The straight talk express lost some more wheels with this new story released a few minutes ago from Washingtong Post
Broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson today contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson's behalf.
Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson's quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.
Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post today. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."
McCain, as you guys remember, come out in full force on Wednesday morning to defend himself against the Nytimes story and he denied ever meeting Paxton. So who's involved in double talk now?
Here's what his campaign said yesterday,
"No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding," the statement said.
Mac is truly back and he's going to get some serious bad press on this issue. The country simply can't afford this warmonger with a double talk expresss
Full story here http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Update [2008-2-23 3:0:28 by Jr1886]: More bad news for John McCain, this time from the Nytimes that broke the initial story on McCain corrupted practices,
In late 1998, Senator John McCain sent an unusually blunt letter to the head of the Federal Communications Commission, warning that he would try to overhaul the agency if it closed a broadcast ownership loophole.
The letter, and two later ones signed by Mr. McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, urged the commission to abandon plans to close a loophole vitally important to Glencairn Ltd., a client of Vicki Iseman, a lobbyist. The provision enabled one of the nation’s largest broadcasting companies, Sinclair, to use a marketing agreement with Glencairn, a far smaller broadcaster, to get around a restriction barring single ownership of two television stations in the same city.
At a news conference on Thursday, Mr. McCain denounced an article in The New York Times that described concerns by top advisers a decade ago about his ties to Ms. Iseman, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay. He said he never had any discussions with his advisers about Ms. Iseman and never did any favors for any lobbyist.
One of the McCain campaign’s statements about his dealings with Ms. Iseman was challenged by news accounts on Friday. In discussing letters he wrote regulators about a deal involving another of Ms. Iseman’s clients, Lowell W. Paxson, the campaign had said the senator had never spoken to her or anyone from the company. But Mr. McCain acknowledged in a 2002 deposition that he had sent the letters after meeting with Mr. Paxson.
On Glencairn, the campaign said Mr. McCain’s efforts to retain the loophole were not done at Ms. Iseman’s request. It said Mr. McCain was merely directing the commission to "not act in a manner contradictory to Congressional intent." Mr. McCain wrote in the letters that a 1996 law, the telecommunications act, required the loophole; a legal opinion by the staff of the commission took the opposite view.
A review of the record, including agency records now at the National Archives and interviews with participants, shows that Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, played a significant role in killing the plan to eliminate the loophole. His actions followed requests by Ms. Iseman and lobbyists at other broadcasting companies, according to lobbying records and Congressional aides.
Woww! this guy has been playing the Washington game for a long time at the same time he was portraying himself as the warrior against corruptions and special interests. More troubling, McCain abused his position as a senator to put pressure on the FCC to force the agency to rule on his liking,
By November 1998, the F.C.C. was planning to strike down broadcasting marketing agreements, a potentially ruinous development for Glencairn. But after receiving Mr. McCain’s Dec. 1 letter, it put off consideration of the issue.
"To the extent the F.C.C. shows itself incapable of following Congressional intent," the letter said, "these issues will become part of our overall review of the commission’s functions and structure during the next session of Congress."
The letter, sent from Mr. McCain’s office by his staff at the commerce committee, was also signed by Senator Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana and chairman of a communications subcommittee. It was uncharacteristic of Mr. McCain, according to a review of dozens of letters sent by him to the commission during the same period.
It was the only letter that contained a suggestion that a failure to act would result in the possible overhaul of the agency.
The letter said that "as a leading participant in the passage of the 1996 Act, I have a very clear understanding" of the law’s intent and why it required the ownership loophole to be preserved
Here's the link http://www.nytimes.com/...