John McCain is a crook..

It hurts me to say that. I’m a Republican, after all, and John McCain is also, but that is all the more reason that the corruption of McCain should be exposed and he himself condemned.

McCain’s first ethics failure came when he accepted gratuities from failed financier Charles Keating. Perhaps his exposure as a hypocrite – and a crook - before the world has made him determined to do anything, including abridging the constitution, to try to recover his reputation. And he has largely succeeded. Few people remember the McCain of the “Keating 5.” Most associate him with McCain-Feingold, the law that now limits what people can say about candidates as an election draws near.

Even as he publicly crusades against big money in politics, he lacks the integrity to identify real abuses and lets fat cats give him both campaign cash and the use of private jets.

Now it turns out that McCain has secretly set up a parallel campaign organization, the Reform Institute that has hired his campaign staff and supports them with tax exempt donations from the likes of George Soros.

McCain-Feingold is a political abomination created largely by a man who lacks the stability and the ethics to be in public office. McCain is not just an embarrassment to the Senate, but to the Republican Party.