January 24th, 2009:

via McCain Hits Obama For William Lynn Pick.

WASHINGTON — A former Raytheon lobbyist nominated to be deputy defense secretary despite President Barack Obama’s ban on hiring lobbyists will sell his stock in the military contracting firm.

However, William J. Lynn won’t be forced to step back from decisions related to his former employer, the Pentagon said Friday.

Instead, Lynn’s dealings at the Defense Department will be subject to ethics reviews for one year, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

That is fair enough. It is hard to find qualified people in Washington who are not lobbyists. Although I would prefer someone else i.e. anybody who’s not a Raytheon lobbyist, as No. 2 at Defense, I can live with the administration’s waiver of William Lynn if it stops here. The article goes on to say:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Linked to Lobbyists through entire campaign

But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he was disappointed that a recently employed lobbyist would be nominated to the No. 2 position at the Pentagon. McCain said he won’t endorse Lynn until more details are provided.

“Before I can determine whether to support his nomination as deputy secretary of defense, I intend to ask him to clarify for the record what matters and decisions will require his recusal,” McCain said in a statement.

John McCain is the absolute biggest hypocrite to ever grace the halls of Congress. He surrounded himself with high powered lobbyists from the moment he announced his candidacy. The first group of top campaign officers that McCain eventually fired were lobbyists, then the group he hired in late 2007 to revive his sinking campaign were also lobbyists.

From Thomas B. Edsall via Huffington Post in June 2007:

On March 7, 2007, McCain named ex-Texas Representative Tom Loeffler, who has one of the most lucrative and influential practices in the nation’s capital, as his campaign co-chair. In the same month, McCain named former Washington Sen. Slade Gorton, now a heavyweight lobbyist, as his honorary chairman for Washington state.

And from CNN in August 2008 identifying McCain’s new top advisers as lobbyists:

• One: Campaign manager Rick Davis is a major telecommunications lobbyist.

• Two: Senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann recently faced scrutiny over his foreign lobbying on behalf of the Republic of Georgia, which has been embroiled in a military conflict with Russia.

• Three: Senior adviser Charlie Black was a foreign lobbyist for dictators in Zaire and Angola in the 1980s, fodder for the liberal group MoveOn.org.

• Four: Frank Donatelli, the Republican National Committee’s liaison to the McCain campaign, has had clients including Exxon Mobil.

• Five: Economic adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer has lobbied for corporate giants like Koch Industries.

McCain needs to just STFU. Him and his deregulation-neo-con bottom-feeders are still being quoted after it was proved in November that Republicanism is DEAD. …Amazing.