2 Senators for McCain Leave Group After Ads

[DogPoundPup]

Source: NYT

Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, prominent surrogates for Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, stepped down Wednesday from their positions with an independent group that released a pair of Internet advertisements attacking Senator Barack Obama on Iraq.

Mr. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, were both on the policy advisory board to the organization, Vets for Freedom, which on Wednesday released its second Web advertisement in less than a week attacking Mr. Obama.

The senators’ positions with the group, which describes itself as a grass-roots advocacy organization pushing for victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed to place them in contravention of new conflict-of-interest rules released by Mr. McCain’s campaign that specifically prohibit anyone “with a McCain campaign title or position” from participating in a “527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate.”

After inquiries from reporters, the senators released a joint letter to Vets for Freedom on Wednesday saying they had requested a leave from their positions to come into compliance with the new policy.

“This is obviously something we’re working through,” said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign. “This is the kind of thing that happens when you have the strictest possible policy on these issues.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/29/us/politics/29ads.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

[truthisfreedom]

1. Translation: Shit! We got caught! Crap!

[stlsaxman]

28. oh they just got a little distracted during the VP vetting...

[skooooo]

2. i hate lieberman

[saigon68]

9. He is a Chicken Hawk and Viet-Nam Draft Dodger Like his Pal

Gangster (5 deferments) Cheney

[mwb970]

21. Lieberman has become a Republican.

I don't mean in the obvious Democrat-to-Independent-to-closet-Republican sense. I mean in the "everything I say now is wrong and crazy and everything I do is the worst possible thing to do" sense.

How do Republicans manage to be so wrong so often on so many subjects? It's actually kind of astonishing. What if we had someone in public life who was right as often as today's benighted Republicans (and Holy Joe) are wrong? It would be a miracle.

[Tuttle]

25. I personally had hit Lieberman's office hard on this

This was hardly a *new policy* - puh---leaze!

But I had contacted Lieberman's office and tried to make a date to get my dog's rabies vaccine updated: the reason being that if Holy Joe was on the group's advisory board, then he must be one of the *other* vets. I had engaged the CT state rep for the group in an email discussion (to which, she abruptly canceled her hotmail account over) and called my local news media to ask them to do a human interest story on Joe's *side business*

Tut-tut

[Ian David]

3. They're full of shit. They can work "Part time" for the 527, or "un-officially" for McCain. n/t

[Yael]

4. They are merely avoiding prosecution

as 527s can't talk with campaigns.

They got caught too early.

Sucks to be them, no?

[w13rd0]

5. It's become quite obvious...

...that McCain will play "cheerful old and gentlemanly fool" (oh, so reagan-esque) and rely on these little quislings and those like them to slither thru the mud and sneak up behind people to shank them. It's like revenge of the nerds, but with old warmongering white guys.

[dweller]

6. Rats ... sinking ship ...

(apologies to all honorable rodents and leaking vessals out there)

dp

[razors edge]

7. Don't let the door hit ya,

Where the politically expedient deity split ya.

[L0oniX]

8. Aw ...they go and leave just when the fun is about to start. Party poopers.

[slm425]

10. Is there anyone working for McCain that isn't a nut?

It is very telling that every day someone is stepping down from assisting the McCain campaign. Has he surrounded himself with anyone ethical? It sure doesn't seem so...

[DCKit]

12. He may well be senile, but he's not stupid.

"Ethical" isn't going to get Grampa into the WH.

It's all about appearances - The lobbyists and other sleaze bags associated with the McInsane campaign will make a huge public show of resigning whatever conflict-of-interest positions they may currently hold, but that's not going to keep them off the phone to their "former" associates. At best they may put their other jobs on hold until after the campaign is over, but don't count on it.

McSame seems to have most of K street working on his campaign and, if they all, for real, stopped lobbying, DC would grind to a halt and half the restaurants, bars, golf courses, whorehouses, cigar stores, strip clubs, etc... will shut down for lack of business. It would cause a wave of unemployment in DC unlike anything we've ever seen.

[MidwestTransplant]

11. This is the group whose leader said "you can have your Tiger Woods" as McCain, Graham and LIEberman

stood by.

[Bette Noir]

13. Although being mistaken for Tiger Woods

isn't much of an insult.

[KSinTX]

16. No kidding, they can't tell one top notch brother from another

Besides, don't they all look alike? Now that I think about it, Obama could pull a "Dave" on the Republicans and the double wouldn't even have to look like him. LOL

[Bette Noir]

14. Shucks.

I was hoping you would say they quit the *campaign.*

[KSinTX]

15. Oh it's on now! The McClellan effect

Suddenly McCain's magic BBQ sauce doesn't have the press in its clutches. Finally! Some real questions. Hallelujah.

[Robeson]

17. Lieberman has no soul...

...I sincerely hope the good people of Connecticut will wake up and show him the exit door.

[NewEnglandGirl]

27. We're Trying !!!!!

He's like a fly that you swat but he keeps coming back. ;(

[Hulk]

18. Pigs...pure and simple.

Lowest scum of the earth. I wish we could route this prissy bitch, graham, from his roost in SC. Guess the folks there are happy with such a pathetic piece of shit for their representative?

[and-justice-for-all]

19. These clowns are yesterdays news...

along with their ilk.

WE ARE DONE WITH THEM AND WE ARE DONE WITH IRAQ!

They better prepare to have their asses handed to'em, because HERE WE COME!!!

GOBAMA 08!!

[SalmonChantedEvening]

20. Corsi and Ginsberg: The Sequel

This time it's.....




Repetitious.

[Jefferson23]

22. Fuck Lieberman, and I am waiting to hear his remarks about McClellan.

[auburngrad82]

23. Are Lieberman and Graham vets? nt

[Born_A_Truman]

26. Graham is ... Lieberman, no

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindsey_Graham

Graham decided to join the United States Air Force in 1982, and served on active duty until 1988. Following his departure he stayed in the military by joining the South Carolina Air National Guard<1> and the U.S. Air Force Reserves. During the Gulf War, he was recalled to active duty, serving as a Judge Advocate at McIntire Air National Guard Station in Eastover, South Carolina, where he helped brief departing pilots on the laws of war.

In 2004, Graham received a promotion to Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserves at a White House ceremony officiated by President George W. Bush.

Graham served in Iraq as a reservist on active duty for short periods during April and two weeks in August 2007, where he worked on detainee and rule-of-law issues.<2> That makes him the only Iraq war veteran serving in the United States Senate.

~~~~
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2008/05/23/lieberman/

During the turmoil over the Vietnam War, a disastrous venture that Lieberman mentions only in passing, he became a leading peace activist in his home state -- a political stance that happened to comport nicely with his own ambitions at the time. He was a founding member of the dissident, antiwar Caucus of Connecticut Democrats, which supported the Rev. Joe Duffey's liberal primary challenge in 1970 against conservative Democratic incumbent Sen. Thomas Dodd, a Vietnam hawk. The young Lieberman, who had escaped the Vietnam draft with student and family deferments between 1961 and 1967, ran and won a seat in the state Senate that same year as a dovish liberal.

[Heywood J]

24. Joe's full of shit.

He's a Republican now, plain and simple. Funding ads critical of other Democrats (when it's not a primary situation and you aren't running) should get you divorced from the party, permanently. Hagel and Chaffee are more of a Democrat than Joe.


Makes me wish something would be exposed that forces him to "spend more time with his family"...