My buyer’s remorse about contributing to his campaign has been greatly reduced, if not eliminated. MR. GOLER: Congressman Paul, I believe you are the only man on the stage who opposes the war in Iraq, who would bring the troops home as quickly as – almost immediately, sir. Are you out of step with your party? Is your party out of step with the rest of the world? If either of those is the case, why are you seeking its nomination? ...
Declan McCullagh at News.com reports that Sen. John McCain is preparing to hold a press conference with John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted and Miss America 2007 to announce a bill that will create a new mandate for Internet Service Providers to eavesdrop on all of their customers email and web traffic in search of child porn images. The act apparently requires ISPs to implement new technology to compare all images transmitted or received by their customers to a federal database of images (presumably via some one-way hash function, so that the database is not itself distributing child pornography), and to report any that are detected to John Walsh’s National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that operates as a clearinghouse/proxy for federal and state law enforcement with Congressional mandate and federal funding. The new bill is known as the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online or SAFE Act, and is not to be confused with the 2003 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom Ensured), the 1997 SAFE Act (Security and Freedom through Encryption), or the 1998 SAFE Act (Safety Advancement For Employees).
This video of John McCain shows video clips of him saying one thing and then the opposite on a number of subjects including the war in Iraq, the Confederate flag, the religious right, and gay marriage. Some of these are a bit misleadingly edited, such as the gay marriage item, where it doesn’t look like he actually contradicted himself to me. Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars. ...
Talking Points Memo has been collecting examples of information (website content, reports, studies, etc.) that the Bush administration has suppressed because they were somehow contrary to the administration’s positions. The list has become fairly lengthy. Here’s what they’ve got so far: * In March, the administration announced it would no longer produce the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation, which identifies which programs best assist low-income families, while also tracking health insurance coverage and child support. * In 2005, after a government report showed an increase in terrorism around the world, the administration announced it would stop publishing its annual report on international terrorism. ...
Sen. John McCain has attempted to blame President Clinton for North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons: “I would remind Senator [Hillary] Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration’s policies that the framework agreement her husband’s administration negotiated was a failure,” McCain said at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard. “The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They’ve diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military,” he said. ...
Both Arlen Specter and John McCain have publicly stated that they thought there were unconstitutional provisions in the Military Commissions Act which they voted for. That’s an admission of acting contrary to their oath of office. Neither of these men is fit to serve. (A previous post on the Military Commissions Act and Arizona Representatives’ votes on it is here.)
Today the Senate, following the House, voted to legalize the right for the government to engage in physical interrogation techniques that most people would consider to be torture and to detain individuals permanently without criminal charges by designating them “unlawful enemy combatants,” even if they are U.S. citizens who have never left the country. As Glenn Greenwald puts it, Congress has legalized tyranny. Both of Arizona’s Senators (John McCain and Jon Kyl) voted for the bill, S. 3930. Arizona’s Representatives voted as follows on the detainment bill, H.R. 6166 (the Senate bill is S. 3930): In favor: Jeff Flake (R-District 6) Trent Franks (R-District 2) J.D. Hayworth (R-District 5) Jim Kolbe (R-District 8) Rick Renzi (R-District 1) John Shadegg (R-District 3) Against: Raul Grijalva (D-District 7) Ed Pastor (D-District 4) Once again, a completely partisan vote in which the Republicans demonstrate their disregard for this constitutional republic. You can find the complete House vote results here. UPDATE September 29, 2006: Ed Brayton has more at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The founders of this country would have found this grounds for revolution. UPDATE October 1, 2006: I fully expect the courts to overturn this, since the U.S. Constitution allows only two conditions for the temporary suspension of habeas corpus in Article I, Section 9 (“when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it”). It is also worth noting that there is some simplification, above. The designation of “unlawful enemy combatant” (UEC) in the bill is made by “a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense." Also see Richard Epstein’s testimony to the Senate (PDF) urging them to kill this bill, which they disregarded.
From a letter to me dated August 11, 2006, in response to a letter I sent him criticizing his vote: Thank you for expressing your views about the issue of flag desecration. I share your concern in this matter. I believe we have an inviolable duty to protect the right of free speech–one of our most precious inalienable rights and the linchpin of a healthy democracy. I do not believe, however, that guaranteeing respect for our national symbol by prohibiting “acts” of desecration impinges on political “speech." As long as citizens are free to speak out on any matter and from whatever point of view they wish, as our forefathers intended, it does not seem burdensome to me that we accord some modicum of respect to the symbol of those precious freedoms for which so many of our countrymen have laid down their lives. Some view these efforts to protect the flag as political demogoguery or empty symbolism, unworthy of the attention it receives. I see the issue differently. The flag represents each and every one of us, regardless of race, religion or political point of view. It is a point of unity in the midst of our great diversity. Tolerating desecration of the flag is silent acquiescence to the degeneration of the broader values which sustain us as a free and democratic nation–the ramifications of which are far more profound than mere symbolism. For these reasons, I have support [sic] a constitutional amendment to ban flag desecration. I voted for such language in previous Congresses, but unfortunately, the tally has always fallen short of the 67 affirmative votes necessary for approval. Additionally, I have cosponsored legislation to statutorily provide protection for the flag in a manner that will be upheld by the Supreme Court. Again, thank you for your interest in this important issue. I hope you will continue to share your views with me on this or any other matter of concern to you and our nation. Sincerely, /s/ John McCain United States SenatorSenator McCain states that “Tolerating desecration of the flag is silent acquiescence to the degeneration of the broader values which sustain us as a free and democratic nation.” But this completely ignores the fact that it is not only possible but certain that voices will loudly speak out in criticism of flag desecration–that’s not silent acquiescence, that’s fighting bad speech with good speech, which is the whole point of the First Amendment. McCain explicitly recognizes that the flag is a symbol. It’s a symbol that can be represented in art, language, binary data, and a Penn and Teller illusion. (Penn & Teller’s illusion raises the question of whether the symbolic desecration of a symbol is any different from an actual desecration of a symbol.) To place limits on the contexts that symbol can be placed in or on transformations of that symbol is to place limits on free expression, and to place limits on the principle of freedom of speech that lies behind the First Amendment. By his willingness to make a special exception for this symbol, McCain is doing damage to a constitutional principle. His position on this issue is just as wrong as his position on trying to protect government from the consequences of violating the First Amendment in his vote for the PERA Act, and just as contrary to his oath of office. ...
John McCain continues his pandering to the religious right by endorsing Republican candidate for Governor of Arizona, Len Munsil. Munsil, who attended Arizona State University at the same time I did, was editor of the ASU newspaper, the State Press. Now he runs an extremist religious right policy organization, the Center for Arizona Policy, which opposed the removal of Arizona’s laws banning cohabitation and oral sex. (They were removed anyway, by a moderate female Republican Governor, Jane Dee Hull.) Munsil drafted Arizona’s law on marriage (which defines marriage to preclude gay marriage) and is behind Proposition 107, the Protect Marriage Arizona Amendment, which amends the Arizona Constitution to prohibit the creation of civil unions or the granting of any legal status for unmarried persons that is similar to marriage. I’ve previously written about Munsil here, where I describe how he refused to print a letter to the editor I wrote criticizing factual errors in an editorial he wrote in the State Press. You can find out more about Munsil and his supporters and detractors at this Arizona Republic blog entry, “Munsil: I’m a Reagan, Kyl-style Republican." I’ve left a number of comments there. ...
As everyone knows, Bush’s first veto ever was of H.R. 810, the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, to authorize federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, on the ridiculous basis that this research involves killing “boys and girls." As Scott Rosenberg points out at Salon: Here is why Bush’s position is a joke: Thousands and thousands of embryos are destroyed every year in fertility clinics. They are created in petri dishes as part of fertility treatments like IVF; then they are discarded. If Bush and his administration truly believe that destroying an embryo is a kind of murder, they shouldn’t be wasting their time arguing about research funding: They should immediately shut down every fertility clinic in the country, arrest the doctors and staff who operate them, and charge all the wannabe parents who have been wantonly slaughtering legions of the unborn. But of course they’ll never do such a thing. (Nor, to be absolutely clear, do I think they should.) Bush could not care less about this issue except as far as it helps burnish his pro-life credentials among his “base." … If Bush believes destroying embryos is murder, let him take a real stand against it. If he doesn’t, he shouldn’t make it harder for the thousands of embryos that are being discarded anyway to be used for a valuable purpose that could improve real lives. ...