John McCain Does Stick to His Guns. It's the Targets that Keep Changing.
He may have fallen in line with President Bush on other issues, but when it comes to government intrusion on citizens' lives, John McCain is going to take a firm, unequivocal, unchangeable stand.
In a December interview with the Boston Globe, he even spoke out against Bush's use of unauthorized wiretaps…
Q: Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?
McCain: There are some areas where the statutes don't apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is. [...] I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law.
That's right! You tell 'em, maverick. A war hero knows how to stand by his principles, come what may…
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, [McCain senior adviser] Douglas Holtz-Eakin said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans' international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.
[...] David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that while the language used by Mr. McCain in his answers six months ago was imprecise, the recent statement by Mr. Holtz-Eakin "seems to contradict precisely what he said earlier."
Somehow I have a feeling McCain isn't going to agree with Prof. Golove, who should probably think about changing his phone number and email address as soon as possible.
Tucker Bounds, a McCain campaign spokesman, said Mr. McCain's position on surveillance laws and executive power "has not changed."
"John McCain has been an unequivocal advocate of pursuing the radicals and extremists who seek to attack Americans," Mr. Bounds wrote in an e-mail message, adding that Mr. McCain's "votes and positions have been completely consistent and any suggestion otherwise is a distortion of his clear record."
See? There you go. McCain has a clear record of pursuing radicals who seek to attack Americans, Americans such as himself, perhaps by using verbal weapons of mass destruction like "contradict" and "flip-flop."
He's also taken the consistent position that inconsistency is his Constitutional right, as long as he's consistently inconsistent, which he totally is, because of his principles.
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Republicans – wake up. This path Cheney has taken us all down, is not a free market.
The market is being manipulated.
Monopolies and cartels are running rampant.
Gee, what a surprise they want to reintroduce the American people to domestic drilling.
AS IF
that will make any difference at all.
As it stands now, the Japanese end up with our Alaskan oil, not us.
It's all a manipulative scam.
As if we haven't given the oil companies a free enough ride!
Yeah, that's it – pour our hard earned tax dollars into the fat pockets of those who are gouging us
How stupid do they think we are? Or, are we that stupid? To fall for yet another oilman scam?
Okay, there was Enron.
There was the manipulation of the market to withhold natural gas supply….or, was that whole fake energy crisis fueled up just to ruin Gray Davis' career the way they did it with the last fake energy crisis when they needed to smear Carter? Not to mention the arms for hostages debacle.
It's all a theater to them, isn't it? Who cares that we single moms out there have to choose between gas and food, heating and cooling, or taking our kids to Disneyland.
Thanks, Bush – Cheney – guess you and your fat oilcat friends got rich on all of us, while the American Taxpayers foot the bill to spoon feed corporate welfare to the oil companies.
Gee, I wonder how long before the American people cry uncle and say "yeah! drill in our last natural habitats!" Falsly thinking, like it's some gas tax holiday, and the oil will actually go to the American people, or make one damn bit of difference as the Hummers suck it all up. Then we don't have our American Eagle habitat, and, we don't have air to breathe anymore – because we weren't smart enough to come up with anything better than the combustible engine.
Come on people, get smart. Americans deserve better than this.
Stop the oil companies from bleeding the American taxpayers dry, through our tax dollars, and the travesty at the pump.
Thank you, caligrrrrl. If only enough people caught on to this, we wouldn't be in the situation we're all in now.
Wow, someone is reading. Thank you!
Just saw on another page that the Petroleum Institute had a coffee clatch with Fox News.
The Petroleum institute. How cozy. Now I get it. This whole gas price blow up is all one big ploy to strong arm us ignorant Americans into crying uncle and letting them drill – oh, and don't forget to subsidize them so they can take more food out of poor children's mouth in the welfare line.
woops, sorry for being redundant. Just makes me so outraged. Why don't we have outrage anymore? Is everyone on Prozac, or Zoloft, or some other mind numbing substance? Are we all so depressed we can't get mad anymore? Too overwhelmed to be anything but apathetic?
That's actually why I like Obama. Because for the first time in a long time, I voted for someone I think isn't BS'ing me.
Bring back the good guys. Bring back Richard Clarke. Bring back those who know how to get Osama. Obama can do that. McCain will be just another puppet in the miltary industrial complex that Eisenhower even warned about – they are bleeding us dry and they've got their hands in your pockets yet again.
Talking about the above "maverick"-has no one told him that the only act left out has been death-squads in America?
That's the only thing Dubya hasn't done yet, which prevents him from being a dictator. And this so-called war hero, (which I'm beginning to doubt he was actually captured, more like surrendered) wants to continue Bush's policies.
Iraq – a Suckling Pig of Pork
McCain is supporting a blundering policy that will render our dollar worthless, if we continue to borrow from China to fund nursing a country we broke, back to health. Why aren't we "fighting terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Bin Laden is laying in wait to kill us. We need to stop Halliburton and Exxon from running this country into the ground, the way Hoover let the energy companies do just before the fall of the great depression.
Clinton left us with a surplus.
The GOP spent it.
They want to spend more.
We need our money to defeat our enemy and protect national security.
Make oil obsolete.
We are smarter than the combustible engine.
Get Osama. Vote Obama.
Does McCain know that there is a Constitution ~ separate ~ from laws passed by Congress ?
1. word limit
2. comedy site
3. psycho site is elsewhere.
4. when we report comment, can we put a reason, like "driveling idiot", "not funny", "insane"?
1. Okay, so I got a little carried away on that first post. Guess I thought I needed to get it all off my chest.
2. Yeah, so? It's a comedy site. It's also a political site, in the best way. The best comedy has a grain of truth in it. I'm grateful that this place seems to be one of the last bastions of free speech left in this country.
3. Does it make you feel better about yourself to be smug?
4. Again, do you get that tinkle of superiority in your loins by putting others down?