He finds a BIG FAT HOLE in McCain’s story:

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.

[…]

The deposition that McCain gave came in the course of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of his landmark campaign finance reform law, known as McCain-Feingold. The suit sheds no new light on the nature of the senator’s dealings with Iseman, but it does include a lengthy discussion of his dealings with the company that hired her, including some statements by the senator that could raise additional questions for his campaign.

In the deposition, noted First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams (who was representing the lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell) grilled McCain about the four trips he took aboard Paxson’s corporate jet to campaign events and the $20,000 in campaign contributions he had received from the company’s executives during the period the firm was pressing him to intervene with federal regulators.

Asked at one point if Paxson’s lobbyist (Abrams never mentions Iseman’s name) had accompanied him on any of the trips he took aboard the Paxson corporate jet, McCain responded, “I do not recall.” (McCain’s campaign confirmed this week that Iseman did fly on one trip returning to Washington from a campaign fund-raiser in Florida.)

At another point Abrams asked McCain if, “looking back on the events with Mr. Paxson, the contributions, the jets, everything you and I have just talked about, do you believe that it would have been justified for a member of the public to say there is at least an appearance of corruption here?”

“Absolutely,” McCain replied. “And when I took a thousand dollars or any other hard-money contribution from anybody who does business before the Congress of the United States, then that allegation is justified as well. Because the taint affects all of us.” Elsewhere McCain said about his dealings with Paxson, “As I said before, I believe that there could possibly be an appearance of corruption because this system has tainted all of us.”

This single post strikes me as an indictment of US press. The names and relationships you list here are compelling; why hasn’t the NYT or the WaPo pulled these threads together? (Rhetorical question, please overlook.)

phred @2, interesting observation about Obama’s credibility; in addition, there’s a case to be made it’s miraculous that Hillary has survived the depth of malice that these entrenched interests clearly represent.
On the right, Huckabee is the only voice calling ‘bullshit’ on this crap. No wonder the GOP detests him. His success points to many of us on various points along the political spectrum utterly ‘fed up’ and appalled by the messes you’ve so skillfully revealed.

You are a da Vinci of data, I swear.

I like this meme, it think it has wheels: “[H]ow common (in both sense of the word) it is for McCain to get in bed with lobbyists.”

Texas Gov. George W. Bush… lashed out at John McCain’s reform credentials today, charging that the Arizonan has hypocritically used his position as chairman of a Senate committee to raise money from lobbyists and to travel on corporate jets. “I’m not letting Senator McCain get away with this Washington doubletalk,” Bush told reporters here. “He has been in Washington long enough to earn a very important committee chairmanship. He has used that position skillfully to forward his campaign.”
[Washington Post, 01/05/00]

I think this is why Obama is getting such traction. People may have different priorities on what needs to get fixed first and what is most important, but I think the public is all to well aware of the fact that the government no longer serves the public interest and we have had enough.