Obama launches website on McCain/Keating link

Barack Obama has countered a John McCain ad about the Illinois senator's controversial connections with an ad of his own. 

The Democratic nominee launched a website on the link between the Arizona senator and S&L loan scandal figure Charles Keating.

{mosads}It's the latest attempt to score points by hitting the candidate of the other party on connections to dubious figures in their past. Over the weekend, the McCain campaign strongly pushed the link between Obama and former Weather Underground member William Ayers.

Now, the Illinois senator’s campaign is responding by putting together a documentary on the “Keating Five.”

“The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation,” the campaign said on the website, which was launched Sunday night. “Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.”

The website states that the GOP nominee “was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.”

According to the Obama campaign’s website, “The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules.

“And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history,” the site stated.

The McCain campaign did not immediately return a request for comment.