Even though he seemed to take an awfully sudden dive on investigating Jack Abramoff - coincidentally, right after one of his senior staffers met with Karl Rove.

You can read all about it here, where Mary Beth Williams did the groundwork the corporate media should have done:

In late February, 2004, the Washington Post published their first report on Abramoff and his dealings with certain gaming tribes seeking access to Congress and Interior. A few days later, Senate Indian Affairs Committee member John McCain announced he would seek hearings into the Abramoff fiasco. That night, Committee Chairman Ben Nighthorse Campbell checked himself into a Washington hospital, complaining of chest pains; turned out he had a bad case of indigestion. A week later, Campbell announced that despite kicking off his re-election campaign just a month earlier, he would not seek re-election, citing “health concerns” (NB, Campbell is currently healthy enough to work as a high-paid lobbyist in DC.) Campbell allowed McCain to oversee the Committee hearings, including the subpoena process, and McCain took over the chairmanship when Campbell retired.

In April, McCain obtained the first Abramoff documents subpoenaed from Greenberg Traurig and other sources. Some of these documents (many still highly redacted) were not made available to the public until hearings began in the Fall of 2004. However, soon after McCain took possession of the Abramoff emails, with their potential to take down now only Abramoff and his lobbying buddies, but dozens of Congressional and Administration officials, McCain’s top advisor John Weaver met with Karl Rove to purportedly “iron-out their differences”, four years after the ugly 2000 primary season. The result? McCain buries any evidence that could hurt Bush’s re-election effort, at least until after November, and McCain becomes Bush’s heir apparent for 2008.

Remember this?

A month later, McCain joined Bush on the campaign trail, and had little to say when Bush cronies swiftboated his colleague and friend, Senator and Vietnam-veteran John Kerry, similarly to their actions against McCain in 2000. For his part, McCain postponed the opening of the Abramoff hearings from early summer until fall, and made sure the first and only hearing prior to the November election focused solely on Abramoff’s “maltreatment” of his tribal clients. It was a full year (and only after significant leaking from unnamed Committee members) that McCain called Interior officials before the Committee, and even then, he softballed on all but Italia Federici, whose Council for Republicans for Environmental Advocacy had actively attacked his support of global warming legislation.

Even McCain nemesis Grover Norquist, clearly indicted in Abramoff documents, was treated with kid gloves - McCain asserted that he would subpoena Norquist, but never carried out the threat, and Norquist, for nearly a year banished from the White House, found his way back into Rove’s office (and good graces.)

No wonder McCain hugged him. I’m surprised he’s not picking Bush’s pubic hairs out of his teeth.

I’ll turn here to the summary Lambert did over at the Mighty Corrente Building:

Wampum owns this story, and Mary Beth summarizes the detail. But I can’t understand a story that is longer than what you can write on a postcard, so I’m going to try to summarize the story this way:

1. The Department of the Interior leases Indian lands to the oil companies.

2. The oil companies are supposed to pay royalties on the oil they drill to the Indians who own the land.

3. The royalties add up to $100 billion (one hundred billion) dollars.

4. The Department of the Interior and the oil companies screwed up the accounting, and didn’t pay the Indians what they owed them.

5. The courts have agreed with the Indians, so the oil companies are on the hook for $100 billion.

6. Enter Saint John Sidney McCain (R-Torture Enablement), who is chair of the Senate Interior Commmittee.

7. McCain is pushing a settlement that will give the Indians 10 cents on the dollar.

8. McCain will thereby gain the undying gratitude of the oil companies, who will waltz off with $100 billion gross — the net to be determined by how much in campaign contributions goes to John Sidney McCain.

Which, as Mary Beth points out, will let McCain burnish his Moderate credentials by fucking the Christianists in 2008—Saint John has a much bigger patron, Big Oil, in play.