Allahpundit notes that the WaPo story mentions nothing about an affair angle, but does talk about the lobbyist part.

Three telecom lobbyists and a former McCain aide, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Iseman spoke up regularly at meetings of telecom lobbyists in Washington, extolling her connections to McCain and his office. She would regularly volunteer at those meetings to be the point person for the telecom industry in dealing with McCain’s office.

Concern about Iseman’s presence around McCain at one point led to her being banned from his Senate office, according to sources close to McCain.

Two of the most prominent newspapers in the world have been working on this 8-year-old+ story for months, and the most reliable sources they can claim are unnamed “lobbyists” and an unnamed “former McCain aide”? And then stress that McCain sometimes supported the positions of her clients, but sometimes opposed them?

The McCain camp sends along some facts that were left out of the NYT story, including:

The New York Times article states, “A champion of deregulation, Mr. McCain wrote letters in 1998 and 1999 to the Federal Communications Commission urging it to uphold marketing agreements allowing a television company to control two stations in the same city, a crucial issue for Glencairn Ltd., one of Iseman’s clients. He introduced a bill to create tax incentives for minority ownership of stations; Ms Iseman represented several businesses seeking such a program. And he twice tried to advance legislation that would permit a company to control television stations in overlapping markets, an important issue for Paxson.”

Local Marketing Agreements (Glencairn)

No representative of Glencairn or Alcalde and Fay, met with Senator McCain in 1998 to discuss the issue of local marketing agreements (LMAs). On July 20, 1999, Senator McCain met with Eddie Edwards, the head of Glencairn, regarding LMAs and minority media ownership issues. This meeting was several months after Senator McCain had weighed in at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding its expected December 1998 decision on media ownership rules. There were no other meetings in 1999 between any representative of Alcalde and Fay and Senator McCain regarding the issue of LMAs.

He also met with many other representatives of other media companies, as well as advocacy groups for consumer and public interests.