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Originally Posted by Tully Mars
How is the "He's mobbed up" mantra fit into the article being discussed? Aren't we talking about his dealings, possibly romantic, with a lobbyist?
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?????????????
This is the last part of the news article in the OP, almost all underlined, presumably to highlight the information, by the author of this thread:
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....."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."
McCain's campaign also issued a lengthy statement insisting that his actions did not benefit any one party or favor any particular interest.
McCain defending his integrity last December, after he was questioned about reports that the Times was investigating allegations of legislative favoritism by the Arizona Republican and that his aides had been trying to dissuade the newspaper from publishing a story.
"I've never done any favors for anybody — lobbyist or special-interest group. That's a clear, 24-year record," he told reporters in Detroit.
McCain and four other senators were accused two decades ago of trying to influence banking regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, a savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud. The Senate Ethics Committee ultimately decided that McCain had used "poor judgment" but that his actions "were not improper" and warranted no penalty.
McCain has said that episode helped spur his drive to change campaign finance laws in an attempt to reduce the influence of money in politics.
In late 1999, McCain twice wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Florida-based Paxson Communications — which had paid Iseman as its lobbyist — urging quick consideration of a proposal to buy a television station license in Pittsburgh. At the time, Paxson's chief executive, Lowell W. "Bud" Paxson, also was a major contributor to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign.
McCain did not urge the FCC commissioners to approve the proposal, but he asked for speedy consideration of the deal, which was pending from two years earlier. In an unusual response, then-FCC Chairman William Kennard complained that McCain's request "comes at a sensitive time in the deliberative process" and "could have procedural and substantive impacts on the commission's deliberations and, thus, on the due process rights of the parties."
McCain wrote the letters after he received more than $20,000 in contributions from Paxson executives and lobbyists. Paxson also lent McCain his company's jet at least four times during 1999 for campaign travel.
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A follow on post by someone who made a point of blaming the messenger, the press, for "smearing" the "noble" senator McCain, seemed worthy, to me, anyway, of a response that demonstrates that McCain's character/ethics problems are not of the press's making, it is one clearly earned, via his greed, unrestrained ambition, and stupendous hypocrisy.
I apologize if only the half dozen examples of McCain's ethical shortcomings and conflicts, mentioned in the OP article, were the ones we were supposed to confine ourselves to discussion here....