McCain Picks His Friends
Yesterday the McCain campaign hired a national finance co-chair: longtime Republican fixer Fred Malek. Here's some fun background info on Malek, from a Washington Post piece published last year:
Malek admitted that a memo written by him did suggest that people who were not Nixon's supporters be punished in some way. "Unethical, immoral and improper" was the way [Sen. Carl] Levin described Malek's role, adding that Malek had "spearheaded a calculated, systematic effort to sell government favors to the highest bidder in the Nixon reelection campaign and to punish low bidders or the nonbidders."…
It was also in 1971, The Post reported, that Malek was given a patently anti-Semitic order from a paranoid Richard Nixon to count the Jews in high-ranking posts in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Instead of refusing, Malek set about compiling a list of 13 of 35 top BLS employees who, he believed, were Jewish. Less than two months later, two senior BLS officials who were Jewish were moved out of their jobs to less visible posts. Malek acknowledges carrying out the disgusting hunt for Jews, but he denies having anything to do with the transfers.
Presumably he just thought Nixon needed a minyan.
[Via David Corn.]