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CHICAGO — James A. Johnson, the consummate Washington insider whom Senator Barack Obama tapped to head his vice-presidential search effort, resigned abruptly on Wednesday to try to silence a growing furor over his business activities. Mr. Johnson’s departure deprives Mr. Obama of decades of experience and access to Washington’s power elite. Mr. Johnson has been a fixture in Washington political and legal circles for three decades, and he led the vice-presidential search team for Senator John Kerry, the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2004. His resignation, at the start of a general election contest in which the candidates have pledged to...

Say this for Sen. Barack Obama: He is a lot quicker in these post-Jeremiah Wright days to walk away from controversy caused him by others. By the time he finished distancing himself from Jim Johnson, his former vice presidential vetter, Johnson must have felt like he was on Mars. After Johnson was portrayed in the Wall Street Journal as having received favorable treatment from Countrywide Financial Corp., a mortgage company Obama has frequently attacked, the Democratic presidential candidate immediately labeled Johnson as being only "tangentially related to our campaign." Shifting into overdrive, Obama added that "these aren't folks who are...

WASHINGTON (June 11) - Jim Johnson, a manager of Democrat Barack Obama's vice presidential search team, resigned Wednesday amid criticism over his personal loan deals. "Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee, so he has made a decision to step aside that I accept," Obama said in a statement. "We have a very good selection process under way, and I am confident that it will produce a number of highly qualified candidates for me to choose from in the weeks ahead. I remain grateful to...

Politicians deploy righteous indignation like college students use credit cards—to excess and with abandon. For such seasoned performers, the emotion is easy to muster, and there are few upfront costs. Rail against powerful interests or the mendacity of your opponent on the stump, and the crowd goes nuts. But there are sometimes hidden costs in the fine print, interest payments not due for months, especially when the outrage is calculated for maximum political effect. And that outrage came back to haunt Barack Obama Wednesday when Jim Johnson, the man running his vice presidential search team, stepped down after the Wall...

Johnson said, among other things... ``I would not dream of being a party to distracting attention from that historic effort,'' he said in a statement. ``I believe Barack Obama's candidacy for president of the United States is the most exciting and important of my lifetime.'' Johnson's ties to Countrywide became a campaign issue after Republicans pointed out that Obama had been critical of the mortgage lender in campaign speeches. Johnson's role as a political insider also contrasted with Obama's pledge to bring change to Washington. Johnson, 64, said that ``blatantly false statements and misrepresentations'' were written about him.

June 11, 2008, 0:00 a.m. D’OH-bama’s Mortgage MessThis is change? By Michelle Malkin If you’re going to promise “new politics,” it would probably be wise to eschew the same old Beltway cronies and insiders who have served presidential nominees of yore. And if you’re going to attack political opponents for playing “textbook Washington games,” it would probably be best not to play them yourself. If you do, you’ll end up tongue-tied in front of the cameras, hung by your own holier-than-thou rhetoric and faced once again with the decision to throw another bad choice under the bus. Yes, Barack...

For Republicans seeking to tarnish Obama's image as a squeaky-clean outsider hoping to clean up Washington -- not to mention divert attention from questions about lobbyists working in Sen. John McCain's campaign -- Obama's embrace of Johnson has been a gift.

Jim Johnson steps down from Obama's team..

<p>US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama today said the head of his vice presidential search team and former head of the mortgage giant Fannie Mae had decided to step aside.</p>

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- A leader of Democrat Barack Obama's vice presidential research team has resigned amid criticism over his personal loan deals. Obama announced in a statement Wednesday that Jim Johnson was stepping aside to avoid distracting

Another example of that famous Obama good judgment. According to today’s Washington Post, Obama’s veep vetter Jim Johnson is linked to an accounting scandal at his former company, Fannie Mae. The newspaper reported this morning that Johnson “was the beneficiary of accounting in which Fannie Mae’s earnings were manipulated so that executives could earn larger bonuses. The accounting manipulation for 1998 resulted in the maximum payouts to Fannie Mae’s senior executives — $1.9 million in Johnson’s case — when the company’s performance that year would have otherwise resulted in no bonuses at all.

Hope springs eternal as they say. But when it comes time to the candidacy of Barack Obama, for many of his Democratic supporters and slavishly devoted members of the press, mere hope has been supplanted by euphoria, infatuation, and at times, delusion. For San Francisco Chronicle writer Mark Morford, Obama is not a mere politician, but rather, a “Lightworker.” Not sure what a Lightworker is? Morford expounds: Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not...

Washington Post: GOP tool? Might sound a tad far-fetched to you. But you're not Howard Dean. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, the DNC Chairman Dean claimed a Washington Post article about Jim Johnson, whom Barack Obama has chosen to head up the vetting of potential VP picks, was "planted" by the McCain campaign. Johnson's appointment has become an embarrassment to Obama because the former CEO of Fannie Mae has been linked to the mortgage crisis. As WaPo reported: The questions about Johnson began after the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that he received more than $2 million in home loans...

Soren Dayton of RedState notices that Barack Obama's choice of Jim Johnson to vet vice presidential choices is worse than previously understood: ...there is more on Johnson. In 2001, he joined Persueus LLC as a Vice Chairman. Perseus has a number of funds. Among them: PERSEUS-SOROS BIOPHARMACEUTICAL FUND, L.P., which Perseus co-manages, was formed in 2000 with capital commitments totaling $449 million to make investments in life sciences companies So Perseus is a business partner with George Soros. And Johnson is the Vice Chairman ... Incidentally, as Say Anything Blog notes, Perseus also seems to own the publisher of the...

If you're going to promise "new politics," it would probably be wise to eschew the same old Beltway cronies and insiders who have served presidential nominees of yore. And if you're going to attack political opponents for playing "textbook Washington games," it would probably be best not to play them yourself. If you do, you'll end up tongue-tied in front of the cameras, hung by your own holier-than-thou rhetoric and faced once again with the decision to throw another bad choice under the bus. Yes, Barack Obama, we're talking about you. Again. It's getting mighty crowded under that bus, isn't...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama is considering former top military leaders among his possible running mates, according to a senator who met Tuesday with the Democratic presidential candidate's vice presidential vetting team. North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad told The Associated Press said the team asked him about potential candidates from three broad categories _ current top elected officials, former top elected officials and former top military leaders. Conrad would not disclose which names they discussed, and the Obama campaign has been keeping the process a closely guarded secret. "We talked about many names," Conrad said, including "some that are out...

... McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) fastened on a Wall Street Journal report that said that Jim Johnson, the mortgage executive leading Obama's vice presidential hunt, had received preferential home loans. ... the Republican's chief economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said the reported loans to Johnson from Countrywide Financial raised troubling questions. "And I thought it was remarkable that Senator Obama could talk about housing, talk about ethics, and fail to mention that he entrusted the single most important decision in his campaign, the choice of the vice presidentil running mate, to a gentlemen, Mr. Johnson, who benifitted...

Ever since Barack Obama chose former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson to vet potential vice presidential choices, critics have questioned Johnson’s ties to Countrywide Financial Corporation, a mortgage lender that gave Johnson millions in below-market loans. The Obama campaign issued a vehement statement Monday calling questions about Johnson’s loans “overblown and irrelevant.” Obama’s GOP opposition, however, is showing no tolerance for Johnson’s role in Obama’s campaign and is eagerly tying the scandal to Obama’s disgraced landlord friend, Tony Rezko. While Obama was kicking off a two-week battleground state economy tour in Raleigh, North Carolina on Monday, the Republican National Committee...

Publisher Peter Osnos, who admits to personally working with former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan on his new book, What Happened, began his career as an assistant to I.F. Stone, the pro-communist "journalist" named as a Soviet agent of influence who was the uncle of Weather Underground communist terrorist Kathy Boudin. But the connections don't end there. Boudin's son Chesa was raised by Barack Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were Boudin's comrades in the communist terrorist group, after Kathy Boudin went to prison for her involvement in an armed robbery and assault that took the...

If John Kerry becomes President he will find himself on the horns of a dilemma - which close friend to ditch when he chooses a new Secretary of State. According to today's Washington Post, Kerry would pick his national security team within a few weeks after winning the White House and two of his closest friends, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) or Richard Holbrooke reportedly want the job of running the State Department.