The Smell of Desperation: Obama Goes For Keating Five Hail Mary

Senator Obama must be getting pretty desperate if this is all he has to bring against Senator McCain. A case that ended with the exoneration of McCain nearly two decades ago in 1991.

From the New York Times [Nov 21, 1999]:

His time under ethics scrutiny ''only further encouraged him to follow his own compass,'' said Scott Celley, his former press secretary. ''His attitude was that 'I've got to decide what's right for myself and go at it without relenting, no matter who is standing in the way.' '' Mr. Celley says Senator McCain has carried that attitude with him in other fights, from overhauling campaign finance to federal anti-tobacco legislation to this year's budget battle, in which the Arizona Republican has denounced pork-barrel spending.

The cloud of scandal did not lift until Nov. 20, 1991, when he was exonerated by the Senate Ethics Committee after an investigation that included weeks of televised hearings. The committee found that Mr. McCain had ''exercised poor judgment'' in attending, with four other senators, two meetings with federal banking regulators, but it found no improper action on his part.

''I found nothing in my investigation which caused me to question Senator McCain's integrity,'' said Robert Bennett, the Washington lawyer who was special counsel to the ethics panel during what is called the Keating Five investigation. Mr. Bennett, more recently, has been one of President Clinton's lawyers.

Senator McCain had taken $112,000 in Keating-related campaign donations, trips aboard Mr. Keating's corporate jet and family vacations at the executive's Bahamas hideaway. While legal, these gifts made his attendance at the meetings with federal regulators all the more questionable. (The other four senators had also taken large contributions from Mr. Keating, some of them far more than Mr. McCain.)

He survived and was re-elected easily in 1992 and again, with almost 70 percent of his state's vote, in 1998. Three other members of the Keating Five were more seriously rebuked by the ethics panel and all of them retired rather than face difficult re-election battles. John Glenn of Ohio, who was exonerated with Mr. McCain, was also re-elected in 1992, but retired in 1998.

This means nothing to Obama and the people in his campaign. In their release of the Keating Five Video, they will bank on the fact that the Legacy Media will refuse to report the truth of the matter and just report on the Obama Campaign activity, allowing people to assume that it is true, when in point of fact, it is a lie.

One of North Carolina's premiere bloggers, Sister Toldjah, has an excellent post with links to plenty of other sources on the dastardly move by the Obama Campaign.

**3.22 pm** Even the local lefties have been suckered into the lie...and Ed Morrissey is addressing that very eloquently on today's show.

Maybe they can tell me the difference between Frank Keating and William Ayers...

Keating didn't kill anyone and McCain renounced him.

Ayers and associates did kill people and Obama has not renounced him.