Shell Game

Captain Ed is none to happy with “Mr. Clean”, Senator John McCain, and I can’t say I blame him:

Here we have a man who has done more harm to the First Amendment as anyone in the past generation, all the while scolding us on coordination of electoral efforts, and he’s playing a shell game with Cablevision in order to gin up indirect payments to his staff. Davis claims that McCain didn’t solicit the donations, but Davis did; according to his own account, he sought out the donation from Cablevision after hearing that they might be interested in funding The Reform Institute. Coincidentally, McCain starts writing letters and making phone calls on behalf of Cablevision shortly after the first installment gets cashed by Davis and the Reform Institute. Under the BCRA, this kind of activity would easily qualify as coordination if they had pulled off this stunt during an election. It may still qualify as a conflict of interest under federal law, and possibly an illegal campaign contribution.

John McCain sold out to Charles Keating fourteen years ago in the S&L scandals, and rebranded himself as an outsider and a reformer, blaming the system rather than himself for his actions. It now appears that McCain isn’t the Mr. Clean he’s sold to Arizona voters.

Like Claude Rains in Casablanca, I’m shocked. Shocked!