Didn't he cheat on his 1st wife a bunch with this wife? Or was cheating on the 2nd wife with the 3rd wife? I can never remember.

He has never violated the public trust

Yeah right, John.  Keating Five?

Mana from heaven.

Todd yes it may unite conservatives, but at the cost of losing independents.

The more they freak out, the more they're worried.

I just might have to listen to Rush tomorrow.

Will it be circle the wagons around McCain because now the liberal media is attacking him?

Or will it be "I told you so, this guy is no good".

Strictly as a political observer, I'm actually dying of curiosity.

BTW... I generally use Lucianne.com as my point of reference for what the nutty right is thinking.

The current thread there is about 1/3 vs. 1/3 vs. 1/3 http://lucianne.com/threads2.asp?artnum= 386818

1/3 are bashing the "Slimes"
1/3 are saying I told you so and having a weird scadenfreude moment of their own
1/3 are crying

non denial, denial.  1973 all over again.

I wonder what Mitt Romney is thinking tonight.

g ving the conservatives another chance to rally around yet another insurgent white knight to "save McCain" would be bad for your team, no?

It's a crappy story, in that its subject wanders. Are they insinuating he had an affair ? Otherwise the nuances of this will be lost on people.

Mrs. McCain would not be so proud now.

Send me right to a John Edwards quote! God how I miss his truth to power! His fire! His fight!

WE Still need what John Edwards campaigned on!

Run a clean campaign?  Yeah, not like their throwing a smear job at Obama's wife or anything...

What a bastard...  Throws crap at people's faces, then complains when someone has the audacity to let out a fart in his general direction...

Thanks,

Mike

And not just any attorney:

Look who it is.  

This is Day One.

Weekend stories will include what telecom bills he advocated during that time period and the like.  This is going to be a long story -- there's a lot of very delicate and careful phrasing in the NY Times piece.

Cindy McCain:  Please pick up the white courtesy phone.

This story and awful hit-jobs does not make a difference in my judgment of McCain when I go to the polls.

Ha ha ha.  Now it's reached the Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2008/02/20/AR2008022002898. html?hpid=topnews

Did you notice what Obama didn't do when that psuedo-plagarism story broke? Deny everything and be outraged, OUTRAGED at the accusation.

Worst possible thing you can do with a story like this. Worst. Possible. Thing.

May be Mrs. McCain will not be so smug now.  She now lives in a glass house and will not dare throwing a stone

Clinton, too, was wise enough, when the 5 million loan thing came out, to own it right away. It's politics 101 in the post-Nixon era. It's ALWAYS the cover-up that kills.

I could care less if he had an affair but -- John, I'm disappointed. I thought you were smarter than this.

February 21, 2008
THE LONG RUN
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk

By JIM RUTENBERG, MARILYN W. THOMPSON, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEPHEN LABATON
WASHINGTON -- Early in Senator John McCain's first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

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.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain's political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

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.

Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman's client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)

Mr. McCain helped found a nonprofit group to promote his personal battle for tighter campaign finance rules. But he later resigned as its chairman after news reports disclosed that the group was tapping the same kinds of unlimited corporate contributions he opposed, including those from companies seeking his favor. He has criticized the cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists, but is relying on corporate lobbyists to donate their time running his presidential race and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office.

"He is essentially an honorable person," said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. "But he can be imprudent."

Mr. Cheshire added, "That imprudence or recklessness may be part of why he was not more astute about the risks he was running with this shady operator," Charles Keating, whose ties to Mr. McCain and four other lawmakers tainted their reputations in the savings and loan debacle.

During his current campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. McCain has played down his attacks on the corrupting power of money in politics, aware that the stricter regulations he championed are unpopular in his party. When the Senate overhauled lobbying and ethics rules last year, Mr. McCain stayed in the background.

With his nomination this year all but certain, though, he is reminding voters again of his record of reform. His campaign has already begun comparing his credentials with those of Senator Barack Obama, a Democratic contender who has made lobbying and ethics rules a centerpiece of his own pitch to voters.

"I would very much like to think that I have never been a man whose favor can be bought," Mr. McCain wrote about his Keating experience in his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For." "From my earliest youth, I would have considered such a reputation to be the most shameful ignominy imaginable. Yet that is exactly how millions of Americans viewed me for a time, a time that I will forever consider one of the worst experiences of my life."

A drive to expunge the stain on his reputation in time turned into a zeal to cleanse Washington as well. The episode taught him that "questions of honor are raised as much by appearances as by reality in politics," he wrote, "and because they incite public distrust they need to be addressed no less directly than we would address evidence of expressly illegal corruption."

A Formative Scandal

Mr. McCain started his career like many other aspiring politicians, eagerly courting the wealthy and powerful. A Vietnam war hero and Senate liaison for the Navy, he arrived in Arizona in 1980 after his second marriage, to Cindy Hensley, the heiress to a beer fortune there. He quickly started looking for a Congressional district where he could run.

Mr. Keating, a Phoenix financier and real estate developer, became an early sponsor and, soon, a friend. He was a man of great confidence and daring, Mr. McCain recalled in his memoir. "People like that appeal to me," he continued. "I have sometimes forgotten that wisdom and a strong sense of public responsibility are much more admirable qualities."

During Mr. McCain's four years in the House, Mr. Keating, his family and his business associates contributed heavily to his political campaigns. The banker gave Mr. McCain free rides on his private jet, a violation of Congressional ethics rules (he later said it was an oversight and paid for the trips). They vacationed together in the Bahamas. And in 1986, the year Mr. McCain was elected to the Senate, his wife joined Mr. Keating in investing in an Arizona shopping mall.

Mr. Keating had taken over the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association and used its federally insured deposits to gamble on risky real estate and other investments. He pressed Mr. McCain and other lawmakers to help hold back federal banking regulators.

For years, Mr. McCain complied. At Mr. Keating's request, he wrote several letters to regulators, introduced legislation and helped secure the nomination of a Keating associate to a banking regulatory board.

By early 1987, though, the thrift was careering toward disaster. Mr. McCain agreed to join several senators, eventually known as the Keating Five, for two private meetings with regulators to urge them to ease up. "Why didn't I fully grasp the unusual appearance of such a meeting?" Mr. McCain later lamented in his memoir.

When Lincoln went bankrupt in 1989 -- one of the biggest collapses of the savings and loan crisis, costing taxpayers $3.4 billion -- the Keating Five became infamous. The scandal sent Mr. Keating to prison and ended the careers of three senators, who were censured in 1991 for intervening. Mr. McCain, who had been a less aggressive advocate for Mr. Keating than the others, was reprimanded only for "poor judgment" and was re-elected the next year.

Some people involved think Mr. McCain got off too lightly. William Black, one of the banking regulators the senator met with, argued that Mrs. McCain's investment with Mr. Keating created an obvious conflict of interest for her husband. (Mr. McCain had said a prenuptial agreement divided the couple's assets.) He should not be able to "put this behind him," Mr. Black said. "It sullied his integrity."

Mr. McCain has since described the episode as a unique humiliation. "If I do not repress the memory, its recollection still provokes a vague but real feeling that I had lost something very important," he wrote in his memoir. "I still wince thinking about it."

A New Chosen Cause

After the Republican takeover of the Senate in 1994, Mr. McCain decided to try to put some of the lessons he had learned into law. He started by attacking earmarks, the pet projects that individual lawmakers could insert anonymously into the fine print of giant spending bills, a recipe for corruption. But he quickly moved on to other targets, most notably political fund-raising.

Mr. McCain earned the lasting animosity of many conservatives, who argue that his push for fund-raising restrictions trampled free speech, and of many of his Senate colleagues, who bristled that he was preaching to them so soon after his own repentance. In debates, his party's leaders challenged him to name a single senator he considered corrupt (he refused).

"We used to joke that each of us was the only one eating alone in our caucus," said Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, who became Mr. McCain's partner on campaign finance efforts.

Mr. McCain appeared motivated less by the usual ideas about good governance than by a more visceral disapproval of the gifts, meals and money that influence seekers shower on lawmakers, Mr. Feingold said. "It had to do with his sense of honor," he said. "He saw this stuff as cheating."

Mr. McCain made loosening the grip of special interests the central cause of his 2000 presidential campaign, inviting scrutiny of his own ethics. His Republican rival, George W. Bush, accused him of "double talk" for soliciting campaign contributions from companies with interests that came before the powerful Senate commerce committee, of which Mr. McCain was chairman. Mr. Bush's allies called Mr. McCain "sanctimonious."

At one point, his campaign invited scores of lobbyists to a fund-raiser at the Willard Hotel in Washington. While Bush supporters stood mocking outside, the McCain team tried to defend his integrity by handing the lobbyists buttons reading " McCain voted against my bill." Mr. McCain himself skipped the event, an act he later called "cowardly."

By 2002, he had succeeded in passing the McCain-Feingold Act, which transformed American politics by banning "soft money," the unlimited donations from corporations, unions and the rich that were funneled through the two political parties to get around previous laws.

One of his efforts, though, seemed self-contradictory. In 2001, he helped found the nonprofit Reform Institute to promote his cause and, in the process, his career. It collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlimited donations from companies that lobbied the Senate commerce committee. Mr. McCain initially said he saw no problems with the financing, but he severed his ties to the institute in 2005, complaining of "bad publicity" after news reports of the arrangement.

Like other presidential candidates, he has relied on lobbyists to run his campaigns. Since a cash crunch last summer, several of them -- including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who represented companies before Mr. McCain's Senate panel -- have been working without pay, a gift that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has hired another lobbyist, Mark Buse, to run his Senate office. In his case, it was a round trip through the revolving door: Mr. Buse had directed Mr. McCain's committee staff for seven years before leaving in 2001 to lobby for telecommunications companies.

Mr. McCain's friends dismiss questions about his ties to lobbyists, arguing that he has too much integrity to let such personal connections influence him.

"Unless he gives you special treatment or takes legislative action against his own views, I don't think his personal and social relationships matter," said Charles Black, a friend and campaign adviser who has previously lobbied the senator for aviation, broadcasting and tobacco concerns.

Concerns in a Campaign

Mr. McCain's confidence in his ability to distinguish personal friendships from compromising connections was at the center of questions advisers raised about Ms. Iseman.

The lobbyist, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay, represented telecommunications companies for whom Mr. McCain's commerce committee was pivotal. Her clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.

Mr. Black said Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman were friends and nothing more. But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, "Why is she always around?"

That February, Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator's advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.

A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman's access to his offices.

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after "a discussion among the campaign leadership" about her.

"Our political messaging during that time period centered around taking on the special interests and placing the nation's interests before either personal or special interest," Mr. Weaver continued. "Ms. Iseman's involvement in the campaign, it was felt by us, could undermine that effort."

Mr. Weaver added that the brief conversation was only about "her conduct and what she allegedly had told people, which made its way back to us." He declined to elaborate.

It is not clear what effect the warnings had; the associates said their concerns receded in the heat of the campaign.

Ms. Iseman acknowledged meeting with Mr. Weaver, but disputed his account.

"I never discussed with him alleged things I had `told people,' that had made their way `back to' him," she wrote in an e-mail message. She said she never received special treatment from Mr. McCain's office.

Mr. McCain said that the relationship was not romantic and that he never showed favoritism to Ms. Iseman or her clients. "I have never betrayed the public trust by doing anything like that," he said. He made the statements in a call to Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, to complain about the paper's inquiries.

The senator declined repeated interview requests, beginning in December. He also would not comment about the assertions that he had been confronted about Ms. Iseman, Mr. Black said Wednesday.

Mr. Davis and Mark Salter, Mr. McCain's top strategists in both of his presidential campaigns, disputed accounts from the former associates and aides and said they did not discuss Ms. Iseman with the senator or colleagues.

"I never had any good reason to think that the relationship was anything other than professional, a friendly professional relationship," Mr. Salter said in an interview.

He and Mr. Davis also said Mr. McCain had frequently denied requests from Ms. Iseman and the companies she represented. In 2006, Mr. McCain sought to break up cable subscription packages, which some of her clients opposed. And his proposals for satellite distribution of local television programs fell short of her clients' hopes.

The McCain aides said the senator sided with Ms. Iseman's clients only when their positions hewed to his principles

A champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Ms. Iseman's clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms. Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.

In late 1999, Ms. Iseman asked Mr. McCain's staff to send a letter to the commission to help Paxson, now Ion Media Networks, on another matter. Mr. Paxson was impatient for F.C.C. approval of a television deal, and Ms. Iseman acknowledged in an e-mail message to The Times that she had sent to Mr. McCain's staff information for drafting a letter urging a swift decision.

Mr. McCain complied. He sent two letters to the commission, drawing a rare rebuke for interference from its chairman. In an embarrassing turn for the campaign, news reports invoked the Keating scandal, once again raising questions about intervening for a patron.

Mr. McCain's aides released all of his letters to the F.C.C. to dispel accusations of favoritism, and aides said the campaign had properly accounted for four trips on the Paxson plane. But the campaign did not report the flight with Ms. Iseman. Mr. McCain's advisers say he was not required to disclose the flight, but ethics lawyers dispute that.

Recalling the Paxson episode in his memoir, Mr. McCain said he was merely trying to push along a slow-moving bureaucracy, but added that he was not surprised by the criticism given his history.

"Any hint that I might have acted to reward a supporter," he wrote, "would be taken as an egregious act of hypocrisy."

Statement by McCain

Mr. McCain's presidential campaign issued the following statement Wednesday night:

"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."

Barclay Walsh and Kitty Bennett contributed research.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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wow

maybe obama will beat mccain afterall.

the media has probably signaled who they would back in the general with this story.

it is an innuendo story but they ran it anyway and followed it up with olberman , cnn doing breathless breaking news on it.

compare it to the national press reaction to rezko , that story was burning in chicago making headline after headline in statewide papers for weeks, local tv and the msm refused to pick it up until clinton said it at the debate.

however spiking it for the primaries showed they wanted to help mccain in the republican primary , romney would have his head in the crapper now.

just a theory.

makes me feel better about obama's chances.

story is a lot of innuendo but still ran anyway.

We have the internet, my friend. Links are fine.

...McCain is screwed.

I really think that people are overblowing this, to be honest.

I mean, I think it looks great as a "Look at what bad judgment he has", and point to Keating and Iraq and, there you go, history of bad judgment.

But unless some more comes out about this alleged "affair", I'm just not sure how much damage this really does to him.

Besides, aren't countless cheating Republicans voted in all the time?  Not only that, once Clinton's affair became public, he still managed to finish his presidency with 60% favorability.  I just don't think this ends McCain's campaign as some others around the blogosphere seem to think.

This just can't be true, I'm sorry but Mr. Clean, literally in bed with a lobbyist, I mean seriously if this has legs this could end up being the ultimate case of corruption (less serious but more memorable than Jefferson or Cunningham)-- this is Foley (protector of Children) emailing minors bad in terms of hypocrisy (less serious but Mccain's far more of a national figure).

And I actually got the point from a freeper watching with giggles as they kicked it around.

What it might be is a very good opportunity to see the infamous temper of John McCain flare up!

but at the very least this story takes the heat off Obama for awhile.

McCain trying to be the bastion of "ethics" trying to slam Obama for considering not taking public campaign finance reform looks kind of silly right now.

IMO, McCain was involved in a WAY WORSE SCANDAL than Obama's Rezko, etc with the Keating Five scandal.

A Washington Post story just came out about it too. It's actually a bit more damaging because it lists specific incidents - particularly a cable TV deal in Pittsburgh - where McCain may have inappropriately lobbied the FCC on behalf of Vicki Iseman's client. McCain denies any wrongdoing, but there may be a lot more to this story than sex with a lobbyist.

It's also interesting that the Washington Post went ahead with this story the same night the Times came out with its piece. Clearly, national political reporters have been sitting on this for a long time.

This is a big problem for McCain. The sex scandal part does not seem to big of a deal to most of us but Bay Buchanan insisted this evening that the right wing (the evangelical part) will not be happy with learning about his infidelity.

For everyone else, the problem is the lobbyist relationships. Was there quid pro quo, we will see.

Things like this are one reason Clinton will hang in there to see what March 4th brings. She's invested a hundred million dollars of her and her supporters' money. Rather than just get up and walk away, she hopes that a disaster like this will strike Obama.

It's an unlikely possibility, but not an impossible one.

It takes the heat off him from McCain for his "pledge" to take public campaign finance reform.  McCain looks a little hypocritical for trying to act "holier than thou".

Also, a potential sex scandel reminds folks about Bill's indiscretions in the 90's.

Plus it may take less heat on Obama when the Rezko trial gets into the news.

I have one question for the Republicans:

"WHAT WILL WE TELL THE CHILDREN?!?!"

Lol.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2008/02/20/AR2008022002898_ pf.html

A few new details about the extent of the lobbying.

Somewhere, in a dark room, Mitt Romney is alone, with only bottles of scotch for friends.

The McCain campaign is doing exactly the right thing: coming out swinging against the "liberals" at the NYT without catching their breath. For the first time, all the radio wingnuts are coming to John's defense. I think they could end up turning this thing into a plus; like when John Edwards managed to turn Coulter's "fag" comment into a big fundraiser for him.

It's kind of a boring story anyway with too many "unsourced" comments for our side to really to use as ammunition.

Even if McCain is their nominee, the GOP doesn't want to lose, and they are well heeled in fight-club politics.