Glenn Greenwald interviews professionally outraged Catholic League President Bill Donahue. Donahue was last seen trying to get two Edwards campaign staffers fired for comments they’d authored on their blogs before being hired by Edwards. Apparently Donahue is now focusing his ire on John McCain’s new best friend, John Hagee.

In the interview, Donohue made some extraordinary statements. He compared Hagee both to Louis Farrakhan and Bob Jones, but noted: “Hagee is far more powerful than Farrakhan is today. . . . Hagee is a major player. There’s no end to his money. He has an empire down there.” Regarding the intense 2000 media controversy when then-Gov. George Bush spoke at Bob Jones University, Donohue said:

Why were they so exercised about Bob Jones? This is worse. . . . If someone said to me: who is the biggest anti-Catholic bigot in the evangelical community, I would say: hands down, John Hagee.

According to Donohue, Hagee has “made a lot of money off bashing the Catholic Church and blames Catholics for the Holocaust.” What does it say about McCain that he would embrace such a figure? “This doesn’t speak well for him. He’s tolerating an endorsement by an inveterate bigot, and it’s been brought to his attention.”

It’s good to know that there are worse anti-Catholic bigots than Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan after all. Let’s see if the media pays attention to Donohue this time around…

This is shameful:

Okay, I guess it was a punt. Fred Wertheimer and Democracy 21 make themselves completely irrelevant:

Democracy 21 did not say that Senator John McCain cannot withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system until the Federal Election Commission makes a decision in this case.

We said that the shut down of the FEC has “taken center stage” because there is no agency to make a legal determination of whether McCain can or cannot withdraw from the public financing system. That means that their will be no resolution of the legal question involved here until the agency is re-constituted to decide the legal issue, and if such an FEC decision is appealed, the case is decided by the courts.

Democracy 21 had no trouble interpreting Barack Obama’s statement — “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election” — to mean that he was opting into the public financing system for the general election. They sit around and parse this stuff all day, set themselves up as judge and jury about what the law is and how it should be interpreted. And now they want to shrug their shoulders because it’s their good buddy John McCain and say that because there’s no quorum at the FEC, he can do whatever the hell he wants?

Some people just love power and the trappings of power. And Democracy 21 and il presidente Fred Wertheimer are clearly some of those people. John McCain lights his world.

Fred Wertheimer and his cow0rkers at Democracy 21 are clearly morally bankrupt. They do not care about political campaign finance law, nor do they care about the presidential matching funds system remaining in a healthy state. If they did, they would choose to defend that over their dear friend John McCain.

Keep in mind that Wertheimer and his pals are making a stink about Obama backing out of a conditional statement, while offering no condemnation when John McCain actual backs out of the matching funds system he had already entered! To them, the issue is what Obama might or might not do down in September. Obviously they’re missing the story happening right in front of them.

This may be hard to believe, but few things have made me physically more ill in my time in politics than this disgusting, immoral, apologism for John McCain’s illegal campaigning.

Democracy 21 head Fred Wertheimer, a strong McCain ally, says that he is stuck in public financing until the FEC says otherwise:

The shut down of the Federal Election Commission has taken center stage because there is no functioning agency to deal with the issue of whether bank loans taken out by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and the collateral provided for those bank loans, means that Senator McCain cannot withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and is bound by its spending limits for the rest of his primary campaign.

Jane Hamsher writes:

That’s not a “punt,” that’s a clear determination. Democracy 21 says McCain has to abide by the spending limits set by the public financing system, which he is has probably already exceeded. Which means by law, it is their opinion that McCain should be dead in the water and unable to spend any more money until the general. (Ambinder missed this the first time around, but to his credit caught it and corrected it.)

All of McCain’s fancy footwork in his loan application that offered up public financing money as collateral without actually offering it up is highly dubious. Wertheimer is saying that unless the FEC can rule on it, McCain is stuck. (For more on this, see Mark Schmidt’s explanation.)

…

Anyway, to recap: John McCain’s staunchest ally on campaign finance reform, Fred Wertheimer, says that it is illegal for him to be doing what he is doing.

So here’s how we have to look at the McCain campaign from here on out: every time he steps on a stage, he is breaking the law. Every time he airs an ad on TV, he is cheating. Every time he travels to California or New York or Michigan or Texas or anywhere else for a fundraiser, he is breaking the law. John McCain is circumventing the campaign finance system. He is a cheater and a law breaker and his actions could mean that he face jail time (up to five years).

These are not the actions of an honorable man or an honest man or an ethical man. These are the actions of a craven, lawless cheater who is desperately hoping that his judgment day never comes.

Update:

Everything in this post about Wertheimer is no longer operable.

Glenn Greenwald on McCain’s latest endorsement from hate-mongering Christianist John Hagee.

Watching the media’s treatment of Farrakhan and Hagee, is it possible to imagine a more transparent, and grotesque, double standard? In the framework of the Russert-led establishment press, white evangelical Christians are, by definition, entitled to great respect no matter how radical, extreme and hateful their professed views are. These are, after all, religious Christians — People of Faith — and, as such, it is wrong, even bigoted, to suggest that they should be repudiated. There is nothing ever radical, hateful or dangerous about the views of white evangelical Christians like Hagee.

Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people. They are still fit for good company, an important and cherished part of our mainstream American political system. The entire GOP establishment is permitted actively to lavish them with praise and court their support without the slightest backlash or controversy. Both George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sent formal greetings to the 2006 gathering of Hagee’s group.

By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers.

How come Tim Russert — in all the times he sits and chats with Lieberman, McCain and various high Bush officials — never reads all of the inflammatory, disgusting, crazed “Rapture-is-Coming/ All-Jews-will-Burn/ Kill-All-Muslims/ Hurricanes-are-Punishment-against-Gays” pronouncements from John Hagee and James Dobson and Pat Robertson and demand that John McCain and George Bush and Joe Lieberman “denounce” those views and “reject” their support? What’s the difference, exactly?

The answer to that is simple, Glenn: It’s OK If You’re A Republican.

Turkana at The Left Coaster condensces the importance of the Times lobbyist scandal for John McCain’s campaign:

Given his close ties to the most unpopular president in modern polling history, and his support for a devastating and unpopular war, McCain’s entire candidacy depends on his mythical aura of integrity and sincerity. That myth has been shattered, and it cannot be pieced back together. The rationale for McCain’s candidacy is gone. He’s looking more and more like Bob Dole, in 1996.

Yep, all that’s left is to continue to grind the pieces of the McCain myth into ever smaller, easier-to-digest pieces and put them into tidy little packages for easy distribution to the media.

Mark Schmidt and Jane Hamsher ask a question that I’ve been wondering the last few days while writing about McCain’s FEC problems: why are the campaign finance reform groups remaining silent on McCain’s efforts to break the law and back out of federal matching funds? Why are they silent now, when five of them demanded Obama take matching funds on the basis of a previous willingness to consider public financing?

Remember, Obama’s position was staked out through a written questionnaire and could charitably be put as him keeping an open mind towards using public financing if his GOP opponent did the same. This is nowhere near John McCain’s current situation, where he used his FEC authorization as collateral for a $4 million line of credit (75% used) and a means to get on the ballot in at least Ohio, Kentucky, Delaware, and Montana. McCain is either about to or already has exceeded his spending limit for the entire primary – and we’re still six months from the Republican nominating convention.

The silence from the campaign finance reform groups is deafening.

Yesterday I had a post on how John McCain used his federal matching funds authorization as a means to gain access to the Ohio ballot. This saved McCain massive amounts of time and money, as Ohio has a particularly complicated ballot access process.

The DNC filed their complaint with the FEC this morning (viewable here). In the complaint, the DNC cited three other examples of places where McCain also gained access to the ballot in Kentucky, Delaware, and Montana using the FEC authorization in lieu of campaign staff and cash resources.

This is not an exhaustive list of states, as Ohio was not included. I look forward to seeing what, if any, other states beyond Ohio, Kentucky, Delaware, and Montana John McCain used his FEC matching funds authorization to gain ballot access.

One of the key aspects of McCain’s use of the public campaign finance regime to help his campaign is using it as leverage to get on the ballot in certain states. Ballot access is often a hard proposition, requiring a great deal of time, infrastructure and money to succeed. I’m trying to get a full list of states that McCain used his qualification for matching funds as a means of getting on the ballot, but here is the story in Ohio. This is the former Republican commissioner to the FEC:

McCain used his FEC certification for at least one other purpose.Qualifying for the presidential primary ballot in Ohio is a complex process, requiring a candidate to gather over 100 signatures in each of the state’s 18 districts, using separate petitions for each county within the district, which must be filed with local election boards around the state. Additionally, the candidate must gather still more signatures statewide, all under some very complicated rules and local interpretations. Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and most of the presidential campaigns went through this process, at considerable time and expense. With a filing date of January 3, this was done by these campaigns at precisely the moment McCain was desperately borrowing to keep his campaign afloat, lacking money and resources to organize and gather signatures to be placed on the Ohio ballot.

But Ohio has an alternative means of getting on the ballot – you can simply present your FEC matching funds authorization to the Secretary of State, and go straight to the ballot, without petitioning.And this is what Senator McCain did.

Jonathan Singer of MyDD reports:

First, McCain was able to get around ballot access rules for the primaries in states around the country — at a value of $2-$3 million (what Dean’s own campaign had to spend on ballot access, having not participated in the public financing system in 2004) — by participating in the program. Pulling out now would enable him to reap the material benefit of ballot access offered by the program — again, valued at millions of dollars — without having to abide by the program’s overall spending limit (somewhere in the neighborhood of $54 million).

Second, McCain used the promise of public funds as collateral to help secure a private loan. Once a candidate uses actual public funds in this manner, they have used those dollars, thus locking them into the program. This is key, not only in that it seems to bind him to the program but also in that McCain showed a clear willingness to capitalize on voluntary taxpayer money in order to help him raise more funds from special interest lobbyists (some of whom are at the upper echelons of his campaign staff).

Finally, now that McCain is in the program and hasn’t been certified to pull out — an act that requires a vote of the FEC — it seems that he may have already gone over the spending limit in violation of the law. As of the last campaign finance filing deadline, McCain was already coming dangerously close to the $54 million threshold, and in the weeks since he might have already passed it.

In short, this is an issue of integrity — and John McCain’s lack of it. What the DNC is asking the FEC to do is fairly simple: Require McCain’s campaign to abide by the legally binding contract it created with the federal government to enjoy the benefits of the public financing system — benefits his campaign has already used — in return for abiding by the program’s spending limits. Soon the ball will be in the FEC’s court. Let’s see where they go from here.

I’d like to see how this complaint is adjudicated in the absence of a quorum on the FEC. Right now there are four slots open on the Commission and they cannot form to act on any issue. It will be interesting to see how Dean seeks to change that – will he push for the Senate to quickly confirm the pending nominees, including the arch-conservative vote suppressor Hans von Spakovsky? Or will Democrats seek a new batch of nominees before they confirm them?

Separate from the desire to get McCain to, you know, not break the law, the political value of the DNC’s complaint would be to get the FEC to agree with them and force McCain to freeze spending between now and when he officially receives the GOP nomination. That would provide a massive structural advantage to the Democratic nominee and force McCain to be a punching bag in the ad war between now and late August.

The key in my mind is how can the FEC act on this complaint now? What can Democrats do to ensure that action is taken on this complaint? A negative news cycle on McCain from this complaint is not going to damage his chances of winning in November, whereas an FEC decision tying him to public financing for the duration of the primary season could help ensure Democratic victory.