Perhaps the Washington Post felt burned that the New York Times beat them to the "scoop" on McCain, such as it is. Today's front-page article by Michael Shear and Jeffrey Birnbaum makes a stab at following the lobbyist portion of the NYT story and catch McCain as a hypocrite for having lobbyists work on his campaign.

Except that the only person reporters Shear and Birnbaum can find to criticize McCain for this is one Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility for Ethics in Washington:

"He has a closer relationship with lobbyists than he lets on," said Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "The problem for McCain being so closely associated with lobbyists is that he's the candidate most closely associated with attacking lobbyists." [snip]

"The potential harm is that should Senator McCain become elected, those people will have a very close relationship with the McCain White House," Sloan said. "[That] would be very helpful for their clients, and that would give them a leg up on everybody else."

You just read the sum total of the article's outside criticism of McCain, all made by Sloan, who, as Erick Erikson or Red State notes, isn't the most objective of sources:

Michael D. Shear and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum carried this off without ever hinting that CREW might be more than what it seems.

As Green Mountain Politics notes

we think it's only fair - in the interest of sunlight - to point out that Ms. Sloan has worked in the past for Democrat John Conyers, Democrat Chuck Schumer and Democrat Joe Biden.

And now Ms. Sloan wants to pass judgment on the Republican nominee for President as if her career sprang up in a vacuum?

Likewise, the reporters never mentioned CREW is heavily funded by liberal interests.

In February 2006, CREW asked the Senate Finance Committee to investigate the Center for Union Facts, an anti-union group, and its sister organization, the Center for Consumer Freedom, which CREW claimed are "front organizations for for-profit industry entities." The complaint noted that the Center for Union Facts Web site had "negative information about unions," including the Service Employees International Union. ...On Sept. 1, 2006, CREW received $75,000 from the SEIU, according to documents that the union filed with the Department of Labor.

In February 2007, CREW also asked the GAO to investigate whether broadcasts of Radio Marti beamed from Florida to Cuba violate federal laws against dissemination of propaganda in the U.S.

While CREW will not release its donor records, since 2003 the group has received $125,000 from the Arca Foundation, according to the foundation's annual reports. Over the same period, Arca -- a family foundation that has backed a host of liberal causes -- has provided about $1 million to organizations to advocate opening ties to Cuba and reducing barriers to travel.

Yes, the competition between the Post and NYT can be fierce, but really, not even a hint of Sloan's or CREW's biases?