McCain's Connection to Drill-Baby-Drill-Me-Gate

From TPM Election Central comes word that a couple of high-ranking McCain campaign officials are linked to the companies involved in the emerging sex-for-oil scandal at the Department of the Interior:

It turns out that McCain's national finance co-chair, Wayne Berman, is a paid lobbyist, and has been one for years, for two of the oil companies that are at the center of the sex, drugs and oil scandal enveloping the Interior Department.

One of McCain's high-ranking campaign officials also lobbied for the companies for years -- during time periods when the scandal has unfolded -- up until he joined the McCain campaign in the spring...

...The short version is as follows: Employees at a number of leading energy companies allegedly gave improper gifts -- including sports tickets, ski trips, illegal drugs and even sexual relations -- to federal officials in charge of a program that oversees a program by which the companies can pay for use of public lands with free energy instead of cash, saving them money.

The office of the Interior Department's inspector General launched a probe in 2006, and this week, it released a report finding that energy company officials serially and flagrantly violated gift rules and went so far as to give drugs and sex to government officials, and the government officials in turn gave contracts to favored companies.

According to Senate lobbying disclosure forms, Ogilvy -- represented by Berman and Green -- lobbied for Chevron and Hess from 2005 to the present, and was paid a total of $2.36 million by the companies. They had enlisted Ogilvy's help in order to influence Congress on such issues as comprehensive energy reform, energy price-gouging, and other issues related to liquefied natural gas.

Both Berman and Green lobbied for the companies for about three years, continuing when the scandals were already public knowledge, and Berman is still lobbying for them.

Now, it's not to suggest that either one of these men is directly tied to the sex-for-oil scandal, but it does show how when you lie down with dogs, you're sure to come up with fleas....and when your national finance co-chair continues to lobby for the flea-bitten dog (who actually looks as though he might be suffering from mange...and perversion) while you're pretending to be a maverick reformer headed to clean up Warshington, well, let's just call that problematic.