Bit, you're an f'ing loon. Read the original comment I was responding to.

Irrelevant.
I have you what you specifically asked for.

Further, within what I gave you were several references to the original 2000 story. Yet, even in the face of that, you still deny the Times ever covered it. And when faced with mere facts, you resort to:

You are not part of this conversation

Wrong. You don't get to make that choice.

And yes, Hal, I'm speaking up because unlike you, I do fully understand what's going on. Indeed, that's your biggest problem. Don't blame me because you're less than accurate in your demands. But you can be educated in the matter, possibly. Allow me to illustrate:

There's an ancient tale of Greece describing a warrior when went to a wizard, seeking a helmet that in his words would make him invulnerable to injury. The Wizard and this warrior had something of a bad history... and the wizard saw he had a chance to even the score. Using his wizardry, he placed a demon in the helmet. When the warrior put that helmet on, the demon bit his head clean off. As the Wizard explained to his friends, he gave the warrior exactly what he asked for. "After all", said he "I gave him exactly what he asked for. The warrior will hardly care about injury when he doesn't have a head."

That tale translates rather well to this situation, don't you think? Oh... Nice guy that I am, and in case you need a translation, allow me to put this in words you're sure to understand:

Dude, I'm mocking you, because it is YOU who is the most entertaining of the bunch. Thanks for playing so well the part set you.

Oh, by the way, Hal... is it still your position that the press is running cover for McCain? You've still not answered the question. Third try.
Or are you going to continue running away from the issue?

You are not part of this conversation, so I don't give you a flying f at a rolling donut what deranged theory spews from your fevered swamp of a brain. You push yourself into the middle of a conversation that you didn't even bother to understand in the first place, misunderstood what was going on and now you're in high dungeon trying to slap me about to fit your original thesis.

Step away from the keyboard and put down the Jack Daniels.

Stop digging.

I responded to your original request. Those are your exact words, not mine. You pinned the 2000 thing after the fact.

And still, my question remains unanswered.

Again...if your claim is to be that McCain is getting cover from the press, and that the press refuses to cover McCain scandal... (Is that now NOT your claim?) ... how does that claim mesh with the evidence I've just given you?

If you can't answer this question Hal, just say so and have done, and quit the posturing. You're not selling anyone with it.

Moron.

Ring me when the MSM chases the story of McCain's adultery,

I did that. I directly responded to your call. I gave you what you asked.

As to the other, let's see... if your claim is to be that McCain is getting cover from the press, and that the press refuses to cover McCain scandal... (Is that now NOT your claim?) ... how does that claim mesh with the evidence I've just given you?

a) the issue was about McCain's adulterous affair with the now Cindy McCain, not the lobbyist.

b) the commenter claimed it was on the front pages of the NY Times in 2000

So please just stop embarrassing yourself and stay out of the conversation unless you're going to actually participate with the actual conversation instead of the fantasy conversation that's going on in your head.

There's a reason the TIMES never went forward with the story despite rather intense investigative efforts, even by their own words... there wasn't any 'there' there.

Yet, clearly, in the case of Edwards, and in the case of Clinton... two stories they avoided outright until suppsoedly less respectable news orgs reported it first, there WAS a rather large 'there'.

If the Republicans are smart they'll keep a low profile on this, and let the Republican leaning press (and yes, there is a sizable element that leans to the right even if the majority lean to the left) make an issue of it ... too many people living in glass houses in both parties for either to throw many stones.

“When a Democrat is accused of some sort of affair, the mainstream media is extremely concerned about making 100% sure the story is drop dead accurate, down to the last detail, before they’ll even begin to think about printing the story. That’s why Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story to the public, not the MSM. It’s also why stories about affairs involving John Kerry, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton have been buried or not printed at all in most MSM outlets over the last few years.”

Bingo. Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding.

Not surprisingly, James posted in that article a list of folks responding to the hit piece.

* Kevin Drum has some interesting musings about the decision to blog or not blog about these manufactured Scandals of The Day. He terms this one a “kinda-sorta-maybe-John-McCain-had-a-non-affair non-story .”

* Publius (ObWi): “Gotta say, I’m underwhelmed by the NYT’s McCain bombshell.” And a good point: “[C]omplaints about timing seem overblown. If anything, the NYT leaked it at the best possible time. If they leak it earlier, it looks like they’re trying to knock McCain out. If they leak it later, it looks like they’re trying to influence the general.”

* Steve Benen: “Now, reading through the Times’ very lengthy article, one notices that it feels at least a little thin. The evidence is hardly overwhelming, and the article is padded with extraneous details. [...] But one also gets the sense that this NYT piece is the opening salvo.”

* Ed Morrissey: “The New York Times launches its long-awaited smear of John McCain today, and the most impressive aspect of the smear is just how baseless it is.”

* Matt Welch: “The New York Times has uncorked a lengthy, long-awaited, weirdly written, (mostly) anonymously sourced, six-reporter article about John McCain that people will remember mostly for hinting in a not-quite-convincing way that he was having an extra-marital affair in the late 1990s with a telecom lobbyist three decades his junior.”

* Megan McArdle: “CNN notes ‘This may end up being a story about the New York Times as about John McCain.’ One does kind of wonder why they’re breaking an eight year-old story now.”

* Mary Katharine Ham: “This doesn’t reflect badly on anyone but the Times, as far as I’m concerned. The innuendo and full-on craptastic nature of the lede alone is enough to damn any actual facts that follow, which are few and far between.”

* Betsy Newmark: “It really is a nothingburger of a story all wrapped up with the sexual innuendo that McCain has been having an affair with an attractive lobbyist.”

* Steven Taylor: “Given that key portions of McCain’s appeal are supposed to be his character and his anti-corruption stances, this story has the potential to be quite damaging, especially if he ends up facing off against Obama, who has a visible, and seemingly quite stable, marriage1 and is running against lobbyists.”

* Mark Kleiman: “Apparently this has been an open secret for years. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with a senator doing to a lobbyist what the lobbyists do to the rest of us. But it says something about a man’s morals when he isn’t even faithful to his trophy wife.”

* Pam Spaulding: “Just imagine all the moralist McCain haters on the far right are thinking right about now, after all, they all want into your bedroom and women’s wombs.”

* Digby: “I don’t know if McCain is crooked. But you have to wonder, after his close call with the Keating Five and public association with campaign finance reform, how anyone could be so arrogant as to think he could get away with this stuff if he actually became the Republican nominee?”

* Logan Murphy: “Could this be the reason Mike Huckabee is still hanging around and Mitt Romney merely suspended his campaign instead of ending it altogether?”

* Jane Hamsher: “No jokes about ‘lobbyists’ and ‘pork.’”

* Michelle Malkin: “If you lie down with MSM dogs, you wake up with stories like this.”

* John Hawkins: “When a Democrat is accused of some sort of affair, the mainstream media is extremely concerned about making 100% sure the story is drop dead accurate, down to the last detail, before they’ll even begin to think about printing the story. That’s why Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story to the public, not the MSM. It’s also why stories about affairs involving John Kerry, John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton have been buried or not printed at all in most MSM outlets over the last few years.”

* Brent Baker: “[Keith] Olbermann insisted the alleged efforts of staffers to ‘protect’ McCain sound ‘eerily similar’ to Clinton-Lewinsky. Later in his 45 minutes of ‘Breaking News’ coverage, Olbermann proposed: ‘If this doesn’t sound like deja vu all over again, I don’t know what does.””

* Dan Riehl: “When it falls to your lawyers to defend you on Fox, as Bennett is doing now for McCain, you’re screwed. McCain can survive it. But on top of Keating Five and who knows what else, this faux conservative is a flawed, old candidate.”

UPDATE: Politico reports that “Aides to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) have released a remarkable 1,500-word document outlining what his campaign calls ’some of the facts that were provided to the New York Times but did not end up in the story.’” They reprint the document in its entirety; it’s basically a timeline refuting the dates and allegations in the story.

UPDATE: McCain has held a press conference denying the allegations.

“I’m very disappointed in the article. It’s not true,” the likely Republican presidential nominee said as his wife, Cindy, stood beside him during a news conference called to address the matter. “I’ve served this nation honorably for more than half a century,” said McCain, a four-term Arizona senator and former Navy pilot. “At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust.” “I intend to move on,” he added.

McCain described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.

The newspaper quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and Iseman to stay away from each other prior to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with lobbyist Iseman and urged her to steer clear of McCain. Weaver told the Times he arranged the meeting before the 2000 campaign after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about Iseman.

But McCain said he was unaware of any such conversation, and denied that his aides ever tried to talk to him about his interactions with Iseman. “I never discussed it with John Weaver. As far as I know, there was no necessity for it,” McCain said. “I don’t know anything about it,” he added. “John Weaver is a friend of mine. He remains a friend of mine. But I certainly didn’t know anything of that nature.”

His wife also said she was disappointed with the newspaper. “More importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America. He’s a man of great character,” Cindy McCain said. The couple smiled throughout the questioning at a Toledo hotel.

McCain’s remaining rival for the Republican nomination, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, called McCain “a good decent honorable man” and said he accepted McCain’s response. “I’ve campaigned now on the same stage or platform with John McCain for 14 months. I only know him to be a man of integrity,” Huckabee said in Houston. “Today he denied any of that was true. I take him at his word. For me to get into it is completely immaterial.”

UPDATE: TNR’s Gabriel Sherman reports:

The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn’t. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.

In short, Hal, and as usual the fact run contrary to your claims. Game, set, match, Bithead.

February 21, 2008
The Long Run
For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk
By JIM RUTENBERG, MARILYN W. THOMPSON, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and STEPHEN LABATON

Correction Appended

WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

I thought the NYT was all over it back in 2000...front pageish no?

Well, went to the NYTimes site and did a search. Didn't turn up anywhere. Perhaps you could do the same and provide a link?