McCain confronted as to why he has taken the most money from Big Oil

Wall Street Journal

Sen. John McCain is occasionally interrupted by Iraq war protestors, but Wednesday he was confronted by a young man angry about energy.

As McCain was talking about his energy plans, a protester in the audience at Missouri State University yelled out that McCain had accepted a half million dollars this year from “big oil.”

“That’s more than any other senator!” he yelled. “How can you be trusted?”

After the event, McCain was asked in a news conference if that were true, though the questioner mistakenly quoted the protestor as saying McCain took in a half billion dollars.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about. So I can’t respond,” he said.

Indeed, McCain does lead all other senators, and all others who ran for president, in contributions from the oil and gas industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ analysis of federal data in the 2007-08 election cycle. McCain collected $724,000 through May.

Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, took in $304,000 from the industry.........