John McCain's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week Continues

If his lockstep support of President Bush and this foolish war won't sink him, or his blowing through all the money he's raised, well, violating federal criminal law and Senate ethics rules just might:

About 3 p.m. Tuesday, Senator John McCain ducked off the Senate floor, entered the Republican cloakroom and took out his mobile phone. Just hours after accepting the resignation of his two top campaign aides, he was making a conference call to his top fund-raisers to urge them to keep up the fight.

The call, however, may only have exacerbated an already tough week for Mr. McCain. Senate ethics rules expressly forbid lawmakers to engage in campaign activities inside Senate facilities. If Mr. McCain solicited campaign contributions on a call from government property, that would be a violation of federal criminal law as well....

It was the kind of technical mistake that seasoned aides -- like the ones his campaign is now letting go -- are supposed to prevent....

Matt David, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, confirmed that Mr. McCain made the phone call from the cloakroom. Mr. David said Mr. McCain used his campaign cellphone and did not specifically ask the fund-raisers for campaign contributions, which would have been a crime. ...

"If it is a solicitation, it is illegal," said Lawrence Noble, a nonpartisan expert on political law in Washington.

Marc Elias, a Democratic campaign lawyer, said, "It is going to depend on the precise words that were used on the call," noting that courts might consider an exhortation to pump up his fund-raisers a solicitation, depending on the context.

Just how badly is McCain doing?  Let's ask Mr. Campaign Convention Wisdom, Charlie Cook:

With just $2 million in the bank, undisclosed debts, a campaign burning cash at a rate of more than $3 million a month and the recent layoffs of more than half its staff, the McCain campaign is reading its obituaries in the comments of some observers.

"It’s effectively over," said Charlie Cook, the editor of The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan newsletter. "The physicians have left the hospital room and it’s the executors of the estate that are taking over."

My only question is this: which Republican in that cloakroom decided to leak McCain's unethical call to the media?

update: How much debt?  More than $1.5 million, says The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder.