Mason, McCain and more chicanery by Bush

(From Media Matters)

David Mason has been the chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Mr. Mason told John McCain that he could not opt out of the public financing system in the presidential primary without the permission of the FEC.

McCain has tried to do just that as he is spending over the limits of the public financing system which means he could be (is probably) breaking federal law.

Last February 21, the Associated Press reported:

"The government's top campaign finance regulator says John McCain can't drop out of the primary election's public financing system until he answers questions about a loan he obtained to kickstart his once faltering presidential campaign.

"Federal Election Chairman David Mason, in a letter to McCain this week, said the all-but-certain Republican nominee needs to assure the commission that he did not use the promise of public money to help secure a $4 million line of credit he obtained in November."

Big problem. If McCain is guilty of "knowingly violating the spending limit," he has committed a criminal offense the penalty of which consists of rather large fines and up to five years in prison.

(That would be an interesting scenario: The Republican candidate for president up on criminal charges! Won't happen, though. Hell, we haven't been able to do anything about the criminals occupying the two highest offices in the land -- and we've got the "goods" on them!)


It so happens that the FEC has been operating short-handed for some time with only two of six members and thus has been unable to deal with McCain's request to get out of the public financing system.

To get around this stalemate, the prezident has nominated three new candidates (refusing, as we mentioned a few days ago, to retract the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky--a crony to whom Bush in deeply in debt.)

Not only so, but our ethically-impaired prezident withdrew the nomination of David Mason!

Why would he do that? Might it have anything to do with the fact that if Mason remained on the commission he might cast a negative vote relative to John McCain's bid to get out of the public financing system?

Nah...our prez would never do anything like that...

(The only good thing about this mess is that Harry Reid's office indicated they'd move ahead on the confirmation of all nominees, with the exception of Spakovsky. They want Spakovsky gone and expect he will not be confirmed.)