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I'm sure this will be the headline on Olbermann tonight.

Vicki Iseman, who sued The New York Times over a story suggesting that she had had a romantic relationship with John McCain, is now accusing the paper of lying about whether it apologized or retracted the story in the course of settlement discussions. In a memo to Times staff Thursday, Washington Bureau Chief Dean Baquet insisted that, while the paper has settled Iseman’s lawsuit, it “did not apologize” for the story or “retract one word” of it. But in an interview with POLITICO Friday, Iseman said Baquet’s memo was “calculated” to the point of being false. “They are absolutely not...

WASHINGTON - Alcalde & Fay partner Vicki Iseman has settled her $27 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times and several of its reporters. Iseman, a Washington lobbyist, sued the Times over a story published last February during the presidential campaign season that she claimed inaccurately depicted her as having an affair with Republican candidate Sen. John McCain. Iseman says, "I am pleased that The New York Times on behalf of its reporters, editors and company has issued a retraction and clarification." Iseman’s statement continues, "The New York Times, its reporters and editors, should and must be held accountable...

She drops her $27 million suit against The New York TImes, gets op-ed in return.

Washington lobbyist Vicki L. Iseman has filed a $27 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times for a February article about Iseman and her relationship with Sen. John McCain. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Tuesday, alleges the article falsely communicated that Iseman and McCain had an illicit “romantic” relationship in 1999 when he was chair of the Senate Commerce Committee and she was a lobbyist representing clients before Congress. The suit also names the executive editor of the Times, its Washington bureau chief and four reporters who wrote the story as defendants. William Keller,...

Vicki L. Iseman The NY Times "Chickens Have Come To Roost." Last February the NY Times wrote a smear piece which said in part that Lobbyist Viki Iseman's relationship with Senator John McCain was not exactly professional. The Times article was so bogus that its own public editor, Clark Hoyt wrote a piece bashing the story. The Suit charges that the Times trashed MS Iseman's reputation just to damage McCain's political aspirations. She is asking for $27 Million. Here's hoping that she gets that and much more. Full story below:

Washington lobbyist Vicki L. Iseman has filed a $27 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times for a February article about Iseman and her relationship with Sen. John McCain.

Washington lobbyist Vicki L. Iseman has filed a $27 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times for a February article about Iseman and her relationship with Sen. John McCain. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Tuesday, alleges the article falsely communicated that Iseman and McCain had an illicit “romantic” relationship in 1999 when he was chair of the Senate Commerce Committee and she was a lobbyist representing clients before Congress. The suit also names the executive editor of the Times, its Washington bureau chief and four reporters who wrote the story as defendants. William Keller,...

Sixty-Six Percent Say 'Smear!' The Gray Lady's smear piece on John McCain got 66% of Rasmussen respondents believing that the paper deliberately trying to kneecap the Republican frontrunner. Only 22% think that the paper had clean motives in publishing the unsubstantiated gossip: The Times recently became enmeshed in controversy over an article published concerning John McCain. Sixty-five percent (65%) of the nation’s likely voters say they have followed that story at least somewhat closely. Of those who followed the story, 66% believe it was an attempt by the paper to hurt the McCain campaign. Just 22% believe the Times was...

I have come under some criticism for my criticism of the New York Times for its criticism of Sen. John McCain. Many readers of last week's New York Times article about McCain, including me, read that article as suggesting that Sen. McCain may have had an affair with a lobbyist eight years ago. The Times, however, has made clear that its story was not about an affair with a lobbyist. Its story was about the possibility that eight years ago, aides to McCain had held meetings with McCain to warn him about the appearance that he might be having an...

Well, it's not what one might think. They have a correction on an irrelevant point in a completely discredited article -- but at least it's right at the top: A front-page article on Feb. 21 about Senator John McCain’s record on lobbying and ethics, including his role in the Keating Five case, described incorrectly the reprimand delivered to three other members of the Senate in 1991 for intervening with government regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr. The Senate Ethics Committee rebuked the three senators for improper behavior, but under a parliamentary agreement the full Senate did not censure...

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, has been linked by documents and testimony to another alleged case of what critics are calling influence peddling, this time involving a minority broadcaster in Pittsburgh. The New York Times last week published a major, controversial expose that insinuated McCain had a romantic relationship with telecommunications lobbyist Vicki Iseman, whose clients had a large stake in decisions made by the Senate Commerce Committeee McCain headed. The report, however, was denied by McCain and widely discredited for lack of evidence. According to his own testimony, it wasn't until he decided to give...

It looks like we have been suckered again. The New York Times delays a lobbyist-scandal story until after McCain takes the lead (all the while endorsing McCain) and then slams McCain now that it is too late to nominate someone else. I write this out of bitterness and sadness over this disaster that need not have happened. We had the opportunity to support people that the NY Times was not spoonfeeding to us - even after Thompson dropped out. But we took the bait and now the Times has dropped the hammer, just like the polls that suddenly did a...

The White House sided with Sen. John McCain and accused The New York Times on Friday of repeatedly trying to "drop a bombshell" on Republican presidential nominees to undermine their candidacies. White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel... "I think a lot of people here in this building, with experience in a couple campaigns, have grown accustomed to the fact that during the course of the campaign, seemingly on maybe a monthly basis leading up to the convention and maybe a weekly basis after that, the New York Times does try to drop a bombshell on the Republican nominee. "And...

A day after insinuating that John McCain had an affair with lobbyist Vicki Iseman, all of the romance appears to have disappeared from the New York Times. Faster than one can say Roberta Flack, the flak taken by the Gray Lady has apparently resulted in a Soviet-style purge of the sexual allegations from their story. Recall this in paragraph 2 of the original article: 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...

INDIANAPOLIS — Senator John McCain declared the battle over on Friday morning, but by then his lieutenants believed he had already won the war. Conservative radio talk show hosts who had long reviled Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential candidate from Arizona, had rallied to his defense. Bloggers on the right said that this could be the start of a new relationship. Most telling, Mr. McCain’s campaign announced Friday afternoon that it had just recorded its single-best 24 hours in online fund-raising, although it declined to provide numbers. Both sides traced the senator’s sudden fortunes to an unusual source, The New...

Earlier today, I linked to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and its editor's essay about the journalistic defects in the New York Times hit piece on John McCain. David McCumber chose not to run the Times' article in the Seattle P-I despite having the rights to it on syndication. Andrew Malcom at the Los Angeles Times reports that another paper also killed the story -- despite being owned by the New York Times: But one interesting aspect of this combined political and professional controversy went widely unnoticed. The Boston Globe, which is wholly owned by the New York Times, chose not to...

The embattled executive editor of the New York Times defended its John McCain story Friday with a novel explanation for the flood of critical e-mails the newspaper received: slow-witted readers. "Personally, I was surprised by the volume of the reaction," Bill Keller wrote in a Times Web site Q&A forum. Readers posted 2,000 comments and sent in 3,700 questions. "I was surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision, with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot," Keller added. The problem, Keller went...

Rarely has a "scandal" faded as quickly as the one in which the New York Times implied Sen. John McCain had a "romantic" relationship with Washington lobbyist Vicki Iseman. After a one-day news blitz of everyone talking and speculating about the consequences of the Times front page "expose," the allegations have not only been scaled down, but are even being used as a fundraiser for McCain among conservatives. Without a persuasive followup, the reputation of the Times is taking a hit for running a major story based almost entirely on innuendo and insinuations from anonymous sources -- on what was...

John McCain just shoved his whole stack into the middle of the table and put his credibility and candidacy on the line. He just threw down the gauntlet to the New York Times by flatly denying every point of a front-page story that implied McCain had an affair nine years ago with a 31-year-old Washington lobbyist, then used his influence as a committee chair to promote the interests of her client. The Times' front-page story of the alleged romance was based on two anonymous sources the Times identified as former aides to the senator. The Washington Post quoted John Weaver,...