Flutterby™! : Chickens roosting

So, let me see if I've got this straight: Mr. campaign finance "reform" himself, John McCain was running short on cash, so he went to the bank, said "if we lose in the next few primaries, we'll sign up for Federal matching funds to pay you back", of course if they won there'd be plenty of cash to pay back the banks.

So the question now is: legally, did John McCain pledge those funds, in which case he's got just $4M to spend between now and September, or didn't he, in which case he didn't opt-in to the campaign spending limits that would come with those funds?

In any event, the McCain campaign argues that The FEC, lacking a quorum, cannot deny its application to withdraw from the campaign. Mason's position, which seems sounder as a matter of law under 437c(c), is that without a quorum, they cannot authorize McCain to withdraw. McCain is now waiving around his constitutional rights to withdraw from the plan, which is a bit sketchy given his prior statement that, "I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected." One can obviously waive constitutional rights, and the question is whether or not McCain did so by entering a contract with the FEC to limit his spending. So McCain's assertion merely begs the real question: has he waived his constitutional right to unlimited funding?

So this whole thing appears to rest right now on some brinksmanship Senator Obama was playing earlier that, if I understand it right, has left the FEC one person short. Ain't politics fun?