Ego Rex or Ego Est : About Truth and Other Animals

Humans being humans, and senators being senators, it defied belief that Mr. McCain would not at some point have done a little something for a special friend back home.There is nothing illegal about this, but it is more evidence that Mr. McCain is as mortal — or compromising — as the next politician. ( oh yeah.......)
Mr. McCain has accepted corporate contributions for pet projects and relied heavily on lobbyists to help run his campaigns and Senate office. And when land swaps like the ones he arranged for Mr. Diamond involve a subsidy from taxpayers, which they often do, they are no different from the pork-barrel projects that Mr. McCain decries daily on the stump.

Pork is central to Mr. McCain’s economic program.

He says he would help pay for hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts by getting rid of it.In the mid-1990s, Mr. McCain’s staff helped Mr. Diamond snap up some prime California coast that he turned for a $20 million profit. The senator also sponsored two bills in 1991 and 1994 (and is now sponsoring a third) authorizing Mr. Diamond to swap land that he owned for thousands of acres of public land that he developed at considerable profit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/opinion/25fri1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin