Barack Obama has put on his boxing gloves.

After McCain’s campaign turned ugly over the weekend, Obama’s camp unveiled a 13-minute viral documentary and a new website, KeatingEconomics.com, that spotlights McCain’s involvement in one of the ugliest savings-and-loans scandals of our time.

The Keating scandal involved Charles H. Keating Jr., who oversaw the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. Keating’s company took advantage of deregulation policies in the 1980s in order to make risky investments with its depositors’ money. When the savings and loan industry collapsed, the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association caused more than 20,000 Americans to lose their savings. According to the website, which is paid for by the Obama campaign, overall, the savings and loan crisis required the federal government to bail out the savings of hundreds of thousands of families and cost American taxpayers $124 billion.

Déjà vu.

So, what’s the McCain link?

Before the Savings and Loans Association collapsed, Keating was the target of a regulatory investigation committee, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. In an attempt to get the FHLBB off his scandalous back, Keating asked five senators to intervene in 1987. The five senators were people whom he contributed more than a million dollars to, and they became known as the "Keating Five." Among them was John McCain. While McCain and one other senator were cleared of having acted improperly, they were criticized for having exercised "poor judgment."

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in an e-mail to supporters today that John McCain’s ties with Keating must be put front and center — amid the biggest government bailout of our times.

"John McCain and his political patron, Charles Keating, played central roles that ultimately landed Keating in jail for fraud and McCain in front of the Senate Ethics Committee," the e-mail read. "The McCain campaign has tried to avoid talking about the scandal, but with so many parallels to the current crisis, McCain’s Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts."

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers bounced back, reports swamppolitics.com.

"John McCain has been open and honest about the Keating matter, and even the Democratic special counsel in charge recommended that Sen. McCain be completely exonerated," Rogers said, reports swamppolitics.

The video documentary about the scandal, "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis," is available to watch at KeatingEconomics.com and can also be viewed below.