John McCain

Friday’s Washington Post describes an Arizona land swap deal–the largest in Arizona history–pushed through Congress by John McCain which had the effect of transferring valuable federal land to Fred Ruskin’s Yavapai Ranch Limited Partnership, that ended up being developed by SunCor Development, owned by McCain supporter Steven A. Betts. The Post article describes past land swap deals that McCain has also pushed through, which have benefited McCain donors Donald R. Diamond and Carl H. Lindner, Jr. Probably all just politics as usual. UPDATE (May 15, 2008): The Arizona Republic finally gets around to covering the story–by reprinting a story from USA Today.

Arianna Huffington has given a list of occasions on which Arizona Sen. John McCain has “issued heartfelt denials of things that were actually true”: * That he had talked with John Kerry about possibly leaving the Republican Party to become his vice presidential running mate in 2004. * That he had claimed he didn’t know much about economics. * That he had ever asked for a budget earmark for Arizona. * That he’d ever had a meeting with lobbyist Vicky Iseman.

John McCain carries thirty-one cents of lucky change, a lucky compass, and a lucky feather. He won’t throw a hat on a bed, or pick up a new lucky coin that’s showing tails instead of heads. He won’t take a salt shaker passed to him; it has to be set on the table first. He carries a laminated four-leaf clover in his wallet. He wears lucky shoes. He makes use of a magical lizard belonging to his trip director, Lanny Wiles, to help win golf bets and cause the right college sports teams to win. John McCain is a superstitious nut.

Max Dunlap, the convicted killer of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles, is seeking clemency in a hearing tomorrow. He would like to be released from his life sentence because he is 78 years old, suffering from incontinence from diabetes, and unable to walk easily due to a head injury received in prison. He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in paying two men (John Harvey Adamson and James Robison) to kill Bolles with a car bomb. Bolles died 11 days after the explosion, which took place on June 2, 1976 in the parking lot of the Clarendon Hotel in downtown Phoenix. Although Dunlap has never fingered him, it is widely believed that the hit was ordered and paid for by Arizona liquor wholesaler, land magnate, and organized crime figure Kemper Marley, who was a primary target of Bolles’ investigative reporting. (Adamson testified that Marley was behind the murder.) Not only did Marley never spend a day of his life in jail for his role in Bolles’ murder or any other crime, he has a building named after him at the University of Arizona–the Kemper Marley College of Agriculture building. He also has a building named after him at my high school alma mater, Brophy College Preparatory, called the Ethel and Kemper Marley Information Commons. He died in 1990 at the age of 83 at a beach home in La Jolla, CA. Kemper Marley employed former bootlegger Jim Hensley in one of his wholesale liquor businesses, United Liquor, which had a monopoly on liquor distribution in Arizona. In 1948, Hensley was convicted on seven counts of filing false liquor records, and was charged again in 1953, but was found not guilty that time thanks to a defense from attorney William Rehnquist, future chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. By 1955 Hensley had his own Budweiser distributorship. Hensley’s daughter Cindy inherited his fortune in 2000. She now shares it with her husband, Arizona Senator John McCain. The story of the Hensley fortune–and of how McCain is beholden to liquor interests–is told in a February 17, 2000 Phoenix New Times story, “Haunted by Spirits." The Arizona Project of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., is a package of stories, photos, and audio about Don Bolles, who was a member of the organization. UPDATE (July 22, 2009): Max Dunlap died in prison yesterday.

Matt Taibbi goes undercover with the Christian right–at the megachurch of John Hagee, whose endorsement for president John McCain is happy to have. (Via Pharyngula.)

John McCain is “very honored” for the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, a televangelist who thinks that the Jews provoked the Holocaust, that the Illuminati is engaged in conspiratorial control of the world’s governments, that the Catholic Church is the “whore of Babylon” in the Book of Revelations, that George Washington hid a picture of a menorah in the tailfeathers of the eagle on the dollar bill, and that a U.S. invasion of Iran is prophesied by the Bible. Ed Brayton has discussed Hagee’s views, and Troutfishing at Daily Kos has some videos documenting Hagee absurdity. UPDATE (May 22, 2008): Finally, McCain has repudiated Hagee’s endorsement, claiming that he’s only just learned of his nastier views and remarks. UPDATE (May 23, 2008): Hume’s Ghost points out the difference between McCain’s relationship with Hagee and Parsley, and Obama’s relationship with Wright, as well as the extremely nasty anti-Semitic remarks from Hagee that prompted McCain’s repudiation (all Jews have “dead souls,” for example). ...

Mike Huckabee’s problems continue to accumulate. There’s the little problem of his son David hanging a dog by its neck, slitting its throat, and stoning it to death–and the fact that Huckabee himself defends this animal cruelty (of the sort that’s often a precursor to serial killing of human beings) on the grounds that the dog was emaciated and had mange. (You may recall that Mitt Romney has a similar, though not nearly as nasty, poor record with dogs.) David Huckabee killed the dog when he was 17 and was never prosecuted, but in April he faced a weapons charge for trying to take a loaded handgun through airport security in Little Rock. Huckabee also claimed to Pat Robertson’s CBN that “I’m the only guy on that stage with a theology degree,” but he doesn’t have a theology degree–he only attended Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary for a year, he’s a theology-school dropout. Then there’s his role in calling for the 1999 release of convicted rapist Wayne Dumond, who was strongly defended by Baptist minister Jay Cole, a close friend of the Huckabee family. Some conservative activists apparently defended Dumond on the grounds that one of his rape victims was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton and the daughter of a major Clinton campaign contributor. Several victims wrote letters to Huckabee describing Dumond’s brutality, but Huckabee was quoted in a column by Steve Dunleavy titled “Clinton’s Biggest Crime–Left Innocent Man in Jail for 14 Years” saying that “There is grave doubt to the circumstances of this reported crime.” But as we know today, Dumond was guilty–he was released from prison in September 1999, apparently with some help from Huckabee, and he raped and murdered two women. Huckabee has refused to release his administration’s records pertaining to Dumond on grounds that they contain sensitive law enforcement information. In 1992, Huckabee called for AIDS victims to be quarantined, and refused to retract that position just recently, despite the fact that the disease is not spread through casual contact (which was also well known in 1992). On top of all of this, Huckabee appears to be genuinely dumb. While governor of Arkansas, Canadian comedian Rick Mercer fooled Huckabee into congratulating Canadians on preserving their capitol building, the national igloo. He is a proud disbeliever in evolution and has publicly supported creationism, though now he refuses to answer questions about it. He thinks that women’s role in marriage should be to “submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband”. And in the December 11 Republican debate, Huckabee pledged to repeal the laws of thermodynamics, stating that “We ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is." Intrade currently puts Huckabee’s chances of obtaining the Republican presidential nomination at 16.8%, third behind Giuliani (36.0%) and Romney (22.0%) and ahead of McCain (8.8%) and Paul (8.5%). But it also puts him at the leading candidate for getting the Republican vice presidential nomination, at 28.9%, well ahead of Pawlenty (10.1%), Romney (8.6%), Thompson (7.6%), and Gingrich (6.5%). UPDATE (December 25, 2007): Mike Huckabee’s tied to Christian reconstructionists and thinks that the Ten Commandments are the basis of U.S. law (even though seven of the ten would be unconstitutional). ...

In an interview with Beliefnet, Arizona Sen. John McCain said that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation: A recent poll found that 55 percent of Americans believe the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. What do you think? I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation. But I say that in the broadest sense. The lady that holds her lamp beside the golden door doesn’t say, “I only welcome Christians.” We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.Apparently he, like Rep. Ron Paul, missed the fact that the only reference to God in the U.S. Constitution is the reference to the “year of our Lord” in the date. The Constitutional Convention voted not to open with prayers, Article VI says that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” and the First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The Constitution establishes a democratic republic with a strong separation of church and state by comparison to other nations. The Bible, by contrast, speaks of theocratic political systems with rule by priests and kings. In 1797, the Senate unanimously ratified and President John Adams signed the Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 of which began with the words “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” (This treaty was quickly violated by Tripoli, and the renegotiated treaty of 1805 did not contain this article, but the important point is that this language was approved by the entire Senate and the President in 1797.) ...

Both houses of Congress have passed a bill that updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow warrantless wiretapping when at least one party is a foreigner, without any requirement that the foreigner be suspected of having connections to terrorists. Wiretaps in such cases do not require approval of the FISA court, only of the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. As Tim Lee at Technology Liberation Front observes: So let me get this straight: the White House says “we think we should be able to eavesdrop on virtually any domestic-to-foreign phone call without court oversight, based on the say-so of one of the president’s subordinates.” And the Democrats response was “Hell no! Warrantless spying should require the say-so of two of the president’s subordinates!”Arizona’s Congressmen voted along party lines except for Harry Mitchell, who sided with the Republicans in favor of the bill, which provides for this expansion of powers for the next six months. (UPDATE, August 8, 2007: Actually, McCain didn’t vote on this bill at all, it’s another of his no-shows.) Kudos to Pastor, Grijalva, and Giffords for voting against this. (Hat tip to Technology Liberation Front and Stranger Fruit.) UPDATE (August 7, 2007): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on how this bill has gutted any oversight of what the Executive branch is doing. ...

Someone should tell John McCain that pandering to the religious right and dropping f-bombs don’t really go together.