I Doubt My Birthday Wish Has Any Chance Of Coming True... Ever

I read somewhere this morning that all the lobbyists concerned with America's disgraceful and much-loathed health care industry are sitting down under the auspices of their patrons in the Senate -- or are they the patrons and the senators the patronized? -- to figure out how the insurance industry and HMOs and other special interests can still come out on top in whatever Obama and Congress manage to cobble together in the name of health care reform and President Obama's post-partisan paradise.

When I woke up this morning (in San Miguel de Allende), I was reminded by dozens of e-mails and Facebook messages that it's my birthday; I had forgotten what the date is. Someone asked me what I wish for, but she put in one stipulation: It had to be something that was tangible, not idealistic. "Don't come back and say 'peace' or 'brotherly love,'" she wrote. OK, how about that big snazzy building at 101 Constitution Avenue gets filled with 34,750 severed skulls, each having once belonged to a for-profit lobbyist? That would go an awful long way towards restoring constitutional government to the U.S. What a birthday present that would be! (And the Smithsonian could keep the skulls.)

Yesterday's Hill reported that lobbyist Vicki Iseman, widely thought to have been a bag lady and perhaps also a more conventional-type whore for John McCain, dropped her defamation suit against the NY Times for having exposed the relationship between her and the hypocritical Arizona senator. She settled for no money and no apology, but the Times has agreed to let her tell her side of the story on their website, although they won't print it in the paper itself unless there's some semblance of truth in her statement. Even though there was no official apology, the Times published a lame note to its readers yesterday that they "did not intend to conclude that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Sen. McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust." Sounds like an apology to me -- and another disgrace the Times has chalked up for itself.

In today's L.A. Times, James Rainey explains how the Times screwed up the story so badly and how "running free out the courthouse door hardly amounts to winning the high journalistic ground... The Times' story about McCain and Iseman contained an essential flaw: It overreached for a story ripe with sex and thereby distracted from a much more important story about influence."

The latter focus could have been devastating to McCain, who built his political profile around the notion he could not be bought. But because the Times raised the implication of an affair, without proving it, McCain and his allies were able to ignore their hypocrisy and instead rail against a favorite whipping boy -- the dastardly, liberal press.

In the story and its many regurgitations, especially on cable TV, people had to wonder whether the grandfatherly McCain had been running around with that pretty young blond, when they should have been wondering whether the Republican presidential candidate had been running around with lobbyists who wanted their way with his powerful Senate Commerce Committee.

So instead of having to defend his record as a senator working closely with one of Washington's sleaziest lobbying firms and betraying the interests of his constituents for the special interests that were paying Vicki Iseman's employers, McCain was able to turn the whole thing into an unprovable, tawdry sex scandal with a notorious whore and liar that made him look quasi-human. This allowed him to focus the public's small attention span away from the real story of his corruption and hypocrisy. And the public still is basically clueless about the venality of the lobbying industry and the mortal danger it poses for American democracy.

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McCAIN CLAIMS HE'S SURROUNDED BY MEN OF HONOR-- INTERESTING TERM FOR ANYONE AWARE OF SICILY'S TRAGIC HISTORY

When I woke up this morning and turned on CNN, the first thing I saw was a drawn and haggard John McCain telling media in Indianapolis-- with more than a little bit of an edge in his voice-- that he's answered "all the questions" pertaining to his character and he won't take any more. He's always been a "my way or the highway" kind of guy-- just like the jerk we have in the White House now-- and he is eager to get back to the day when reporters just lobbed him softballs about his PR spin, almost all of which turns out to have been well-manufactured lies and half-truths meant to mislead. But the toothpaste is out of the tube and McCain and his lobbyist team may be good but they're not that good; they're not going to be able to avoid talking about the real issues of his character. And the real issue isn't and never was for one second whether or not he runs around with younger women he isn't married to-- no one knows better than his current wife, who he met and started an affair with when he was still married to his former wife and who is considerably younger than he is (though not nearly as young as the lobbyist gal from the NY Times story), that he always has. The issue is his character, his inability and unwillingness to tell the truth, and the criminal mentality that pervades, at the very minimum, his team of what he insists are men of honor.

McCain's discomfiture stems from the fact that he is so used to the Big Lie, and so used to his bullshit being unchallenged by the media, that he speaks in deceptive generalities that do not stand up to scrutiny. Yesterday Newsweek made mincemeat out of his claim and quickly followed that up with a meta article on how he's gotten a free ride from the press which has acted like cheerleaders for his entire disgraceful career, built on univestigated lie after uninvestigated lie. The news isn't going to get any better by him refusing to answer legitimate questions from the press.

Today's Washington Post reports that the head of Paxson Media, a Vicki Iseman client, on whose behalf she lobbied McCain, contradicts McCain's account of  what went down between them. Lowell Paxson has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to political candidates, mostly Republicans but also to the kind of reactionary Democrats who tend, like Republicans, to favor Big Business over consumers and workers; no one can claim he is anything but a political conservative. His specifics laid the lie to McCain's sweeping-- and untruthful-- generalities. McCain says he never met with Paxson or his lobbyists regarding the two unethical letters he sent to pressure the FCC on Paxson's befalf. But he did.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters in 1999 to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson's quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, likely attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post yesterday. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."

The recollection of the now-retired Paxson conflicted with the account provided by the McCain campaign about the two letters at the center of a controversy about the senator's ties to Iseman, a partner at the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay.

The McCain campaign said Thursday that the senator had not met with Paxson or Iseman on the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding," the campaign said in a statement.

But Paxson said yesterday, "I remember going there to meet with him." He recalled that he told McCain: "You're head of the Commerce Committee. The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."

I don't know how many instances of these contradictions the media has lined up to dump on McCain. But I suspect they have tons of them. Today's revelation in the NY Times is not nearly so splashy and sexy as the Vicki Iseman scandal but if voters were paying attention to things that don't relate to dirty old married men chasing younger women, this would be a much bigger piece of news. Again, it's about the bullying letters McCain sent to the FCC-- warning them that he would destroy the agency if it closed a loophole his contributors wanted.

The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, [the right wing propagandists] Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.

...On Glencairn, the campaign said Mr. McCain’s efforts to retain the loophole were not done at Ms. Iseman’s request. It said Mr. McCain was merely directing the commission to “not act in a manner contradictory to Congressional intent.” Mr. McCain wrote in the letters that a 1996 law, the telecommunications act, required the loophole; a legal opinion by the staff of the commission took the opposite view.

A review of the record, including agency records now at the National Archives and interviews with participants, shows that Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, played a significant role in killing the plan to eliminate the loophole. His actions followed requests by Ms. Iseman and lobbyists at other broadcasting companies, according to lobbying records and Congressional aides.

McCain's partner in this sordid venture (the threatening letter) was none other than Conrad Burns (R-MT), Jack Abramoff's most favored senator-- one who McCain later protected from scrutiny when he was investigating covering up Congress' role in the Culture of Corruption that came to light when GOP lobbyist Abramoff was caught bribing dozens of Republican senators and congressmen, not one of whom McCain's committeee even questioned.


UPDATE: NOT THAT THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT McCAIN'S ANTI-FAMILY VALUES SEXSCADES HAVE COME UP

America's most respected historian, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr just had his diary published by Penguin and in a 1998 entry (on page 833) he had made an interesting and prescient notation about McCain's reputation as a man who was less than faithful to his wives.

McCain is a loose cannon. He has commendably defied his party on campaign finance, but he is also capable of bizarre behavior. Recently, speaking at a Republican dinner, he told the following so-called joke: why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because she is the illegitimate child of Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno. This plus his reputedly wayward sex life will surely destroy his evident presidential aspirations.

Interesting last sentence there, huh?

LIEBERMAN TO THE RESCUE? WELL... THE LADY DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH

Headed to Foggy Bottom? Or History's garbage dump?

Although he has tried to spin it otherwise, Joe Lieberman is married to a lobbyist for Big Pharma. Hadassah Lieberman, who never registered as a lobbyist and refuses to say what services she performed for one of Washington's biggest and best connected lobbying outfits, worked for a smarmy firm known as Hill & Knowlton which has had a repulsive list of clients eager for special treatment from the government-- from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uganda to GlaxoSmithKline, Big Tobacco, Sankyo Pharmaceuticals, AIG, Enron, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and WalMart. Lieberman's other wife, his political wife, John McCain, has also been in bed, for his entire career, with lobbyists. So, although Lieberman was the first Democrat to stab Bill Clinton in the back when Republicans hurled charges at him about Monica Lewinsky, it was no surprise to anyone when he quickly stood up to defend the man who he hopes will make him Secretary of State. Lieberman is slated to play the Zell Miller role at this year's Republican National HateFest Convention in Minneapolis.

Yesterday, however, Lieberman went even further in his defense of the honor of his sleazy best friend. Of course he vouched for McCain's marital fidelity: "I've been with him on a lot of occasions, traveled all around the world, been at meetings with a lot of women there, and I've never seen him do anything that even approached inappropriate behavior." It's laughable to think of a life-long admited whoremonger like John McCain, now in his 70s, lunging at some unfortunate woman at a conference with Lieberman (and Lindsey Graham) flanking him. Not quite the way it works.

Allow me to take a little detour for a moment. I'm not sure if Cindy McCain called David Vitter's wife, Wendy, or Suzanne, Larry Craig's "wife"-- or even Hillary-- to ask for some tips on handling the press when the old man's improprieties are dragged out into the public spotlight. She certainly knew McCain has had a life with zero respect for marital fidelity since she's presumably read the books and articles where he's admited running around on his first wife. In fact, she's aware of it because he was still married when he took up with her. Maybe she's just... naive. Here is the statement McCain's PR ops wrote for her to read to the media yesterday: "More importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America. He's a man of great character." Interesting since many people have speculated that it was Cindy McCain who made the decision to prohibit lobbyist Vicki Iseman from being allowed into McCain's Senate office. Allegedly it was Cindy who called the McCain aides and told them, in no uncertain terms, that they had better keep Iseman away from her husband. Now, back to the arbiter of moral purity, Holy Joe.

Lieberman, who has staked what ever is left of his shabby and tattered political career on McCain's slim chances to extend the hated Bush Regime for another term, got into high dunder mode at the thought of McCain's carefully laid public relations offensive finally bogging down. Never one to botch his Republican talking points, Lieberman let loose at all the targets the McCain PR machine has mapped out:

"I honestly think the story in the New York Times about Sen. McCain raises more ethical questions about the New York Times than it does about Sen. McCain," Lieberman said. "Here's a man who's devoted his whole life to service to his country. His honor matters a lot to him."

The Times did not report that McCain had an affair, but it described his staff as concerned eight years ago that McCain was far too close to a telecommunications lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. McCain and Iseman have denied any impropriety.

"This a story that basically pukes up 8-year-old rumors, uncorroborated," Lieberman said.

Lieberman then gave McCain a broad character reference.

"Given a choice of believing an unsubstantiated, uncorroborated story in the New York Times or believing John McCain, I'm sticking with John McCain," Lieberman told reporters.

Lieberman, a member of the Senate Democratic caucus who endorsed the GOP presidential candidate in December, said he spoke with McCain after the Times posted the story Wednesday night.

"He is a man of honor and nothing I read in the New York Times story changed my opinion of him," Lieberman said. "I'm sticking with you, John."

He has scant choice. The Man of Honor meme, though, is starting to wear a bit thin as more and more people start to examine the Real McCain and find a tawdry, self-serving, hack whose only relation to honor are baseless claims repeated ad nauseum by himself, grasping sycophants like Lieberman, and by a press far too long in the thrall of McCain's shallow charms. But regardless of the silliness about a serial adulterer engaging in adultery again-- as though to send a subliminal message that he can still get it up-- the real story of McCain being in bed with lobbyists is now part of the conversation. And it should be. McCain's campaign, completely run by lobbyists, is claiming he's never done a favor for a lobbyist. You'd have to be Joe Lieberman or Lindsey Graham to repeat that with a straight face.

...[W]hen McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long decried. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, co-founded a lobbying firm whose clients have included Verizon and SBC Telecommunications. His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington's lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways.

Senior advisers Steve Schmidt and Mark McKinnon work for firms that have lobbied for Land O' Lakes, UST Public Affairs, Dell and Fannie Mae.

This morning Newsweek's Michael Isikoff points out that there are some serious holes in his the claims of innocence only a Lieberman would find credible.

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain
might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman's clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

Just hours after the Times' story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff--and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC," the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue," McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by Newsweek. "He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint."

While McCain said "I don't recall" if he ever directly spoke to the firm's lobbyist about the issue-- an apparent reference to Iseman, though she is not named- -"I'm sure I spoke to [Paxson]." McCain agreed that his letters on behalf of Paxson, a campaign contributor, could "possibly be an appearance of corruption"-- even though McCain denied doing anything improper. [He always does, even when caught red-handed; that's his history. And we do NOT need another George Bush in the White House-- only a meaner and more volitile version.]

McCain's subsequent letters to the FCC--coming around the same time that Paxson's firm was flying the senator to campaign events aboard its corporate jet and contributing $20,000 to his campaign-- first surfaced as an issue during his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. William Kennard, the FCC chair at the time, described the sharply worded letters from McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, as "highly unusual."

And there's the little matter of his campaign co-chair and close political ally, Rick Renzi, being indicted today. It never stops; and it never will... although the whole bunch of them need to face the music:

McCAIN MAY HAVE AN EVEN WORSE PROBLEM WITH THE FEC THAN WITH WHOM HE'S BEEN IN BED WITH-- LITERALLY OR FIGURATIVELY

Normal Americans won't care about the accusations-- not by the NY Times, by the way, if you failed to read the piece and only heard about it from far right propagandists, like most people who are babbling about it, but by several of McCain's top aides-- that some lecherous and pathetic old man may or may not have been getting a little extramarital action on the side. But it isn't the reactions of "normal Americans" that has McCain's PR operation campaign in hysterics. The Republican base-- bigoted, self righteous, Bible-thumping, snake-handling loons-- doesn't trust McCain. They know he's not a Christian, at least not by their narrow definition, and they know he's a long time whoremonger and adulterer. These charges will stick in some of their narrow minds long after normal Americans have laughed them off. Now the shilling for lobbyists is a far more serious matter and we'll have to see if the media actually exposes McCain, in any serious sense for what he's actually been guilty of. For now, though, the McCain PR operatives aren't worried about something that abstract and complex; all they want to do is damage control on the bimbo-alert-- and, of course, insinuate that there is a sense of solidarity between Times-hating wingnuts and the man who was endorsed by that paper several weeks ago.

There may, however, be something just as vexing about to descend on them. (Can you imagine how Romney is feeling towards whoever told him it was time to pack it in and get out of the race?) This morning's Washington Post spells out what people have been talking about all week: McCain has troubles with the Federal Election Commission, serious ones. They told him he can't withdraw from the public financing he had requested-- which means that unless he breaks the law, he's not going to be able to spend what he wants to until the fall. The irony of course, is that the system is one he crafted-- and one he gets so much fire from the far right over. McCain's campaign attempted to pivot on the Times expose to ask Republicans to send him checks in the mail.

But McCain's attempts to build up his campaign coffers before a general election contest appeared to be threatened by the stern warning yesterday from Federal Election Commission Chairman David M. Mason, a Republican. Mason notified McCain that the commission had not granted his Feb. 6 request to withdraw from the presidential public financing system.

The implications of that could be dramatic. Last year, when McCain's campaign was starved for cash, he applied to join the financing system to gain access to millions of dollars in federal matching money. He was also permitted to use his FEC certification to bypass the time-consuming process of gathering signatures to get his name on the ballot in several states, including Ohio.

By signing up for matching money, McCain agreed to adhere to strict state-by-state spending limits and an overall limit on spending of $54 million for the primary season, which lasts until the party's nominating convention in September. The general election has a separate public financing arrangement.

But after McCain won a series of early contests and the campaign found its financial footing, his lawyer wrote to the FEC requesting to back out of the program -- which is permitted for candidates who have not yet received any federal money and who have not used the promise of federal funding as collateral for borrowing money.

Mason's letter raises two issues as the basis for his position. One is that the six-member commission lacks a quorum, with four vacancies because of a Senate deadlock over President Bush's nominees for the seats. Mason said the FEC would need to vote on McCain's request to leave the system, which is not possible without a quorum. Until that can happen, the candidate will have to remain within the system, he said.

The second issue is more complicated. It involves a $1 million loan McCain obtained from a Bethesda bank in January. The bank was worried about his ability to repay the loan if he exited the federal financing program and started to lose in the primary race. McCain promised the bank that, if that happened, he would reapply for matching money and offer those as collateral for the loan. While McCain's aides have argued that the campaign was careful to make sure that they technically complied with the rules, Mason indicated that the question needs further FEC review.

If the FEC refuses McCain's request to leave the system, his campaign could be bound by a potentially debilitating spending limit until he formally accepts his party's nomination. His campaign has already spent $49 million, federal reports show. Knowingly violating the spending limit is a criminal offense that could put McCain at risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison.

McCAIN'S FRIENDS:

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.

IF YOU SUSPECTED McCAIN HAS BEEN SELLING HIS ASS TO THE HIGHEST BIDDERS... WELL NOW WE KNOW SOME OF THE BIDDERS

Bush with McCain's lobbyist, Ms. Iseman

I don't really care if McCain was getting a little side-action on Cindy. After all, at one point it was Cindy who was the side action. It's the kind of thing Huckabee voters worry themselves about. The popular media will probably treat McCain's little bump in the road to political oblivion as a tawdry and titillating sex scandal, a sex scandal that ultimately no one can ever prove-- and no one would want to except the kind of people who going sniffing around in other people's underwear and blue dresses. But they're all Republican thugs and not likely to bother poor old McCain anyway. But the adulterous relationship long-time former McCain aides claim he was engaged in-- for as many as 15 years-- is a story for rubes and teenagers. The real story is about McCain's carefully crafted-- but obviously false, obvious, at least, to anyone paying attention-- image as a straight-shooting man of probity and ethics.

McCain's PR firm campaign has already released an official statement trying to discredit the story he has worked hard to try to keep out of the press. A vicious old gut fighter, McCain's first instinct, of course, is to smear the NY Times:

"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."

The record shows clearly that although McCain has successfully pivoted away from scandal after scandal-- people think he uncovered the Keating Five Scandal, instead of being one of the more scandalous of the Five-- he is a man of the lowest ethics and the most deceitful instincts.

Early in 2000 the Boston Globe reported on a multitude of instances where McCain used his influence and power to get results from the FCC, which his Committee was charged with overseeing.

Days before Senator John McCain joined hands with Senator Bill Bradley last month to decry the noxious influence of special interest campaign donors, McCain pressured the Federal Communications Commission to vote on an issue that cleared the way for a major contributor to his
presidential campaign to buy a Pittsburgh television station.

McCain, in his bluntly worded Dec. 10 letter to the FCC, did not urge a vote favoring the contributor, Paxson Communications. But he acted at the request of the company's lobbyist, during a period when he used Paxson's corporate jet four times to travel to campaign events-- where he almost always attacks [with the most cold-blooded hypocrisy] monied special interests.

McCain's intervention in the case drew a speedy, scolding response from William E. Kennard, the FCC chairman, who deemed the Senator's letter "highly unusual'' and suggested it was inappropriate. The
Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain heads, oversees the FCC.

Angela J. Campbell, the attorney who represents opponents of the sale to Paxson, went much further, asserting in an interview yesterday that McCain's action was improper, unethical, violated FCC rules barring such contacts on pending FCC matters, and appeared designed to assist a major contributor.

"Senator McCain said, 'Do it by December 15 or explain why,' and the commission jumped to it and did it that very day. The senator's intent was for the FCC to grant the transfer of the TV license, said
Campbell, a Georgetown University law professor. McCain's intercession, she added, ''may well have tipped the decision.''

A spokesman for the senator, noting that McCain often sees the FCC deliberative process as molasses-like, said there was no connection between Paxson's political support for McCain-- $20,000 in two concentrated doses from Paxson and its law firm-- and his intercession with the FCC.

But McCain's close ties to Paxson were abundantly clear on the key dates surrounding the FCC decision. The day before he sent the Dec. 10 letter, McCain used Paxson's jet for a trip from New York to Florida. The day after the letter, he took the company jet from Florida to Washington. The campaign reimbursed the company at first-class airfare rates-- well below the actual cost of the charters.

The scandal breaking about McCain being in bed with a lobbyist should not degenerate into a sex scandal. It's a scandal about McCain's long and disgraceful career as a well-paid shill for the corporate interests he claims to be free of. The whore in tonight's long-overdue scandal is not the female lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The whore is the corrupt senator from Arizona, John McCain.

Keep in mind that Iseman is far from the only lobbyist in McCain's wretched life. In fact, one of the filthiest and most unethical lobbyists in Washington, Rick Davis (who even the far right finds too unethical to bear), is McCain's current campaign manager! McCain has long been a tool of special interests, lobbyists and their well-heeled clients. The combination of fear and cowed admiration the mass media has had for McCain has kept them from even the most rudimentary and obvious reporting on his jarring shortcomings as a leader and political figure. A couple weeks ago Joe Conason wrote an essay at Salon, Will The Press Get Over Its Love For McCain?, which highlighted his utter lack of ethics, particularly in regard to the ironic base of his corruption, the McCain "Reform Institute."

Speaking of reform, just how much of a reformer is McCain? The myth as recounted by the maverick himself and his admiring scribes is that the searing experience of the Keating Five scandal purified his character. Never again would he allow himself to be turned away from the path of righteousness by lobbyists and donors, never again would he sell out the public interest to the high rollers, never again would he besmirch the honor of his office ... and so on.

This is inspiring stuff, and he may well believe it all, but there is a growing backlog of evidence that he has not always lived up to such exacting standards-- particularly during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Consider just one McCain story that never drew the roaring gang of cable and print hacks who would surely show up if someone named Clinton (or Edwards or even perhaps Obama) had done the same thing. It is the story of an entity that the Arizona senator founded, known as the Reform Institute.

Created after his failed presidential run in 2000, the Reform Institute is a hybrid between a domestic issues think tank and a tasty sugar teat for campaign staffers. Among its senior fellows is former Mexican Cabinet member Juan Hernandez, who also heads the McCain campaign's outreach to Hispanic voters. Other Reform Institute employees have included lobbyist and political consultant Rick Davis, long a member of the McCain inner circle and now his campaign manager.

The sweetest aspect of the Reform Institute-- aside from its commitment to research on immigration reform, campaign finance and other liberal concerns that the senator no longer finds so relevant-- is that its own financing is not subject to the regulations and disclosures of federal election law. In practice, that has meant not only that the McCain crowd could sop up subsidies from foundations run by liberal Democrats but that corporate donors with issues before the Commerce Committee could chip in a few bucks, too. Or a few thousand bucks, or even 50,000 bucks or more, like the executives of Cablevision (under the name CSC Holdings) and Echostar, communications firms with substantial issues at stake before McCain's committee.

Then there was that contribution from American International Group, whose executives had been quite concerned in 2000 about McCain's vow to stop AIG from profiting illicitly on insurance overcharges ripped off from the Boston "Big Dig" project. Sen. John Kerry got most of the blame for the demise of McCain's reform bill, which would have banned insurance giants like AIG from overcharging federal projects and reaping windfalls from investing that money. But it was actually McCain who killed his own bill -- and nobody seems to have checked back to discover that AIG later donated more than $50,000 to the Reform Institute. How much more? That might be a relevant question now, notably because Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the McCain backer who ran AIG in those days, has since been forced to relinquish the company under threat of criminal prosecution.

If the very thought of McCain having sex with some young woman creeps you out, good; that isn't the story. The story is what he delivered to her clients and to other lobbyists' clients. Let the sanctimonious Huckabee supports worry about adultery and fornication; let's keep focused on good governance.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself-- instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

...But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Anyone hear from Holy Joe Lieberman on this? We know how he hates this kind of behavior.