Opaque Lucidity

Washington's Best?

The Washington Post has hopped on the New York Times-driven bandwagon in the drive to smear John McCain. Take a moment and read the article; the first thing you'll probably note is that the salient point of the article does not appear until the last paragraph:

"After the letters became public in 2000, they were widely criticized. Kennard's predecessor, however, defended McCain, saying he did not find the letters objectionable. A subsequent review by the FCC General Counsel's Office determined that McCain had violated the commission's ex parte rules, though the breach was deemed inadvertent."

To summarize: John McCain wrote a letter to the FCC concerning an upcoming vote the commission was facing. The FCC later said the letter was inappropriate, but that the Senator meant no malice in sending it. This was determined sometime in 2000, eight years ago. Now, a retired network owner is contradicting McCain's campaign on the issue of the date of a meeting, implying that he sent the letter as a favor to the lobbyist.

In the final analysis, this is a he said/he said argument between McCain's people and a retired multi-millionaire. Even if McCain is guilty of what he has been accused of, he has broken no laws. It IS improper, especially coming from a Senator who has railed against the power of lobbyists on Capitol Hill for years. And that, of course, is the point of this exercise: make McCain look like a hypocrite. You will see more articles like this since anyone who has served in the Senate since 1980 is bound to have stories associated with him or her that, when taken with a certain amount of spin, appear inappropriate.

I'm curious to see if there will be any in-depth investigation into Barack Obama's business dealings before he became involved in politics. What did he do, exactly? I don't know and I consider myself very current when it comes to national politics. It makes one wonder.

Keep something in mind: we are not nominating anyone for sainthood here. Those who slammed Republicans for pursuing Bill Clinton's perjury before a grand jury would do well to remember that.

UPDATE: My friend Hash let me know that I did not link to the story I quoted. As of now, I am unable to find the article. Sorry about that.