Redstate

then the NY Times would have had more substantial evidence. Rumor has it that they had compiled this story back late last year but did not run it b/c they didn't have any hard evidence to back up the insinuations. Then they get wind that TNR is going to run their own threadbare story anyway and so, rather than get scooped, they run one of the weakest, least subsantive hit jobs I have ever seen. Two anonymous aides? That's it? That's their evidence?

I have to admit that I always laughed off the idea of the "liberal media." I used to think it was a valuable talking point that helped out Republicans politically, but was grossly overstated. No more. To see the TNR and NY Times run with an empty hit job, and to see an MSNBC host, Olbermann, basically drooling with delight as he runs with it, my mind has been changed. There is a liberal media, one dedicated to destroying conservatives and Republicans.

"Glory is not a conceit. It is not a decoration for valor. Glory belongs to the act of being constant to something greater than yourself, to a cause, to your principles, to the people on whom you rely and who rely on you in return."-Senator McCain

Can you cite one outlet that was going to run it NOT known for running with pathetic attacks on Republicans?

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

If the above is true (that there was an inter-media battle to publish it first) it actually indicates that there might be LESS meat to the story. I mean, if the New Republic, L.A. Times, Newsweek, or God forbid a blog might jump the gun and publish it, the pressure is on the NYT to get it out there first regardless of whether it's fully fleshed out or not.

Maybe there's more to it, but as of this moment the New York Times has embarrassed itself pretty thoroughly. And if it rushed to get that honor so that other media outlets couldn't that's simply all the more damning.

(-2.75, -4.92)

Plus does anyone read TNR ?
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

but I hear they write great fiction!

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Two thirds of the world is covered by water,
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You have literally no idea how close to being right on the money, you actually are. But it won't deal with horsing around.

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The last thing he wants is to drag this into court. What if he did have a realtionship?

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

If it's not true there's no danger in suing. Then again, if it's not true there's probably no benefit in suing either. The lying weasels of the left won't stop their abuse of the truth in service of their Communist revolution.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

Here's the deal. Given the knowledge of sex scandals that have came out in the past couple of years, I wouldn't be shocked if McCain had some sort of relationship with this woman. It wouldn't be a story really. His flat denial is the issue.

If they have enough to prove he did it after the denial...then McCain's credibility is done.

I really hope McCain files suit. That would show he is serious about not being caught.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

I'm not suggesting he bring a suit. I'm just saying it borders libel. A newspaper can not publish character dammaging pieces unless you can prove it is true. If he lost the election, he could show that damage was caused by this piece.

Now they do have some protection since he is public offical and generally the law give wiggle room in those cases but it still is extremely unethical, if not slanderous. This is something you would fail a journalism course for in college.

That is what worries me. If he is telling the truth he has a slam dunk to take down the Times. So the question begged is why wouldn't he sue them?

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

If McCain is telling the truth and knows the woman will deny it on the stand why not sue?

If he is confident that NYT has no real source and no real evidence he should sue to destroy the Times.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

The NY Times did not really accuse McCain of anything. It just implied it.

Hence why I said it borders libel. They walked a very fine line. I still think a case could be made if they decided to take action but I think the court of public opinion matters more to McCain now.

But the NY Times can argue that they did not actually accuse anything -- after all, they even quote McCain and the woman denying they had an affair -- in which case, it is not libel.

It is character defamation at least. The press does not have immunity here. If McCain is telling the truth, the woman will back him up, and NYT's sources bail then McCain has them by the short hairs.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

Public figures -- and John McCain is definitely a public figure -- do not have recourse against character defamation. They have recourse against libel and as long as the NY Times did not "say" he had an affair, and they only "imply" that, then the NY Times can argue that they did not libel McCain.

As I understand it, is much much much different.

It's easier for anyone, even public figures, to sue successfully for libel.

As such, the media there has discovered circumlocution.

You cannot say "the Member of Parliament looked drunk" without being sued for libel and likely losing even if the Prime Minister *WAS* drunk... so the media says "the Member of Parliament seemed unwell."

And everyone of the readers knows that "unwell" means "drunk" but, in a court of law, "unwell" still means "unwell".

This resulted in a case a few years back where a MP held a press conference to talk about how he wasn't unwell, he was sick and talked about going to his doctor for a perscription and that's why he seemed unwell when he was merely sick.

But this is one heck of a digression.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Thats why need to get rid of that pesty first amendment thing so many people reference. ;)

It used to be much easier for public figures to sue for libel, but in recent years British law has moved closer to U.S. law in this area. There is now a qualified privilege for "responsible journalism" on matters of public interest, so that statements that turn out to be false are protected if the journalist acted according to standards of professional responsibility.

There's absolutely no basis for a lawsuit here. Since McCain is a public figure, he can win a suit for libel only if proves that the NYT made a false allegation with 'malice,' which means that the defendant *knew* the statement was false or made the statement with reckless disregard for the truth. This is an almost impossible standard to prove, which is why there are almost no successful suits for libel by a public figure. The NYT has not even directly claimed that McCain had an affair. There's nothing in the article that even comes close to the libel standard. And they should know. It was the Sup. Ct. case of New York Times v. Sullivan that established this extremely generous standard for the media.

lol.

Someone studied case law...

I think, more over, what I am getting at is the ethical standard here. If I wrote a piece like this in one of my journalism classes in college, I'm pretty sure my professor would have made an example of me and given me an "F"

One reason to give this story an F is its use of anonymous sources when there's no good reason for it. Journalism ethics professors generally frown on anonymous sources. A justifiable reasons might be exposing a serious scandal or threat to national security. Using an anonymous source for innuendo about a romantic relationship doesn't count.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

I am all for McCain as the nominee. I have problems with him but he is electable. Or he was.

If he had an affair, I can overlook that because I don't care what he does in his personal life. BUT, if he tried to cover it up then his image is destroyed. If he gets caught here he will lose the election. We can't have that.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

What's stopping McCain from suing for libel?

Unless he is not being honest.

God...I am so worried that he is blowing it for all of us. If he had an affair with that woman and they can prove it...we are done.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

I just don't want this election blown because of a cover up. I'm jaded by a long list of sexual impropiety in politicians coming back to bite them.

It is always worse if you deny it and then get caught. I hope Mac is telling the truth.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

Anyone dumb enough to believe the NYT isn't going to be coinvinced by a lawsuit.

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The NYT will have to retract and every other paper will jump all over them because that is their nature. The NYT is already struggling with sales in a cyber era. This could be a great blow to them.

If McCain is telling the truth I will help donate to this lawyers to sue the Times.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

The fools who believe it now will still believe it regardless of a court-mandated retraction. They'll spin conspiracy theories, just like the Ronulans and the rest do about everythinge lse that doesn't go the way they believe.

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There are people out there who believe it that could be swayed. Independents and moderates that McCain appeals to, like him because he is honest and authentic. If he loses them, when the base is already tepid about him...his candidacy is done.

He has to fight back and fight hard. He can be the victim of a smear who is fighting the good fight. It is a great narrative. He could even say that Hanoi didn't stop him and their communist progeny at the Times won't either.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

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is almost impossible to establish. The assertion must be false and the purveyor must know that it is false. It's the knowing part that is almost impossible to get to when they cite "usually reliable" anonymous sources.

In Vino Veritas

But if McCain is telling the truth. The woman is telling the truth. And no sources will actually stand up in public to testify to the contrary then McCain has a case.

If he is telling the truth and the Times has nothing, he can threaten suit causing them to retract and setlle.

It is a time for McCain to call their bluff. Unless...he is the one bluffing.

This is serious. Somebody is lying and somebody is going down for this.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

Please quote, verbatim, where the article actually states that McCain had an affair with the lobbyist. Because until you or someone else does that, you cannot even begin to argue that McCain has a libel claim against the NY Times.

is keep it in the news longer. And it isn't necessarily true that somebody is "lying." In this world, the pregnant description of a pretty lady lobbyist having access to an officeholder, the insinuation that her access might be better than others, the insinuation that the reason for that better access might be her better assets; get the drift? Nobody has outright said anything untrue, they've just laid out the possibility for people to run with - and run they will.

In Vino Veritas

How many libel suits have actually resulted in the plaintiff winning rather than in the media saying "Dude, it was an honest mistake, plus The First Amendment" and the judge/jury siding with the media (provided they print a retraction)?

I'm under the impression that it is *EXCEPTIONALLY* hard to win a libel suit under the best of circumstances.

Also, McCain's situation doesn't strike me as the best of circumstances.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

[nt]

Under prevailing law, it is virtually impossible for a "public figure" such as McCain to win a libel suit, and certainly not in this case.

I'm not going to write the legal treatise here, just trust me, there is no way he could win such a suit even if every single sentence in the Times article is false. So just stop all the lawsuit talk now, it is irrelevant to the issue, and cannot be used by McCain.

Brad Smith
Professor of Law
Capital University Law School
Capital University website
Center for Competitive Politics website

I was going to chime in, but there is no reason now. Thank you. Will it put a stop to the parroting of innuendo? Nope. But it should.

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I'm willing to crawl on hands and knees to Fred with donations ready.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

As much as I like and respect Fred Thompson, let's face it and admit he did not do well in this season's Republican primary. Why should we expect he would do better in the general election?

McCain will have to step down as the nominee, which probably means Huckabee gets the nod, and we head into the wilderness for the next four years. If there's a shread of truth regarding the relationship with the lobbyist whcih McCain has denied, we have been dealt a mortal blow from which we cannot recover - save an even more embarassing and substantiated story about Obama.

And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they may be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. ~ Winston Churchill

McCain was chosen on electability. If he is destroyed then his only rationale for nomination is done. Fred would be the strongest other candidate. He can unite the base at least.

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I am a Positivist Pastafarian for the alliteration alone.

Again, I am a former FredHead but, face facts, Fred Thompson earned fewer votes than Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney or Rudy Guiliani. Unfortunately, he is not our strongest candidate.

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"If we want to take this party back, and I think we can someday, let’s get to work." – Barry Goldwater

Memo to Mike: You believe the New York Times? Heh. by Neil Stevens

Well, I'm a little suspicious of McCain's line that he "doesn't recall" any conservations with staffers about concerns over Ms. Iseman. That's the same thing he says about the acconts of two conservative Republican lawyers who heard him say he wouldn't nominate a judge like Alito because he thought Alito wore his conservatism on his sleeve. Someone is lying here--or someone is struggling with Alzheimer's. Two former McCain aides independently confirmed the account of aides confronting him about concerns regarding Ms. Iseman, and it's true that Ms Iseman suddenly stopped appearing at McCain meetins and on flights with him. Come on, folks.

Also, much of the information in the NYT article is not in dispute. For example, there's no dispute that McCain lobbied the FCC to expedite Paxson's request for a TV license--after he'd received over $20K in donations from Paxson executives and lobbyists and a time when Paxson's CEO was giving money to McCain's campaign.

Mike Griffith
Let Freedom Ring website
http://ourworld.cs.com/mikegriffith1/id47.htm

that can't control his own newsletters and whose foreign policy is worse than Obamas. Yeah, that sounds like a fantastic idea to me-we should put up two surrender candidates. Unite in Blaming America First!

"Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight. We're Americans. We're Americans, and we'll never surrender. They will."-John McCain
McCain/Rudy 08-kill the terrorists and punch the hippies.

I read the story and said, "ok. so what"

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with whatever Bush or other non-liberal source say, but somehow or other fail to name the "experts". Just the use of the word is enough for their loyal but crazed readers.

Once in a while they will dig up someone from nowhere, say a Professor Snert from Anthropology A&M, to refute a story they can't abide.

The Times has reached the point where, in but a different manner, they are on a par with the National Inquirer.
Next, "Republican mother gives birth to two headed baby, with a tail yet".

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville

French experts still think Jerry Lewis is funny, rank "Cinderfella" as best comedy of all time.

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