Dear Brigade,

"To witness the truthfulness of his words, McCain stood silent as
wife Cindy addressed the alleged adulterous affair..."

Brigade, Deja vu all over again? Yes, in more ways than one.

Back in the day, the media kept us focused on Hillary standing by
her man while Clinton's real crimes were kept under the radar.
Today, the juicy story of McCain and the sexy lobbyist make cable
news headlines while there is no mention of his latest corruption
scandal involving Paxson Communications.

Note: Since running for the GOP nomination for president, Sen.
McCain has been assuring critics that he had learned a valuable
lesson about getting too close to lobbyists since his involvement
as one of the Keating Five. The Keating Five were United States
Senators who were accused of corruption in 1989 during the Savings
and Loan crisis in which they improperly aided Charles H. Keating,
Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln S&L. The S&L was the target of
an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. As a result
of that investigation, Keating was convicted in 1992 of fraud,
racketeering, and conspiracy and received a 10 year prison
sentence. McCain's more recent involvement with Paxson
Communications, a big campaign contributor, indicates he really
didn't learn his lesson about distancing himself from lobbyists as
he continues to claim.

See Pat's column below and another on one of the key reasons why
John McCain is unfit for command.

For the Cause, Linda

--------------

McCain Calls Out the Times
by Patrick J. Buchanan
February 23, 2008

John McCain just shoved his whole stack into the middle of the
table and put his credibility and candidacy on the line.

He just threw down the gauntlet to the New York Times by flatly
denying every point of a front-page story that implied McCain had
an affair nine years ago with a 31-year-old Washington lobbyist,
then used his influence as a committee chair to promote the
interests of her client.

The Times' front-page story of the alleged romance was based on two
anonymous sources the Times identified as former aides to the
senator. The Washington Post quoted John Weaver, once the man
closest to McCain, as saying he confronted the lobbyist at a Union
Station lunch and warned her to stay away from the senator.

Weaver is quoted as saying he brought the matter up with McCain.
McCain denies Weaver ever did.

The anonymous aides were said to have confronted McCain and told
him his dinners with blond lobbyist Vicki Iseman, and his travels
with her on corporate jets, were imperiling his reputation. The
aides said they feared a romantic involvement that could destroy
McCain.

McCain denies any aides ever mentioned such a thing.

To witness the truthfulness of his words, McCain stood silent as
wife Cindy addressed the alleged adulterous affair:

"(T)he 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,
and I'm very, very disappointed in the New York Times."

McCain also expressed disappointment in the Times. His aides,
however, are savaging the paper.

His campaign issued a statement accusing the Times of a
"hit-and-run smear." Lawyer Bob Bennett compared the Times article
to the sleazy robo-calls in South Carolina in 2000 that charged
McCain with having fathered a black baby out of wedlock.

Conservative commentators and talk-show hosts, among them McCain's
leading critics in the Republican coalition, have rallied to his
defense and assailed the journalistic ethics of the Times.

Iseman has denied any affair, and her firm has accused the Times of
"innuendo ... malicious and false."

Times' editor Bill Keller remains hidden behind a press release
saying, "On the substance, we think the story speaks for itself."
Two days after it hit, the Times had said nothing more to defend
the story.

Either the Times has more than it has revealed, or the Times'
publisher should dispatch Keller to join his predecessor, Howell
Raines, who presided over the Jason Blair debacle, where an
African-American rookie reporter hoked up dozens of stories to make
himself the toast of the liberal Times.

Blair related how he hoodwinked the editors in an autobiographical
book titled, "Burning Down My Masters' House."

As of this writing, McCain has emerged triumphant and the Times has
egg all over its face. Even Times admirers in the media, where the
paper has long been regarded as the gold standard of journalism,
are professing astonishment at the story. Something is either
terribly wrong at the Times, or the Times is withholding something.

For, among American newspapers, the Times has always been among the
most reluctant to get into personal lives. Its own rules for
anonymous sources were violated in this story. The sources never
said they knew of an affair, only that they suspected one. That
does not rise to the Times' own standards for backing up a story
that could abort the nomination of a Republican front-runner for
president and throw the party into chaos.

Also, the Drudge Report on Dec. 20 revealed a battle inside the
paper over whether to publish this story. It was withheld, as
McCain, the Times' endorsed candidate for the nomination, began
eking out a series of victories in the primaries.

If Keller felt the story, a head shot at McCain, was fit to print
on Feb. 21, after McCain had won the nomination, why was it not fit
to publish on Dec. 21, when an untainted Republican like Mike
Huckabee or Mitt Romney might have won?

Was the Times deliberately withholding, then deploying, dirt, first
to advance, then to destroy McCain and the GOP chances in November?
Is Bill Keller using the information his reporters gather to try to
affect the outcome of a presidential race?

In the absence of a Times defense of this seemingly indefensible
story, what other conclusion is there for the timing?

"We're going to go to war with them now," said McCain adviser
Charlie Black. McCain's people have every right. For the Times has
sought to inflict a mortal wound on their candidate's character,
and McCain's people contend it is all malicious innuendo or lies.

On the table now is not just McCain's credibility, candidacy and
career, but the character and credibility of the New York Times.

One of the two is going to lose, big-time.

SOURCE: http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=HV68Z& ... svMM3VUZ6w

----

"The underlying issue is about McCain's effort on behalf of one of
his largest campaign benefactors, Paxson Communications, to win
approval from the FCC to buy a Pittsburgh television station. In
his 2000 presidential campaign, McCain received $20,000..."

McCain Defends Pressing Agency to Act on License
- Big Campaign Donor Just Wanted a TV Station

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff
February 22, 2008

WASHINGTON - Senator John McCain yesterday defended pushing a
government agency to decide whether to issue a TV license to a
major donor, asserting that the agency's former chairman had
cleared his role as "appropriate."

But the Federal Communications Commission chairman involved in the
case, William E. Kennard, actually wrote a letter to McCain at the
time saying that his request for the agency to take action was
"highly unusual" and that he was concerned that McCain's action
would interfere with the agency's "due process."

Asked to explain the apparent contradiction, a McCain spokeswoman
said yesterday that the Arizona senator was citing exoneration from
a chairman who left the commission in 1997 - even though that was
two years before McCain pushed the FCC to decide the case. The
spokeswoman denied that McCain sought to mislead the public.

Angela Campbell, a Georgetown University law professor who
represented opponents of the company trying to buy the TV station,
said yesterday that McCain's statement that a former FCC chairman
deemed his action appropriate was "very misleading" because the
campaign was relying on someone who was not involved in the matter.

Also, Reed Hundt, the former FCC chairman cited as exonerating
McCain, said in an interview that he shouldn't have been,
notwithstanding a letter to the editor he wrote in 2000 praising
the senator. "I can't speak to a thing," Hundt said yesterday. "I
don't know anything about what he wrote to Kennard and not to me."

McCain's letter to the FCC, and the response by Kennard, are at the
heart of an episode that has resurfaced after The New York Times
reported that McCain's aides were concerned about whether he might
have had an inappropriate relationship with a lobbyist for the donor.

With his wife, Cindy by his side, McCain said at a news conference
in Ohio yesterday that the story was "not true" and that he did no
special favors for the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, whom he called a
friend. "At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the
public trust," said the likely Republican presidential nominee.

The Times stood by the story, which was published online Wednesday
night and in yesterday's newspaper and was discussed at length on
political talk shows.

Conservatives railed against the Times, as journalism commentators
debated the use of anonymous sources in the Times story, which said
the unnamed top advisers were convinced that the relationship
between McCain and Iseman had become romantic and intervened to
keep them apart.

McCain's campaign yesterday called the story a smear and launched a
fund-raising appeal based on it, saying it needed contributions to
"counteract the liberal establishment and fight back against The
New York Times."

The underlying issue is about McCain's effort on behalf of one of
his largest campaign benefactors, Paxson Communications, to win
approval from the FCC to buy a Pittsburgh television station. In
his 2000 presidential campaign, McCain received $20,000 in
donations from Paxson-affiliated individuals and took four flights
aboard Paxson's corporate aircraft, including one flight on the day
before he wrote a letter to Kennard seeking action on the request
to buy the television station.

At yesterday's news conference, McCain said it was "accepted
practice" to fly on corporate aircraft and reimburse the companies.
"Since then, the rules have been changed." he said. "It was
something I supported."

As for his letter to the FCC on behalf of Paxson, McCain said, "I
wrote a letter because the FCC, which usually makes a decision
within 400 days, had gone almost 800 days," he said. "In the
letter, I said, 'I am not telling you how to make a decision; I'm
just telling you that you should move forward and make a decision
on this issue.' And I believe that was appropriate." McCain then
said, the "former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
at the time in 2000 said that that was more than an appropriate
role for me to play as chairman of the [Commerce] Committee."

The senator has staked his campaign on his reputation for "straight
talk" and his efforts to reform the campaign finance system. His
dealings with the FCC in 1999 and 2000 were cited at the time as
raising questions about whether he was too close to donors and
their lobbyists. The letter from Kennard to McCain was first
reported by the Globe in an article on Jan. 5, 2000, and it became
a significant campaign issue.

Kennard declined comment yesterday. He served as FCC chairman from
1997 to January 2001 and works at The Carlyle Group, a
Washington-based private equity firm. He is on the board of
directors of The New York Times Co., which owns the Globe.

McCain's spokeswoman said yesterday that the senator was referring
in his news conference to a letter written by Hundt, who was FCC
chairman from 1993 to 1997.

After the reports in 2000 that Kennard had criticized McCain's
letter on behalf of Paxson Communications, Hundt wrote a letter to
the editor of The Washington Post in support of McCain's right to
send letters to the FCC chairman as long as the senator didn't take
a position on how the commission should rule.

The McCain campaign sent a copy of Hundt's letter yesterday to the
Globe to explain why McCain felt exonerated, even while
acknowledging that Hundt was not chairman at the time when McCain
was urging that a decision be made on the Paxson case. "Senator
McCain was clear when he indicated today that former chairman Hundt
defended his submission of the letter," McCain spokeswoman Crystal
Benton said yesterday.

McCain, however, did not mention Hundt or Kennard by name at his
news conference. Hundt said yesterday that he was trying to defend
McCain at the time from attacks from the campaign of George W. Bush
and that he couldn't speak to what happened after he left the
chairmanship.

McCain wrote to the FCC on Dec. 10, 1999, "expressing concern over
the protracted pendency of the pending applications for assignment
of licenses of WQEX-TV and WPCB-TV, Pittsburgh, Pa." He said he was
not telling the FCC how to vote but asking "merely that you vote."
He asked commissioners to disclose whether they had acted on the
request or whether they planned to do so within days. Kennard
replied by expressing concern that McCain's letter "comes at a
sensitive time in the deliberative process as the individual
commissioners finalize their views and their votes on this matter.
I must respectfully note that it is highly unusual for the
commissioners to be asked to publicly announce their voting status
on a matter that is still pending."

Another commissioner, Gloria Tristani, wrote McCain in 1999 that
she would not comply with his request to reveal whether she had
acted on the request, "in order to preserve the integrity of our
processes." Tristani said yesterday McCain's request was "unusual."

Shortly after McCain wrote his letter to the FCC, the commission
voted 3 to 2 to allow Paxson to buy the television station, with
Kennard and Tristani dissenting.

SOURCE: The Boston Globe http://www.boston.com/news/nation/artic ... n_license/