I KNEW IT!

The New York Times reported today that John McCain was NOT in a "cone of silence" at Saddleback during Barack Obama's Q&A session with Rick Warren on Saturday. I suspected as much at the time; his answers were too pat, and he responded too quickly, to not have had some advance warning of what the questions would be. Andrea Mitchell first brought it up on "Meet the Press" Sunday morning, and today's article by Katharine Seelye confirms both Mitchell's report and my own suspicions!

Senator John McCain was not in a "cone of silence" on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California...The matter is of interest because Mr. McCain, who followed Mr. Obama’s hourlong appearance in the forum, was asked virtually the same questions as Mr. Obama. Mr. McCain’s performance was well received, raising speculation among some viewers, especially supporters of Mr. Obama, that he was not as isolated during the Obama interview as Mr. Warren implied.

...Mr. Warren, the pastor of Saddleback, had assured the audience while he was interviewing Mr. Obama that "we have safely placed Senator McCain in a cone of silence" and that he could not hear the questions...Interviewed Sunday on CNN, Mr. Warren seemed surprised to learn that Mr. McCain was not in the building during the Obama interview.

And again, the McCain lying weasels campaign played the POW card, by replying that "the insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous". BULLSHIT. Being the idiots that they are, they inadvertently confirmed the story, in a protest letter sent to NBC New president Steve Capus by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, and reported by both Mike Allen at Politico and Rachel Sklar at the Huffington Post:

The fact is that during Senator Obama's segment at Saddleback last night, Senator McCain was in a motorcade to the event and then held in a green room with no broadcast feed.

OK, so McCain wasn't in the green room at first, so hell yeah, he wasn't in the cone of silence to begin with! Then next, they're trying to say that he couldn't see the interview when he finally, 30 minutes into Obama's appearance, arrived there? C'mon, Rick, ever heard of a Blackberry? Someone else couldn't have been watching, and then fed the questions to McCain? Remember, these are the same people who wired W with a receiver and an earplug during his debate with John Kerry in 2004, then flatly denied it, even after a highly-regarded NASA expert on image analysis identified an electronic device on Bush's back in photos.

They lied then, and they're lying now. You just can't trust these guys.