McCain: Witness for the Prosecution

For the 9/11-like Commission he wants to study the Wall Street collapse, John McCain could well be the star witness about failure of government regulation to prevent chaos in the financial industry.

His actions as a member of the Keating Five in the 1980s, which the Senate Ethics Committee later labeled "poor judgment," were the start of two decades of McCain opposition to controlling the excesses he is now denouncing on the campaign trail.

Like the Washington insiders he is now promising to rein in, McCain took heavy campaign contributions from Savings and Loan operator Charles H. Keating, accepted free trips to Keating's Bahamas vacation retreat and saw his family turn a profit from an investment his wife and father-in-law made with Keating.

In return, McCain worked hard to delay and divert government action against Keating, who later went to jail for fraud and whose S&L bailout cost taxpayers more than $124 billion.

Now here he is in 2008, promising to reform what he was so deeply involved in and expecting voters to believe that he and Sarah Palin will ride in as mavericks to clean it all up.

In 2000, the Bush-Rove gang used a push poll about the Keating Scandal in the South Carolina primary to blemish McCain's straight-talk campaigning. Obama won't stoop to that, but voters with short memories should remember McCain's own record on corruption before swallowing his promises to shake up the way Washington does business.

Larry Craig Is Sticking to His Guns

Washington's Walking Embarrassment is still sitting proudly in his Senate seat and, along with his Idaho colleague, Michael Crapo (sic), is blocking President Bush’s nomination of Michael Sullivan to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

According to the Editorial Board blog of the New York Times, "Mr. Crapo’s spokesman said his boss is hearing from gun owners and dealers with 'concerns about ATF policies regarding gun sales and even ownership.' It may be, he said, 'that the federal government is getting a little too aggressive with people who haven’t done anything wrong.'

"It’s a remarkable claim to make in a month in which a young gunman in Nebraska shot 11 people, killing eight of them, at an Omaha shopping mall, and another killed four young people in two attacks on religious organizations in Colorado, before taking his own life.

"The Colorado gunman, according to the Denver Post, spent a year buying guns and ammunition...and all of his purchases were within the law. When a large shipment of ammunition was sent to a post office box owned by the gunman, the authorities were alerted, the paper reports--and specifically determined that he had a legal right to receive it."

Awaiting action by the Senate Ethics Committee on his little Minneapolis men's room misunderstanding, Sen. Craig is sticking to his guns maintaining the record that earned him an A+ from the National Rifle Association. The voters who saw him inducted into Idaho's Hall of Fame this fall must be proud.

Why Didn't Larry Craig Think of That?

In the old I-was-doing-it-as-research ploy, a Vatican official caught soliticing gay sex claims that he only pretended to be gay in order to gather information about "those who damage the image of the Church with homosexual activity."

Nonetheless, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico was suspended after being filmed making advances to a young man and asserting that gay sex was not sinful on a television program.

The Monsignor insists he is heterosexual but remained faithful to his vow of celibacy and expects to be fully exonerated after a review.

Back here, his counterpart, Sen. Larry Craig is fighting on as well. In an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, he says he will seek vindication from the Senate Ethics Committee and is particularly rueful about being fired as Senate chairman of Mitt Romney’s Presidential campaign.

"I was very proud of my association with Mitt Romney," Craig told Lauer. "... And he not only threw me under his campaign bus, he backed up and ran over me again."

Nothing, however, about vows of celibacy.

U. S. Senate in the Toilet

If Republicans follow through on their threats, some time this month six United States Senators will gather in a hearing room to study and debate urgent questions about a men’s room stall in the Minneapolis-St. Paul air terminal.

Ending the war in Iraq, starting one in Iran and health care for poor children will have to wait while the Senate Ethics Committee considers charges against Larry Craig, brought by the Republican leadership to embarrass him into resigning his seat, as he had promised to by the end of September but now shows no sign of doing.

Senators would publicly examine such weighty matters as the original allegation against Craig of "interference with privacy" for peeping into the stall occupied by an undercover police officer as well as witnesses and documents.

The committee could also spend time looking for "a pattern of conduct" by combing court records elsewhere to find out if Craig has had prior arrests.

To unsophisticated taxpayers, this may look like burning down the barn to get rid of a field mouse, but Senate leaders will do anything to keep the place squeaky clean.

"Die Hard" Starring Larry Craig

Now that he is represented by Michael Vick’s lawyer, Sen. Craig may not be going to the dogs after all. Spurred on by Arlen Specter’s unsolicited legal advice, the Idaho Republican is now prepared to embarrass both parties by putting himself, and the rest of us, through a Senate Ethics Committee hearing to determine if his men’s room behavior was inappropriate.

If this comes to pass, the sessions should be held in secret, not on the grounds of national security, but to save whatever shreds of national sanity remain.