Ok, where's the blue dress? Who has it? Anybody interview Linda Tripp yet? We need juicy details.

He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists

If I were Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney I'd be 'very' upset with the NYT's for releasing this information - NOW, that's been known since before last Christmas, thereby allowing McCain to have enough time to accumulate enough delegates to assure him of his nomination.

Some are reporting it was a left wing group that released this news. But out of anybody, who best would know about this story? The GOP of course!

Makes one wonder if the GOP conservative wing that is so angry about McCain winning the GOP nomination, that they are hoping this story stops McCain in his tracks -- maybe he'll withdraw from the race?

What do you think?

Interesting that he has only denied betraying the public's trust in his relationship with this lobbyist. The relationship he has with his wife is not a public trust.

If the anonymous "sources" were associated in any way with the Coulter wing of the party (or any other campaign) -- and the NYT did not disclose that bias -- it will be a disaster for the Times.

This is the epitome of a non-denial denial. McCain really doesn't deny anything, he just rails against the NY Times for publishing the story.

Sen. McCain just blew away the NYTimes. He showed excellent political judgment in his handling of the NYT "smear." Many would not have taken questions; he took questions, answered them calmly and ably. The NYT is very much out on a limb. Cindy McCain also distinguished herself. Simply put, we know that John McCain can take a punch, absorb it professionally and calmly, amd move on.

I would put forth this goes to overall character. John McCain was a POW, with a wife and three children at home waiting for him. He then, after being home, dumped his wife after he began an affair with current wife Cindy, and they were married within a month of his divorce. He was involved in the Savings and Loan scandal BIG time and reprimanded by Congress, not to mention costing American taxpayers millions. He has had lobby problems in the past. He is now in the middle of possible violations of the FEC public financing rules. It goes on and on. Having lived in Arizona myself for years, this guy is all over the map: his wife also, by the way, had a drug addiction (prescription) to the point she stole from a charity and broke Federal laws. That was all "handled" so of course she is proud of her country. It caters to people like her with millions. If McCain had no history, I would blow this off. Sadly, where there is smoke there is fire, and he has had questionable character issues his entire adult life. BTW, Kerry too is a war "hero" but in his case he was scum, according to the media = GOP, but with McCain, somehow it is worthy of a Presidency, decency being a word missing in the evolution of John McCain's political career.

Oh my god, this is delicious. This is the sort of thing that dogs a candidacy for its entirety. the sort of thing a politician cannot stamp out. It's vague and not sourced so there is no specific accusation or person for him to focus on discrediting. It's being repeated in various news outlets, including one of the most pervasive news sources, the AP, which is incredibly hard to shake because they don't have to substantiate it. They just have to write something like: "Hey, we don't really know what the issue might be, and we're not going to state that we think this story that could be a number of different things is necessarily true, but at some point someone who could have insider information said that Candidate A could have or had an extramarital romantic relationship with a younger woman who is also a lobbyist (ooh an evil lobbyist) or, or additionally, he could be trading his influence in government for campaign contributions from her clients. His staff is really worried about it, he's going to have a press conference to deny it. It's all over the news. We're just saying." When the news organizations start repeating a story like that, because it's juicy and they can't be accused of reporting falsehoods, it gets stuck in the news media echo chamber and becomes almost impossible to completely expunge.

I'm not guaranteeing that will certainly be the case with this story but it's tailor-made for that outcome. He's right, it is a sort of smear story, but smears the media picks up without having the intention to use against a candidate generally have long lives - think of the Swiftboat story, it simply would not die. So far to a lesser extent the same goes for the claims that Senator Obama is a Muslim that attended a madrassa. That outcome in this sense would be unfair to Senator McCain but I am politically focussed enough to first of all not care if it means having the best outcome for the country in the election, and second of all have no pity for a Republican this happens to. After all, it's a taste of the party's own medicine and Senator McCain did not put his foot down on the Swiftboat story as he should have. In fact, I think I'm going to repeat this story to my friends.

The New York Times violated its own policy on anonymous sources in today’s front page article about John McCain. The core of the story was based on two unidentified former staffers who spoke on “the condition of anonymity.” The article only noted that the anonymous ex-staffers claimed to be “disillusioned.”

Bill Keller laid out the NYT policy on anonymous sources.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/14/business/media/14asktheeditors.html?pagewanted=all

“We do all we can to inform the readers about the reliability and motives of the unnamed source.”

Except in this case. We know nothing about why they sought and were given anonymity. We know nothing about their reliability or motives. We do not know whether they were fired, associates of Ann Coulter or Sen. McCain’s political enemies, or otherwise biased..

The problem is that its hard to show somebody how to do it without accidentally doing it, but I'll give it a shot.

To do the quote box thing, you put the word "blockquote" between the symbols (no spaces) at the start of the text you want to do quote. To end it, you put "/blockquote" between the symbols at the end of the text.

The same trick works with "i" and "/i" for italics, and "b" and "/b" for bold. I seem to recall that there are one or two other codes that work, but I didn't get my required dosage of caffeine before my cutoff point today and my brain isn't firing on all cylinders.

Meanwhile, over at Taylor Marsh's site, all of the usual commenters, having finished their morning bowls of Crazy Flakes, are busily blaming Obama for "leaking" this story to the NYT. Mere objective data showing the Times has been sitting on this story since December are, naturally, insufficient to dissuade them from this theory.

And this just in from the Crazy Cultists desk: at Hillaryis44.org, they are urging her true believers to watch "Elmer Gantry" and "The Music Man" to gain valuable insight into Obama's true nature and lauding