New McCain scandal; sex brings down another candidate?

Blatham posted a link to the TNR piece (or a TNR piece) here:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8b7675e4-36de-43f5-afdd-2a2cd2b96a24

Still reading it, interesting so far.

Yglesias, on how this story dredges up McCain's history as a cheater:



Cycloptichorn

McCain Co-Chair Hit For Fraud, Extortion
Rick Renzi Indicted: McCain Co-Chair Hit For Fraud, Extortion
Huffington Post | February 22, 2008 10:58 AM

GOP Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi -- the co-chairman of Sen. John McCain's campaign in Arizona -- has been indicted this morning:

Republican Rep. Rick Renzi (REN-zee) has been indicted for extortion, wire fraud, money laundering and other charges related to a land deal in Arizona.

A 26-page federal indictment unsealed in Arizona accuses Renzi and two former business partners of conspiring to promote the sale of land that buyers could swap for property owned by the federal government. The sale netted one of Renzi's former partners $4.5 million.

Renzi is a three-term member of the House. He announced in August that he would not seek re-election.

Today's indictment comes after a lengthy federal investigation into the land developing and insurance businesses owned by Renzi's family.

In April 2007, federal agents raided a Sonoita (so-no-EE-ta) Arizona business owned by Renzi's wife, Roberta.

Renzi is listed as an Arizona co-chair McCain's website.

Paul Kiel breaks down the indictment:

The charges boil down to this, basically. Renzi is charged with doing everything he can as a congressman to strong-arm others into buying land from his buddy James Sandlin -- Sandlin then allegedly kicked back sizable chunks of cash back to Renzi in a series of complicated financial transactions (thus the money laundering charge). The main details of these charges were reported by the Arizona papers and The Wall Street Journal last year.

John McCain was asked about the indictment in Indianapolis today:

"I'm sorry obviously, you always feel for the family as you know he has 12 children. But I don't know enough of the details or anything to make a judgment, this kind of thing is always, is always very unfortunate. I rely on our department of justice and our system of justice to make the right outcome."

House Minority Leader John Boehner is pushing for Renzi to resign, according to The Hill:

"I have made it clear that I will hold our members to the highest standards of ethical conduct," Boehner said in a statement Friday. "The charges contained in this indictment are completely unacceptable for a member of Congress, and I strongly urge Rep. Renzi to seriously consider whether he can continue to effectively represent his constituents under these circumstances. I expect to meet with Rep. Renzi at the earliest possible opportunity to discuss this situation and the best option for his constituents, our Conference, and the American people."
Rick Renzi's attorney has released a statement responding to the charges:

"We fear that the Department of Justice may have allowed the investigation to have been influenced by political considerations, which should never have a place in the administration of justice."

Some people have no character. Not that I've got anything against carnality, or in favor of the sanctity of marriage beyond financial obligations, but there's more going on. Despite the fact that all love is beautiful, we know why what Clinton did or got caught doing is a problem - it was undignified.

Say that and you hear that it's human nature and such behavior is pervasive especially among head honchos because we're all such squalid weaklings and power is just an accident of circumstance that can be amplified through charisma and ruthlessness. And then you got a guy eats higher on the trough, took a job that would either get him killed or make him a hero, defies his captors, amicably divorces his wife when he wants something else, and admits it and yet suddenly he's not just a guy doing his own thing and a fine job of it, he's as dirty and basal as anyone.

You see what I'm getting at here - the liberals are fixated one the idea that everyone is weak, decadent and self-serving and that statecraft is a necessary matter of channeling it. They want to treat us all like greedy kids in a toy store, and if someone manages to take what he or she wants from life it just scares the crap out of them. They want to deny and punish the concept of human excellence, in any form other than blind altruism which in turn can be manipulated to their own advantage. Turn us all into dulcet cattle while the only scraps of self-determination are theirs, set up a society where you can't pay your dues to nature and the furies but only to the system and the lower needs. Then once we're all just stuffing our faces there'll be no need to get worked up about anything and no intrinsic authority to back it.

Someone that shouted obscenities over his captors, endured imprisonment and torture rather than sign off on enemy propaganda, and rehabilitated himself to fly again is a man who knows what he wants and can keep his drives in order long enough to get it (as if it would be difficult with his current wife as opposed to Bills predicament in which seeking 'novelty' was a bit more understandable). This is more than a smear campaign, it's a Freudian slip.

so can he run the country properly or not? thats all i care about, yet it is last on the list of thing politicians can do usually.

So...is there any actual evidence that whatever did or did not happen between McCain and whoever she is affected what he did in his professional life in a corrupt or illegal manner?



If not, then I see this as just as dumb and hateful as hysteria about Clinton's private life.

****, if hes gettin laid at that old, then he gets my vote.

I'm not a fan of the professional politician myself. There is such a thing as a statesman which I believe McCain qualifies as.

Since you bring it up on this thread you must either mean as evidenced by his alleged behavior or that the alleged behavior is inconsequential. I don't think this kindof thing is inconsequential because our government needs an ass-kicker at the helm not a frat boy. As for his ability relative to the allegation, I've said my piece - he's the man not because the article is BS, but as evidenced by the fact that the kindof BS they think they gotta use on him paints overindulged weaklings of us all.

BBB wrote, or quoted-



Does that mean to suggest he was shagging her or that he was seeing the lady in some ethereal resplendent light?

Okay, so forget the romantic angle; McCain has a serious problem.

He's been caught in a lie. Yesterday in a news conference McCain specifically said that he had not met with Mr. Paxson or Mrs. Iselman prior to writing letters on his behalf to the FCC, after having been lobbied to do so.

Today Mr. Paxson said that he did in fact meet with Senator McCain, in his office, and that Mrs. Iselman was 'probably' there.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/22/AR2008022202634.html?hpid=topnews

Caught in a lie - never a good thing for a presidential candidate. And the story gains new legs.

Cycloptichorn

There are what...five people in America who don't think that he was doing this chick? Maybe ten who would care? It is never the sex, it is the cover-up that does these guys in during the modern age.

McCain should have admitted it, said that it was wrong, and that he will try to do better.

sometimes its like beating your head against a wall--its not the relationship or the sex which is the main issue at hand so it don't matter if he admitted it or not.


source



source

The McCain Counter-Offensive

McCain is getting into some legal parsing and I admitt; I don't quite understand it all yet.

BBB
Tell me. If every politician who did a favor for a lobbiest was kicked out of office how many would remain in congress. ! or 2.

rabel


Should I include the politicians who are dead?

BBB

'NYT' Public Editor Weighs in on McCain Bombshell
'NYT' Public Editor Weighs in on McCain Bombshell
By E&P Staff
Published: February 23, 2008 4:00 PM ET

Editors and reporters at The New York Times have been replying online to readers' queries about its bombshell Sen. John McCain/lobbyist story since yesterday but many have wondered: What would the paper's public editor have to say? Now we know.

Clark Hoyt's column for the Sunday paper has been put up at www.nytimes.com. After reviewing the story and Executive Editor Bill Keller's claim that the story really wasn't about "sex," Hoyt concludes as follows.

A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.

The stakes are just too big. As the flamboyant Edwin Edwards of Louisiana once said, "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy."

The pity of it is that, without the sex, The Times was on to a good story. McCain, who was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 for exercising "poor judgment" by intervening with federal regulators on behalf of a corrupt savings and loan executive, recast himself as a crusader against special interests and the corrupting influence of money in politics. Yet he has continued to maintain complex relationships with lobbyists like Iseman, at whose request he wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to urge a speed-up on a decision affecting one of her clients.

Much of that story has been reported over the years, but it was still worth pulling together to help voters in 2008 better understand the John McCain who might be their next president.

I asked Jill Abramson, the managing editor for news, if The Times could have done the story and left out the allegation about an affair. "That would not have reflected the essential truth of why the aides were alarmed," she said.

But what the aides believed might not have been the real truth. And if you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed.

No. If their dead their no longer a danger to government.

Howard Kurtz opines that the point of the NYT's story was the sex, which it never got even an anonymous source to document
NYT's

Who gave the NYT's the lead is what I want to know, was it the conservatives or was it a disgruntled former associate?

The Other Side of the McCain Lobbyist Scandal
The Other Side of the McCain Lobbyist Scandal
By Jerold M. Starr
The Nation
Tuesday 04 March 2008

I don't know whether Senator John McCain had sex with lobbyist Vickie Iseman, but I do know, first hand, that he broke the rules while doing the bidding of media mogul Lowell "Bud" Paxson, a major contributor to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. McCain's staff lied it about it then and they are inventing new lies even now.

I was the leader of the campaign opposing the transfer of Pittsburgh's second public television station (Channel 16), along with $17.5 million, to a conservative televangelist ministry so that Paxson could expand his network into the Pittsburgh market. In fact, I wrote a well-reviewed book in 2000 about the entire case, Air Wars: The Fight to Reclaim Public Broadcasting.

Since this man could well be the next President of the United States, his character should be of concern to all people of this country.

In 1994, local media revealed that Pittsburgh's public station WQED had piled up millions of dollars of debt due to obvious malfeasance and, according to our informants, possible embezzlement. By 1996, new CEO George Miles's solution to this problem was to commercialize and sell off Channel 16. Along with activist Linda Wambaugh, I organized the Save Pittsburgh Public Television campaign to advocate a solution that would have both addressed the debt and saved the station.

In July 1996, the FCC denied WQED's petition on the grounds that a noncommercial license had never been removed from a community without being replaced by another. Around April 1997, WQED proposed "Plan B"-a swap with Cornerstone Broadcasting, bankrolled by Paxson Communications, with Cornerstone taking over our public station and Paxson taking over Cornerstone's commercial frequency.

As reported originally in the New York Times, McCain wrote two letters late in 1999 to each of the five FCC commissioners demanding that they advise him by December 15 whether they had voted for or against Paxson's petition. McCain continues to insist that his letter's disclaimer that he was not calling for a particular outcome exonerates him of charges of interference. However, Steve Labaton of the New York Times plowed through 2,000 pages of McCain office correspondence and found that almost all of his letters included this "boilerplate" disclaimer. Moreover, in "the vast majority of these regulatory cases where McCain himself sent the letter, the interested parties had contributed to his presidential campaigns."

As our attorney, Georgetown's Angela Campbell, advised ABC News: "The timing of the letters was clearly in Paxson's interest." Paxson's contract with all parties was due to expire December 31 and there were clear indications that Cornerstone would withdraw from the deal. The Commission still was undecided and had the option to refer the case for public hearing so that community sentiment could be measured. Short of outright denial, this was our wish. Miles acknowledged to the press at the time that had this happened, the deal would have been "dead in the water."

Back then, after extensive interviews with DC lobbyists and FCC staff, the Boston Globe, New York Times, Washington Post and others concluded that McCain's letters were "highly unusual," "crossed a line" and "were widely interpreted to favor the complicated transfers."

At the time, McCain's staff said to the press that his intervention was appropriate because "there was no formal opposition." Our opposition had been formal for years. Our board of directors included such community leaders as the president of the Pittsburgh City Council, a monsignor in the Pittsburgh Catholic Archdiocese and a state legislator (who sat on WQED's board but could not abide the sellout). Our supporters included scores of unions with up to 150,000 members, more than forty public interest groups, hundreds of educators, clergy and other professionals and, thanks to Working Assets, up to 40,000 letters urging the FCC to deny the transfer of Pittsburgh's public station to Cornerstone.

The major reason the case took so long is the well-documented presentation by our campaign that Cornerstone was not qualified to run our educational broadcasting station. In a highly unusual move in March 1998, Barbara Kreisman, a high-ranking FCC official, wrote to Cornerstone to advise that it amend their application to demonstrate eligibility. Kreisman called Cornerstone's five-member board "self perpetuating" and "not...broadly representative of the Pittsburgh community."

Kreisman noted further that Cornerstone's "goal still appears to be primarily religious" and "it's not clear to what extent" Cornerstone would pursue its claimed educational purposes. Still another problem was that, given all the commercials on Cornerstone (some programs being little more than infomercials), the FCC needed to know what steps the station "will take to comply with the Commission's rules regarding advertising and fund-raising on noncommercial educational stations."

(One show peddled screensavers with messages such as "Somewhere a homo teacher is molesting a child." Since Cornerstone leaders were active followers of Pat Robertson, gays were not the only groups who got hammered on the air. So did the United Nations, teachers unions, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Buddhists and Unitarians, among others.)

Cornerstone's response to the FCC's concerns was to add two associates to their five-member board and to submit a reformatted schedule with the same programs, even those in which commercials were integral to their content. Cornerstone then accused the FCC of religious bias and refused to make any more changes.

In January 1999, the FCC invited all attorneys to a meeting. When our attorney asked the FCC's Joyce Bernstein whether the meeting was for "negotiation," Bernstein replied, "No, there is a standard for reserved licenses." The FCC then called to advise that Cornerstone refused to attend and the meeting canceled.

Now McCain's camp has issued a 1,500-page document of "facts" the recent New York Times exposé did not include, such as that "No representative of Paxson or Alcade and Fay asked McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding." However, within days, Paxson himself advised the Washington Post that both Iseman and he had met with McCain about the matter.

At the time, according to well-documented reports, Paxson's family, company and law firm were contributing tens of thousands of dollars to McCain's campaign while McCain flew around on Paxson's private jet to rallies and to fundraisers on Paxson's yacht.

Eight months later, the FCC did, indeed, determine that McCain had broken the rules. First, the comment period was over so the case was bound by ex parte rules-no outside attempts to influence the commissioners. Commissioner Tristani recently explained, "It's like going to a court and saying, 'Tell us before it is final how you voted.'" At the time, Chair Kennard wrote to McCain that such inquiries could have "substantive impacts on the Commission's deliberation" and "the due process rights of the parties."

As chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, McCain had control of the FCC's budget. To a colleague of mine at a meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters, Paxson boasted he had the commission "in his pocket." One commissioner, Democrat Susan Ness, had her application for another term at the FCC on McCain's desk. Ness broke ranks with her Democratic colleagues to approve the transfer, and then switched back to warn Cornerstone the FCC would be watching to see that they conformed to the rules governing non-commercial educational stations.

Apparently, wishing to recast McCain as peacemaker rather than influence peddler, his campaign has resorted to more lies, claiming his staff "met with public broadcasting activists from the Pittsburgh area about the transfer" and we "expressed frustration that the proceeding had been before the FCC for over two years." Allegedly, we asked McCain's staff "to contact the FCC regarding this proceeding." We had no idea of McCain's sudden and urgent interest in our local matter until the FCC advised that the commissioners already had voted 3-2 to approve the transfer, at which time McCain's letters were dropped on us.

In the end, Cornerstone miraculously withdrew, stating it could not risk compromising its religious ministry. Subsequently, Republicans in Congress moved a bill stripping educational programming as a requirement for holding an educational license. It actually passed the House, but stalled in the Senate.

As I said, McCain's private life is not my concern. But I care deeply, as a veteran of Pittsburgh's struggle to save public television, that he sought to dictate the solution to our community dispute on behalf of some Florida-based media mogul.