first came to light. "We are going through our records to see what happened," Burns said, noting that McCain's assurances weren't necessary.

"It doesn't make any difference. Whatever they want out of our office, whatever they need, I'm willing to do that," he added.

As Roll Call reported last week, Vitter, while a House Member, pushed a provision in an Appropriations bill that was designed to instruct the Interior Department to deny federal recognition to a tribe seeking to build a casino in western Louisiana. An opponent of gambling, Vitter worked hand-in-hand with a group opposed to the proposed tribal casino-- a group that was later revealed to be funded by a competing Indian casino that simply didn't want increased competition to its multi-million-dollar gambling operation.

Vitter, who has said he did not know the anti-gambling group was a front for another casino, said Wednesday that McCain personally approached him last week to assure him that his committee is not angling to embarrass fellow Senators. But, Vitter said, he has nothing to hide and believes McCain's probe is highlighting the unseemly connection between Indian casino money and attempts to expand tribal gambling.

"I encouraged him to keep going full speed ahead," Vitter said.

A senior McCain aide said a Member could end up in the committee's cross-hairs only if the Member was involved in defrauding the tribes.

No one did-- not a single senator; not a single congressman. McCain protected them all. He "hauled" Abramoff and Scanlon in front of his committee and made a big show of what a crime fighter he is and how devoted he is, always is, to ethics. But you can't have bribers without bribees-- unless you live in McCain World. And we're not talking about penny-ante stuff here. McCain's own committee found that the sums were in the tens of millions of dollars, possibly over $100 million. McCain never accounted for what happened to the $82 million defrauded from the Indian Tribes that flowed into Republican coffers via Abramoff and Scanlon. McCain wouldn't even question Ney, not even after he admitted his guilt.