Sure, the propaganda media organs have tried to make this Jeremiah Wright thing into a monster. Most people I know just are not concerned about this absurdly overblown Jeremiah Wright frenzy. Most people do not even have much faith in the propaganda media organs anymore. Then there is this:

So much for the straight talk express. There's already evidence in the record that John McCain was out and out lying when he offered his defense against the charges leveled against him in the big New York Times exposé on his all-too-close relationship with the lobbying community, and now we have even more proof that McCain just ain't tellin' the truth.

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."

The recollection of the now-retired Paxson conflicted with the account provided by McCain about two letters at the center of a controversy about the senator's ties to Iseman, a partner at the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay.

The response from the McCain campaign, via uber-lawyer Bob Bennett: "We understood that he [McCain] did not speak directly with him [Paxson]. Now it appears he did speak to him. What is the difference?" Well, the difference is that one situation involves the truth and another does not. Either McCain was lying or he wasn't. And now we have two sources -- the person lobbying McCain and McCain himself, in the form of his own sworn deposition -- that Paxson was lobbying McCain, contrary to the latter's protestations yesterday. After having put up with nearly eight years of a Republican administration that has trouble being straight with the American people, it's hard to see someone like McCain, who has trouble telling the truth to voters about his ties with the lobbying community, doing terribly well in a general election.

Michael Isikoff is on the case, catching John McCain in an apparent lie.

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

McCain can't help but keep digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole, now admitting that his campaign is teeming with lobbyists.

Sen. John McCain said Friday that while lobbyists serve as close advisers to his presidential campaign, they are honorable and he is not influenced by corruption in the system.

Chris Cillizza, writing about McCain's press conference yesterday, hits the nail on the head in taking down McCain's defense that his actions were okay because he's always around lobbyists.

While that argument may be technically correct, it's a political loser -- especially in a change-oriented election like this one. Obama's political rise has been fueled, at least in part, by his denunciation of the pay-to-play culture in Washington and his promise to clean up Washington if elected president.

McCain, too, has railed against special interests throughout his political life. But, by trying to defuse the Iseman questions, the Arizona senator may well have created a long-term problem for himself.

McCain is stuck in an awfully difficult position. In his mind and in the minds of his campaign staff, the best way to cool off the media from the Vicki Iseman story was to play it off like as just one of the many, many, many, many interactions McCain has with lobbyists -- including those who run his campaign. Obviously, though, this is not a political winner. Little surprise, then, that McCain started lying to the press in order to forward his cover up. Tough times for team McCain.

Update [2008-2-22 13:48:19 by Jonathan Singer]: You want the depositions? You got 'em!

Wash Post' Joins 'NYT' in Trumpeting 'Anonymous' Claims on Iran Weapons

By Greg Mitchell

Published: February 11, 2007 1:20 PM ET updated 3:30 PM

NEW YORK First it was Michael Gordon in The New York Times on Saturday. Now The Washington Post has joined in suggesting a slam dunk case for Iranian weapons killing Americans in Iraq.

An article by Joshua Partlow from Baghdad -- currently atop the Post's Web site -- carries the declarative headline, "Iran Sending Explosives to Extremist Groups in Iraq," without even "U.S. officials say."

Not that those officials could be named anyway. As in case of Michael Gordon's article, the officials are unnamed.

The Post article, which was published online at 12:30 this afternoon, states, "Iranian security forces, taking orders from the 'highest levels' of the Iranian government, are funneling sophisticated explosives to extremist groups in Iraq, and the weapons have grown increasingly deadly for U.S.-led troops over the past two years, senior defense officials said Sunday in Baghdad."

"Three defense officials from the U.S.-led Multi-National Force in Baghdad, laid out for reporters what they described as a 'growing body of evidence' that Iran is manufacturing and exporting into Iraq the armor piercing explosives, known as 'explosively formed penetrators,' or EFPs, that have killed more than 170 coalition troops, and wounded more than 620 others, in the past two years."

The officials all spoke "on condition of anonymity."

Partlow adds: "The allegations against Iran marked the farthest that coalition forces have gone to make the case that Iran is working to attack U.S. and Iraqi troops. The revelations threaten to further enflame tensions between America and Iran."

Of course, the article itself -- and its placement on top of the Post site and with that headline -- is sure to "enflame" as well.

Defense officials claimed they were "not trying to hype this up to be more than it is."

The officials said they decided to speak "on the condition of anonymity so the trio's explosives expert and analyst who would normally not speak to reporters could provide more information. The analyst's exact job description was not revealed to reporters. Reporters' cell phones were taken before the briefing, and the officials did not allow reporters to record or videotape the proceedings....

"On two tables in a briefing room in Baghdad, military officials laid out tubular rocket propelled grenades, football-shaped mortars, a cylindrical EFP, and about 40 tail fins of exploded mortars, which they say are manufactured in Iran -- just a 'smattering' of the examples they have found in Iraq, said the defense analyst.

"Iran is the only country in the region that produces these weapons, the officials said."

On his new site, Iraqslogger.com, Eason Jordan observes in response, that "one of the three supposedly unnamed US officials apparently has been outed by an Iraqi news service, Voices of Iraq, whose report on the Baghdad news conference identified one of the three speakers as Major General William Caldwell, whose portfolio includes public affairs and who holds frequent news conference and grants one-on-one interviews.

"So, if the VOI report identifying Caldwell is correct, why did every other news organization apparently agree to grant anonymity to the general who's the official spokesman of the US-led Multi-National Force in Iraq? Why would Caldwell insist on not having his name associated with these allegations today?

"After the bogus Iraq evidence debacle in 2002 and 2003 -- allegations that led to war, tens of thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent -- only a fool would accept as the gospel supposed evidence against another country that's presented by officials who insist on making their allegations anonymously.

"We deserve better from the US government. We deserve better from the western news media."

An E&P article earlier this weekend pointed out echoes of the WMD charges in the run-up to the Iraq war. Michael Gordon, for example, had co-authored with Judith Miller the wildly inaccurate "aluminum tubes" article in 2002 that proved so influential.

UPDATE:

The online hed on the Partlow article was later changed to "Officials: Iran Sending Arms to Militias in Iraq."
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor.

The White House demanded the excision of material for an article on Iranian-American relations for political - not security - reasons, two former government officials allege.

The debate centers on an opinion piece that former National Security Council official Flynt Leverett and former Foreign Service officer Hillary Mann sought to publish in The New York Times. Following long-standing rules for former CIA employees like Leverett, they submitted the article to the CIA's Publication Review Board to ensure it did not contain classified information.

Cross-posed from Patterns That Connect

For almost a year--no, make that five years, maybe more, the GOP's top leadership hid a sex-scandal from the American people, involving Congressman Mark Foley cyberstalking House pages.  Now, over the past three days, the GOP's top leadership has been involved in a public coverup of that longterm private coverup.  It's not the first example we've seen of a public coverup by the GOP.  Indeed, the seemingly paradoxical notion--a public act of concealment--dates back, in it's current incarnation, to Gerald Ford's Watergate pardon of Richard Nixon, the man who made him President.  But unlike most GOP coverups, this one is about SEX, and for that reason, if no other, it has to be handled extremely delicately.  Like a finicky explosive, it could easily blow up without warning.

Woops!  It already has. But the GOP is still hoping against hope that they can control this thing, somehow, someway. Which means it's a good time for some historical and cultural perspective.

Crossposted from Patterns That Connect.

In a short diary at Dkos and elsewhere, Frameshop maestro Jeffrey Feldman has advanced the frame "Hastert Protected A Predator."  We could quibble a bit--perhaps "House Republicans Protected a Predator" would be better as a broad indictment of their entire leadership, perhaps not, since it's too impersonal--but there's no question that conceptually Jeffrey's scored a direct hit.  The question is--are there others?

Of course there are.  And I'd like suggest three more in this diary.  They're not all for pushing as equally accessible media frames.  Some are primarily for clarifying our own thinking, and just beginning to introduce them to a wider audience.  Because, you see, frames are not just about how we communicate messages.  They are also about how we think.

The frames discussed are:

   "Hastert Protected A Predator."
    "We Need Eagles, Not Ostriches"
    "Investigate Now: Stop The Public Coverup"
    "Corruption Is The Symptom, Conservatism Is The Disease"

Details on the flip.

What is being kept out of the spotlight, Rove-Abramoff connection, Failure to put in enough money in the bill to fund the wall between Mexico and the US, that Afganistan is getting worse and many other things.

This is a normal republican tatic use one horrible thing as an event to dump everything you've done at once