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"Good morning! John McCain&amp;#x27;s campaign has been kvetching since Super Tuesday about being &amp;quot;ignored&amp;quot; by the media in favor of the more exciting story of the Democratic race. So, one would think they would be excited to have finally sucked all the media oxygen away from the Democratic campaigns this morning&amp;amp;#8212;and they would be, if the story getting him all of that attention wasn&amp;#x27;t about his relationship with a female lobbyist that his staff characterized as potentially inappropriate. The whole semi-sordid tale dates back to 1999, when the female lobbyist in question, Vicki Iseman, was in her early 30s and working for a company specializing in earmarks and representing telecommunications companies. McCain and Iseman deny there was anything more than an appropriate professional relationship, and McCain characterized her in a press conference this morning as a friend. By all reports, the New York Times has been sitting on this story since December, when rumors of its existence first appeared in The Drudge Report and McCain accused the Times of running with the story to hurt him in the primaries. Although neither the Times story or a similar one in the Washington Post explicitly accuse McCain of having an affair with Iseman, they definitely imply that there were rumors around to that effect. Both stories do, however, bring up the thorny issue of whether or not she lobbied him to do things for her clients (which is, after all, the role of a lobbyist) and whether he did those things when he might not otherwise have done them because he was lobbied. It&amp;#x27;s not exactly a smoking-gun kind of moment, except that Iseman is a younger woman and bears more than a passing resemblance to McCain&amp;#x27;s wife Cindy. Would the story have legs if she was older or unattractive? Is she really the only lobbyist with which McCain has ever worked? That news has drowned out other interesting tidbits, like dueling groups of feminists taking aim at one another over Hillary Clinton&amp;#x27;s support for the war and the perceived &amp;quot;need&amp;quot; by some to support a female candidate even while disagreeing with her. In the meantime, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is accusing someone of fraud because some precincts reported unofficially on Super Tuesday that Barack Obama received no votes in 78 districts, a result later found to be patently untrue. But, who cares about feminists or voter fraud when there&amp;#x27;s the whiff of scandal in the air? So, if there&amp;#x27;s no more to the story than that McCain was lobbied, do you care? Is the lobbyist angle just a stand-in for the rumors that the media isn&amp;#x27;t willing to openly give credence to? And why is the story about fraudulent election returns in New York getting virtually no attention? &amp;amp;#8212;Megan"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/glamocracy/2008/02/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-j>