You've got to hand it to Karen Hughes. She fights for what she believes in.

The former top Bush adviser talked torture in a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle:

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Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman have sent a letter to President Obama urging him not to prosecute Bush Justice Department officials who wrote legal rationales for torture. "[T]he Department of Justice is currently conducting an internal ethics review of the OLC memos," the trio write, "but that is a quite a different matter from making legal advice with which we may disagree into a crime."

This has been a common refrain from these three for some time, but this letter belies the facts that the use of torture predated the memos that were written to retroactively justify it, and that the Attorney General has independent authority to investigate and, possibly, prosecute their authors. I've pasted the full text of the letter below the fold.

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A senior enlisted U.S. Army soldier--Master Sergeant John Hatley--was convicted two days ago by a military jury in Germany of executing four handcuffed, blindfolded Iraqi men by shooting them in the backs of their heads.

That's a newsworthy (and, of course, gruesome) story in and of itself, but there's a story behind the story.

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Mack Whittle was a member of John McCain's South Carolina finance team for the Arizona senator's recent presidential bid, and was on the finance committee for South Carolina senator (and McCain pal) Lindsey Graham's 2002 Senate campaign. Whittle also raised money for George Bush's run in 2000.

That's according to a press release sent out by McCain's campaign in March 2007, and reported by the States News Service (via Nexis). It lists 40 members of the finance team, including:

Mack Whittle of Greenville, CEO of the South Financial Group. Bush Fundraiser 2000. Graham for Senate Finance Committee 2002.

Whittle also serves on the board of the University of South Carolina, according to published reports.

And according to the transcript (via Nexis) of an October 22 conference call with reporters, Whittle will remain on South Financial's board. On the call, Whittle said: "I have a three-year term on the board, and I just plan on continuing to serve out that term."

Whittle retired late last moth with an $18 million severance package. South Financial recently received $347 million in bailout money.

Late Update: In 2003, Bush also appointed Whittle a member of the Advisory Committee on the Arts, says this White House press release.

Check out FoxNews.com's frantic effort to lay the groundwork for the claim that Obama's expected win is illegitimate, the product of a chaotic and fraud-prone election system and voter intimidation carried out by violent African-Americans.

At one polling site in Vermont, voters could maybe even look over and see each other's ballots! The election is ruined!

Not to pooh-pooh the importance of a secret ballot, but this is really grasping at straws.

In a way, you can't blame Fox. In stoking fears of an illegitimate election, it's only following John McCain's lead.

Earlier tonight we told you about a lawsuit filed by the McCain campaign that seeks to ensure that military ballots not received until after the election are counted in Virginia. Election law expert Rick Hasen writes on his blog that he's now had a chance to look more closely at the suit, and here's his take:

I think there's a strong argument that because of the long delay the suit could well be barred by laches.

More fundamentally, the suit under UOCAVA may be barred for the same reason the Ohio mismatch case failed at the Supreme Court-- there's no private right of action: 42 USC Sec. 1973ff-4 Enforcement: The Attorney General may bring a civil action in an appropriate district court for such declaratory or injunctive relief as may be necessary to carry out this subchapter." The McCain campaign likely doesn't have standing to bring this suit; only DOJ does (and don't count them out!).

So it's by no means clear that the suit will even be heard on its merits. But we're likely to hear more on this...

Here's a possible last-minute effort by the McCain camp to throw a wrench into the vote counting in a key swing state.

The Associated Press reports:

John McCain's campaign sued Virginia's electoral board today, hours before the election, seeking to force the state to count late-arriving overseas military ballots.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to order the State Board of Elections to count any overseas absentee ballots sent by November 4 and received by local election officials as late as November 14.

McCain claims the rights of military voters are protected by the federal Uniform and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Rights Act of 1986.

The campaign's complaint says that Virginia military voters posted overseas who support the Republican nominee will be denied their right to vote unless the court grants the order.

The report adds that no hearing was scheduled by this afternoon.

Under normal procedures, military ballots would likely only be counted if their number exceeded the total margin of victory of one candidate, meaning they could affect the result. So the suit may be designed to ensure that Virginia can't be officially called for Obama early in the evening, which could depress Republican turnout in other parts of the country.

Late Update: Rick Hasen, an election law expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, tells TPMmuckraker that the suit is likely an effort to ensure that military ballots that arrived after election day -- which will likely favor McCain -- will be counted. That was an issue during the Florida recount of 2000, in which the courts ultimately ruled that such ballots could be counted. (Hasen cautioned that he hadn't yet had a chance to look closely at the suit.)

And on his blog, he asks a good question: "Why did this suit have to wait until the eve of the election?"

A member of John McCain's "Honest and Open Election Committee" has admitted that he can't give a single example of voter registration fraud leading to actual voter fraud.

In an interview with Pro Publica, which was also published on Politico.com, Ronald Michaelson, a veteran elections administrator, acknowledged:

"Do we have a documented instance of voting fraud that resulted from a phony registration form? No, I can't cite one, chapter and verse."

The Honest and Open Election Committee was set up by the McCain camp to provide a veneer of expertise and non-partisanship to the campaign's efforts to stoke fears about voter fraud. In a September conference call, one of the committee chair's, ex-Missouri senator John Danforth, highlighted reports of faulty registration forms in Michigan, Colorado, and other states, and tried to link ACORN to Barack Obama.

Michaelson also admitted, in Pro Publica's words, that "an election-rigging scheme starting with phony application forms would not make much sense." But he argued that the mere perception of fraud can do damage to the integrity of the election.

Of course, the McCain campaign and other Republicans have been the foremost creators of that perception. Earlier this month in a presidential debate, McCain warned darkly that ACORN -- the community organizing group that Republicans have tried to turn into a voter-fraud boogeyman -- "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

Pro Publica adds that a McCain campaign spokesman couldn't do much better than Michaelson:

Asked for specifics about the dangers of fake registration, Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, provided links to 13 news clips and a 2003 Missouri state auditor's report. Eleven of the cases did not involve registration fraud. Two recounted how felons appeared to have cast illegal votes under their own names. The lone example of a forged registration leading to an illegitimate vote comes from The Wall Street Journal's John Fund, who in April 2006 wrote that a community organizer had improperly registered a noncitizen, and then "someone eventually voted in [the noncitizen's] name."

Here's how the right's big eleventh-hour smear on Obama was carried out.

First the Murdoch-owned Times of London reported Thursday that Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, is living in a Boston public-housing complex. It's unclear how the paper learned of the woman's presence in the U.S.

From there, the story quickly got taken up by the right-wing echo chamber. Fox News (also Murdoch-owned, of course), Drudge, the Boston Herald, and various conservative blogs -- as well as some mainstream outlets -- began breathlessly hyping the story.

But the Times had been unable to tie up one key detail. It reported:

The Times could not determine their immigration status and an official at Boston City Hall said that Ms Onyango was a resident of Flaherty Way but not registered to vote on the electoral roll. However, that Ms Onyango made a contribution to the Obama campaign would indicate that she is a US citizen.

But that was easily taken care of. The Associated Press was the first to confirm, in a story posted this morning, that Onyango is here illegally after her request for asylum was rejected by an immigration judge four years ago.

But note the way in which AP seems to have obtained the information. High up in the story, it reports:

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

In other words, it looks like someone in the Bush administration leaked the information, with the goal of throwing a last-minute wrench into Obama's campaign. And someone else confirmed it, with similar motives.

On the record, of course, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, is telling reporters it can't comment on any individual person's immigration status. It would appear to be a violation of department procedures, at the least, to leak such information.

We've seen this same tactic used recently by the Bush administration. Earlier this month, law enforcement sources leaked the news, also to the AP, that the FBI has begun a nationwide investigation into ACORN. Again, the obvious purpose of the leak was political -- to bolster a Republican campaign to stoke fears about voter fraud, in an effort to de-legitimize an Obama win. The Justice Department still has not confirmed the existence of the investigation.

Yesterday, in an unanimous decision, the jury in the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens found the seven-term senator guilty on seven count of false statements. The verdict made Stevens, the longest serving Republican in the Senate, a convicted felon and one of only five in all of history to be convicted of a crime, and the first since 1981.

This morning, presidential hopeful and fellow Senator John McCain called for Stevens, embroiled in a close election of his own, to step down.

Fox News caught up with the Senator leaving his office today to return home to Alaska to campaign, and it appeared that becoming a convicted felon hadn't chastened Stevens legendary ornery attitude. At the end of the interview, Trish Turner, the Fox News Senate producer asked the senator, "What is the formula for winning," to which he replied, "Not answering you right now." Take a look.

Also release this morning were scanned versions of all of the notes passed between the jury and Judge Emmet Sullivan, which we've collected here along with the historical official verdict.

It's worth noting, in response to the news that the FBI has launched an investigation into whether ACORN was involved in a nationwide voter-registration fraud scheme, that the launch of the probe comes at a time national Republicans at several different levels have sought to make an issue out of ACORN -- in some cases calling for just such an investigation.

Last week, John McCain told a Florida crowd:

"There are serious allegations of voter fraud in the battleground states across America. They must be investigated." The GOP standard-bearer has continued to sound the alarm over ACORN since then, and brought it up at last night's debate.

GOP House leader John Boehner last week called in a statement for ACORN to be de-funded -- it is currently eligible for federal housing funds -- and charged that over the years, ACORN "has committed fraud on our system of elections, making American voters question the fairness and accuracy of the exercise of their most fundamental right under the Constitution."

Last week the RNC held at least five separate conference calls with reporters to stoke fears of voter fraud connected to ACORN.

And numerous state- and local-level Republicans have also in the last few weeks called publicly for authorities to look into ACORN.

There's something else that's worth keeping in mind as we learn more about what's behind the current investigation.

At a summer 2007 hearing on the U.S. attorney firings, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) questioned then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about changes made to DOJ's election crimes manual.

As TPMmuckraker reported at the time:

The new version (pdf), which replaced the 1995 manual, lowers the bar in terms of voter fraud prosecutions -- no longer cautioning against pursuing isolated, individual cases of fraud and softening language that had all but prohibited pursuing such cases before an election. "Two and possibly three of the fired U.S. attorneys were fired because they didn't bring those small cases that might affect an election," [Feinstein] observed. "Something's rotten in Denmark."

The recent inspector general's report on the U.S. attorney firings concluded that the failure to pursue voter fraud allegations as aggressively as the Bush administration wanted was a factor in several of the the firings.

We laid out the details to the changes in the manual at the time of Feinstein's questioning.

In last night's debate, John McCain claimed that ACORN "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

That's quite an allegation against a group that's working to register low-income voters. You'd hope that the media would ask McCain's campaign for some evidence for the claim, or at least note that the candidate himself didn't offer any. Or that moderator Bob Schieffer would have followed up in real time.

You'd be disappointed, of course. Reporters were too distracted by Joe the Plumber to pay much attention to McCain's hyperbolic accusation.

Of course, McCain had essentially no backing whatsoever for his claim. As TPMmuckraker and others have pointed out, there's virtually no evidence that fraudulent registration forms of the type erroneously submitted by ACORN in their thousands in some states ever turn into fraudulent votes.

(Indeed, the whole voter fraud controversy is such baloney that now even Florida's Republican governor Charlie Crist, a big McCain backer in the primaries, felt compelled to throw some water on it, telling reporters yesterday: "I think that there's probably less [fraud] than is being discussed. As we're coming into the closing days of any campaign, there are some who enjoy chaos.'')

But the media's failure last night is in keeping with its broader failure to explain that key distinction between voter registration fraud and voter fraud point. We've highlighted some egregious examples of CNN conflating the two. But there are plenty more from other outlets.

Here's a report from ABC's World News Tonight, flagged by Media Matters, which aired Tuesday night, in which correspondent Jake Tapper, keying off claims made by McCain, sounds the alarm about "voter fraud." Rather than stating authoritatively that the fraudulent forms aren't going to lead to fraudulent votes cast, the story goes he-said she-said, leaving it to Barack Obama to say it while talking to reporters about the charges -- as if this were a debatable point, when in fact it's a crucial fact which undermines the essential premise of the story.

Or consider this NBC News "Deep Background" investigative report, which stokes fears of voter fraud by running down ACORN's history of legal disputes over its registration activities, without ever explaining that in not a single one of these cases was there evidence that fraudulent voting took place.

It's thanks largely to this ongoing media failure that the McCain camp is continuing to flog the issue. Already today, Sarah Palin told a crowd in Bangor, Maine that voters face "a choice between a candidate who won't disavow a group committing voter fraud and a leader who will not tolerate the voter fraud."

Given how clueless the reporting on this story has been, it's almost hard to blame them.

As we just noted, Murray Waas is reporting that William Timmons, the head of John McCain's transition team, was involved in a lobbying effort on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government in the early 1990s.

At TPMmuckraker, we've acquired a copy of the court documents from the 2006 trial of Tongsun Park, one of the lobbyists involved, on which Waas' report was in part based.

And they shed some crucial light on a key point about Timmons' involvement in the scheme.

As Waas notes:

Timmons previously told investigators that he did not know that either Vincent or Park were acting as unregistered agents of Iraq. He also insisted that he did not fully understand just how closely the two men were tied to Saddam's regime while they collaborated.

But testimony and records made public during Park's criminal trial, as well as other information uncovered during a United Nations investigation, suggest just the opposite.

For instance, court records examined by TPMmuckraker show that Samir Vincent, the other lobbyist involved in the scheme, testified at Park's trial about a trip he took to Iraq during which he met with Saddam personally, and listened as the Iraqi dictator expressed his desire to have sanctions lifted and normal relations with the U.S. restored.

The prosecutor then asked Vincent: "When you returned to the U.S., did you tell anyone about your visit with Saddam Hussein?"

Vincent replied: "I told Bill Timmons and Tongsun Park."

Prosecutor: "Why did you tell Bill Timmons about your visit with Saddam?"

Vincent: "To let him know that we were talking to the leader of Iraq, and in essence we have access, and assure him that any messages we were relaying between Iraqi (sic) and Tariq Aziz [a top Saddam aide] and anyone else, it was being transmitted to the president, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq."

Late Update: As we should have noted, this exchange appears in Waas' report.

Wiliam Timmons, the veteran Washington lobbyist tapped to lead John McCain's transition team was involved in an effort on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government to ease international sanctions against Iraq, according to a report by Murray Waas in The Huffington Post.

The two lobbyists with whom Timmons teamed in the early 90s, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, both either pleaded guilty to, or were convicted of, charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam's government.

Park has a long history of involvement with covert schemes to influence international events. In 1976, he was charged with attempting to bribe members of Congress to win their support for keeping U.S. troops in Vietnam.

This isn't the first time that Timmons has had his name in the news for the wrong reasons since being announced as McCain's transition chief. Last month, Bloomberg reported that he had lobbied on behalf of Freddie Mac, a company that McCain has blamed for helping to cause the current financial crisis.

Timmons' Washington lobby firm, Timmons and Co., founded in the 1970's, helped develop the model on which today's lobbying culture is based.

It's worth taking a moment to step back from the slew of charges leveled over the last week at ACORN, the community-organizing group that Republicans and the McCain campaign have been trying to turn into a bogeyman for fears about vote fraud (and, of course, tie to Barack Obama).

The GOP has accused ACORN of submitting fraudulent voter registration forms numbering in the hundreds or thousands, in battleground states including Ohio, Indiana, Nevada, and Missouri.

But the most important point that's getting lost in the Fox-generated hysteria is that, according to voting experts, even when fraudulent voter registration forms are submitted, they virtually never lead to fraudulent votes being cast. Richard Hasen, a law professor at Loyola and an authority on voting law, wrote in a 2007 op-ed published last year in the Dallas Morning News and noted recently by TPM, that "the idea of massive polling-place fraud (through the use of inflated voter rolls) is inherently incredible," because of the sheer logistical challenges it would require to carry out on a large scale.

In many states, ACORN is required by law to turn in all the forms it collects, though the law differs from state to law, according to experts.

ACORN has consistently said that it flags suspicious forms for election officials. Indeed, in Nevada where last week an ACORN office was raided in an investigation headed by the Secretary of State, ACORN was already cooperating with authorities.

According to a statement from the group which has not been disputed by state officials, in July, ACORN set up a meeting with county elections officials and the Secretary of State's office to urge them to take action on information ACORN had provided. Since then, "ACORN has provided officials with copies and--in some cases--second copies of many of the personnel records and the 'problem card packages' and cover sheets with which we originally identified the problem cards."

It's also worth noting that similar allegations were made against ACORN in the last few election cycles, and several investigations were conducted, none of which found evidence of widespread voter fraud. Many of these were conducted by US attorneys, who were pressured by GOP political figures to investigate the issue, then fired after they failed to come up with sufficient evidence.

So as the GOP campaign to make an issue out of ACORN continues -- and we'll be keeping you posted as it does -- remember that the number of fraudulent votes that will be cast in November as a result of the group's voter-registration activities is close to zero. But the number of valid voters who could potentially have obstacles placed in their way of voting, as a result of the Republican campaign, is far larger.

Here's a statement from the McCain-Palin camp on the report.

"Today's report shows that the Governor acted within her proper and lawful authority in the reassignment of Walt Monegan," said Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapelton. "The report also illustrates what we've known all along: this was a partisan led inquiry run by Obama supporters and the Palins were completely justified in their concern regarding Trooper Wooten given his violent and rogue behavior. Lacking evidence to support the original Monegan allegation, the Legislative Council seriously overreached, making a tortured argument to find fault without basis in law or fact. The Governor is looking forward to cooperating with the Personnel Board and continuing her conversation with the American people regarding the important issues facing the country."

It looks like the effort by the McCain campaign and the Republican party to make an issue out of ACORN's voter registration activities has gone national.

We've seen reports from several states in recent days that the group, which works to register low-income and minority voters, has submitted flawed or fraudulent voter registration forms -- though it's by no means clear how widespread the problem is.

But that's not stopping the McCain team. At a town-hall meeting in Wisconsin today, when supporters began to chant the group's name in derision, the Arizona senator seized the moment to go on the attack.

"You've seen the allegations, the multiple registrations under the same name, the more registered voters than the population, these are serious allegations, my friends, and they must be investigated, and they must be investigated immediately and they must be stopped before November the fourth, so Americans will not -- will not -- be deprived of a fair process in this election.

The Republican National Committee is also flogging the story. Under the headline "You Can't Make This Stuff Up", its website lists various cases of potential voter fraud, and links to a GOP press release noting that ACORN employees are under investigation in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

And this morning, Fox News interviewed a Domino's Pizza employee in Ohio, who said that he had been asked by an ACORN canvasser to fill out multiple registration forms. The story appeared on the front page of the New York Post this morning.

The Republican effort to raise the specter of voter fraud, with ACORN at the center, is being carried out on the local level as well. After Nevada investigators raided ACORN's Las Vegas office Tuesday, Nevada's Republican senator, John Ensign immediately called on the Bush administration to close a loophole through which the group, which works to register low-income and minority voters, is eligible to receive federal housing funds through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

No one has been charged in the raid, which was part of an investigation apparently being led by Democratic secretary of state, Ross Miller. But there are suggestions that it was prompted in part by GOP complaints. Tory Mazzola, a spokesman for Ensign, quickly ended a call without responding, after being asked by TPMmuckraker whether Ensign's office had complained to state authorities about potential voter fraud by ACORN in advance of the raid. And as we reported this morning, the head of the state Republican party told TPMmuckraker that the state party had indeed expressed concerns about the issue to Miller's office over the summer. Miller's office has said that the raid was prompted by evidence that ACORN has submitted fraudulent voter registration forms.

Meanwhile, Missouri Republicans, led by former senator Jack Danforth, yesterday accused ACORN of filing thousands of false forms with election officials in the Show Me state. Danforth, who garnered a reputation as a bipartisan statesman during his tenure the Senate, is helping to lead a nationwide effort by the McCain campaign to raise concerns about voter fraud. On a September conference call with reporters, Danforth highlighted reports of faulty registration forms in Michigan, Colorado, and other states, and tried to link ACORN to Barack Obama, pointing out that the group's political action committee affiliated had endorsed the Demcrat.

And in New Mexico -- where David Iglesias was fired as U.S. attorney in 2006 in large part for failing to respond with sufficient alacrity to complaints about voter fraud lodged by GOP elected officials -- the FBI has opened a preliminary investigation into 1400 potentially fraudulent registration forms filed at a county election office in Albuquerque. ACORN is active in the area. A Republican state legislator told the Wall Street Journal that even if fraud is rare, "every fraudulent vote cast cancels out a legitimate one."

ACORN may have been lax, at best, in its procedures for gathering registration forms. But aside from the GOP's continuing inability to pinpoint the scale of the problem, it's also worth noting that, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, "a fake registration doesn't necessarily mean an ineligible vote is tallied. Officials say canvassers sometimes make up registered names to impress bosses or earn bonuses, but that doesn't result in anyone ineligible casting a vote."

But by shrieking about voter fraud, the McCain camp hopes to make voting officials more willing to place restrictions in the path of voters on election day, potentially causing delays and confusion at the polls, and reducing overall turnout. And it seeks to discredit any Obama victory by raising the suggestion that it was aided by the votes of ineligible voters.

It looks like John McCain's foreign policy advisers are back in the news -- and not in a good way.

Yesterday, McCain issued a statement urging the Bush administration to enlarge a $6 billion package of military equipment for Taiwan, announced earlier this week. McCain wants submarines and F-16 aircraft added to the package.

But as the Washington Post notes, the lobbying firm run by Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top foreign policy adviser, in June renewed a $200,00 contract to lobby on behalf of Taiwan. And in 2005, Scheunemann had personally signed the original contract between his firm, Orion Strategies, and the Taiwanese government. (Scheunemann took a leave of absence from the firm to work on McCain's campaign.)

The Post reports:

The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment on whether Randy Scheunemann, his foreign policy coordinator, had a role in drafting the statement or if he had recused himself.

But that's not the only potential conflict of interest here. As Think Progress points out, Scheuenemann has also lobbied for Lockheed Martin, which makes the F-16s that make McCain wants to give to Taiwan.

And here's something else worth noting. Another McCain foreign policy adviser, Bruce Jackson, is a former Lockheed vice president.

Jackson is a close Scheunemann ally, who was at Lockheed until 2002, during the period when, according to Senate disclosure forms, Scheuenemann lobbied for the arms contractor. The two men have worked together closely since then on efforts to expand NATO into eastern Europe.

In an interview, Jackson told TPMmuckraker that he has no financial stake in Lockheed, and has not spoken to McCain about the Taiwan arms package. He described his advisory role in the campaign as informal, and focused mostly on human-rights issues.

Still, Scheunemann's and Jackson's ties to Taiwan and Lockheed serve as a reminder of the influence of lobbyist and former corporate executives in McCain's campaign -- and of the ways in which the senator's bellicose foreign policy is often in sync with their interests.

Early last week, a reader flagged a report in the online newspaper Narco News which noted an interesting FEC expense filing from the McCain campaign from June. The filing listed expenses for hotels and airline tickets in Singapore and Vietnam -- that seemed to correlate with a trip that Cindy McCain took in June to Southeast Asia. The campaign charges seemed at odds with statements made both by Cindy and the campaign at the time, which said that the trip was for "non-campaign" and "humanitarian" reasons.

The filings list $12,316 in air travel on Thai Airways International, British Airways and Air Singapore, as well as $4,886 in hotel stays for the Raffles Hotel in Singapore and the Caravelle Hotel and "Vinpers Resort" in Vietnam.

But the filings didn't specify who the expenses were for, so TPMmuckraker called the McCain camp, and like NarcoNews, received no response to inquiries on the expense filings or the trip.

Stonewalled by the campaign, we started calling hotels listed to see if Cindy or Meghan had stayed there on their trip which had been part of Cindy's ongoing work with poor children in Southeast Asia -- primarily with the charity Operation Smile.

We found that "Vinpers Resort Spa," is the Vinpearl Resort Spa. Vinpearl Hotel administrators confirmed to TPMmuckraker that both Cindy and Meghan McCain were guests there on the night of June 18th, which was also mentioned in local news reports at the time.

So the campaign expenses were in fact tied to Cindy and Meghan's trip, which seemed sharply at odds with what the campaign and Cindy herself described as a solely "humanitarian" mission:

"This is what I do, and this is what revitalizes me, personally," Cindy McCain is quoted as saying in an AP article from June 10th. "The campaign is extremely important, of course, but this is also important to me, and so you try to balance everything."

The personal, non-campaign nature of the trip was stressed by McCain's own staff who said that the excursion was "private and not related to the political campaign," according to a June 19 report from the French news service the AFP.

Our initial calls to the camp still unreturned, we called again -- but this time asking for a comment on the Cindy's stay at the Vinpearl. We got a response within an hour.

In a conversation with TPMmuckraker, Cindy McCain's press aide confirmed that two campaign aides accompanied Meghan and Cindy on their trip.

"There was a press aide and another press advance person who went along and that the campaign paid for," Cindy McCain's spokesperson Laurye Blackford told us, adding that Cindy and Meghan paid their own way and the way of their guests.

Blackford also confirmed that following her trip to Southeast Asia, Cindy McCain did participate in a campaign function -- she and Megan attended a fundraiser for the campaign in London on June 26.

It is unclear whether this would qualify the whole of the McCain's trip to Asia as a travel expense under FEC guidelines.

Looks like Rick Davis isn't the only lobbyist problem the McCain camp is dealing with these days.

Mother Jones reports that two actively-registered lobbyists are currently working on John McCain's campaign for president.

Wayne Berman, co-chairs McCain's national finance committee. James Jay Baker co-steers McCain's National Steering Committee of Sportsmen for McCain. Both work for the lobbying firm, Ogilvy Government Relations as managing directors.

This month, the NRA -- a client of Baker and Berman's -- launched attack ads against Barack Obama. MoJo points out that besides conflicting with McCain's claims for running a straight-shooting, non-lobbyist campaign, Berman and Baker's presence also could come into conflict with the actual campaign rules that banned active lobbyists from working full time for the campaign, or participating in 527s or groups that "oppose any presidential candidate."

From Mother Jones:

Asked whether he might be in violation of the campaign's conflict rules, Berman told Mother Jones, "Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that." He said he was currently lobbying for the NRA but not involved in the group's campaign activities. "I'm in full compliance with campaign policy," he maintained. "I will check over there....I will continue to be in compliance. If that requires me to make changes, I'll make them." He added, "You've done me a favor" by raising this issue.

We knew we hadn't seen the last news report on McCain campaign manager Rick Davis' ongoing ties to the lobby firm he founded, Davis Manafort.

Newsweek has taken a look at annual filings made by the company to the Virginia state government. Those filings, the most recent of which is from April of this year, list Davis as one of two officers and directors of the firm.

As the magazine notes, that information suggests that in recent days, the campaign "appear[s] to have overstated the extent to which Davis had severed his relationship with his lobbying firm." A statement posted on the McCain campaign website by a spokesman Wednesday morning -- in response to reports that Davis's firm was being paid by the home-loan giant Freddie Mac as recently as this month -- asserted that Davis "separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006." And a campaign spokeswoman wrote in an email to Newsweek Tuesday that Davis "left" the firm that year.

Of course, the fact that someone is listed as an officer on a corporate filing doesn't prove that he was involved in the day-to-day running of the company during the period in question. But Newsweek's find will certainly keep the heat on Davis, who yesterday skipped lunch with reporters, at a time when McCain would prefer the focus to be on his own efforts, belated and vainglorious as they may be, to help avoid a financial meltdown.

A source just sent us a copy of the working draft of the bailout plan circulating, as of about two hours ago, in the House.*

Based on our quick look, it includes a strong provision for congressional oversight, limits executive pay, and would allow bankruptcy judges to adjust mortgages in order to help homeowners, among other items. In other words, the major Democratic priorities.

Things have been changing so quickly on the Hill -- even before McCain's dramatic announcement -- that there's no telling what's occurred in the intervening period.

The source, who's a well-connected Democratic lobbyist, added in an email to TPMmuckraker that "the deal on the "bail out" is 98 percent done. Treasury has capitulated on almost every point. A draft is circulating on the Hill now. No one needs McCain to help do the remaining 2 percent."

Late Update: As we should have mentioned earlier, the draft plan also contains a provision designed to "maximiz[e] taxpayer benefits" by requiring that the Treasury "obtain warrants" (i.e. stock futures) if it makes a direct purchase of a company. That's intended to ensure that taxpayers get a share of any future profits, and it's another element Democrats have been insisting on.

*Ed. Note: A well-placed Hill source subsequently tells us that this version has actually been circulating for a couple of days, and that while it's still mostly operative, it is not the latest iteration of the alternative to the Bush plan.

Last night, The New York Times -- followed by a slew of other outlets -- reported that the lobbying firm of Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager, has been collecting $15,000 from mortgage giant Freddie Mac. On Monday, The Times had reported that Davis had been paid to run Freddie Mac's advocacy group, the Homeowner's Alliance, until 2005.

But there's a set of questions that still remain unanswered.

The McCain campaign told the Times that Davis had stopped taking a salary from the firm, Davis-Manafort, by the end of 2006. (Davis took a leave of absence from the firm to work on the campaign.) But the Times points out that, as an equity holder, Davis continues to benefit from his firm's income.

But it's unclear exactly what the Times means by that.

Let's stipulate, first of all, that since Davis is an equity holder, he has a long-term interest in Davis-Manafort's success. The McCain camp hasn't disputed that.

But could Davis be benefiting in a more direct sense?

For instance, could Davis' agreement with Davis-Manafort allow for his share of profits to simply be deferred until he rejoins the firm? Nothing that the McCain camp has said on the subject -- including this lengthy response to the Times story from the campaign's in-house blogger -- has ruled that possibility out.

We also know that in 2007, the McCain campaign did not have Davis on the payroll, and was paying Davis Manafort for "consulting" services. Did none of that money make its way back to Davis?

It's also worth noting that the McCain camp hasn't offered any backing for its claim that Davis did indeed stop getting paid by his firm in 2006. The campaign declined a request from TPMmuckraker to provide such backing.

The bottom line is that none of the reports have fully fleshed out Davis' relationship worth Davis Manafort, and how his compensation agreement actually works.

Seems like that might be worth looking into.