McCain Supports Bush's Warrantless Wiretaps

The New York Times reports today on how John McCain has flipped his position on warrantless wiretapping to look very similar to George Bush's. Below are a couple paragraphs from the article that reflect how John McCain has flip-flopped toward Bush:

A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the 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...

...But Mr. McCain had previously stopped short of endorsing the view that Mr. Bush's program of surveillance without warrants was lawful all along because a president's wartime powers can trump statutory limits.

Andrew C. McCarthy, a National Review columnist who has defended the administration's legal theories, wrote that Mr. Holtz-Eakin's statement "implicitly shows Senator McCain's thinking has changed as time has gone on and he has educated himself on this issue."

And Glenn Greenwald, a Salon columnist and critic of the Bush administration's legal claims, wrote that the statement was a "complete reversal" by Mr. McCain, accusing the candidate of seeking "to shore up the support of right-wing extremists."

Comments

[williamg]

Dubya is on TV telling us how confident he is in the American economy.

[gladys46]

Nawww, ya don' say!! We're just hanging around here waiting for The Clintons to concede! Didn't he get that memo!!?

[BeyondGoodAndEvil]

While the DJI is tanking.

[LibDrummer]

and the dow just dropped 300 points right after he started saying that....

[gladys46]

How's he to do that ... he can't speak! He and Mc are really all badddddddddd!

[gotalife]

w's solutions:

Extend tax cuts to the wealthy.

Drill, drill, drill.

New housing secretary as foreclosers hit over a million.

Politics as usual.

[ducksawce]

BOMB BOMB IRAN

[Canaris]

Anyone that supports retroactive immunity for telecoms, Republican or Democrat, has lost my vote, now and in the future.

[LibDrummer]

It has never been about retroactive immunity ( amnesty ) for the telecomms. If they can get immunity, that clears any charges being brought against Bush. This has always been about saving thier own skin, nothing more.

[lisakaz2]

Good for you. I hope your candidates actually tell the truth so you know where they stand.

[fleetw1978]

I agree 100%. ADDITIONALLY, anyone who authorized this insiped, useless war will never get my vote.

[gladys46]

How else would you prefer getting people to tell the truth ... WATERBOARDING!

[Ron]

This is McCain's normal way he operates. He's critical of everyone else, while he changes position on each policy according to who he's speaking to. Just like Bush. His policies are the same, his actions are very similar, and his ability to choose the right direction for this country is suprisingly bad. Then you put into the mix, he can't remember all the lies he's told, and what statement to make, then he losses his temper, and really gets crazy with his actions. Too old, too much like Bush, and too unstable to be in touch with the american people. Not electable

[chrisbee]

Every time I feeling low, I just think of "::GRIN:: ::GRIN:: That's not change you can believe in::WINK::" hahahah

I also have to say, some of the best/funniest comments I have read in my life have come from HuffPo. I love HuffPo readers! haha

[mairs]

That radioactive grin gives me the chills.

[JonW]

Me too. His glazey look at the teleprompter, his hugs for some of the most despicable people on the planet and his sleazy prompters (Lieberbush, etc) also trouble me

[joefazio]

The Seeds Of Deceit have been planted throughout
our political system. They steadily grow and slowly
strangle truth, trust and all that we value.

It happened slowly, almost imperceptibly. Politicians
have many names for deceit; a miss statement...a mistake...
I can't recall...a flip flop..I could go on and on. When I was a boy...
and to this very day, a lie was exactly that--a lie!

How can the people of this nation trust again? How can we not
look at most statements from politicians with a jaundiced eye?
How can our children learn the true values of life, living, when each
day they are show negative examples? Untruths that have caused
disintegration of values and a moral and social retardation.


In our homes and private places we need to turn down the volume
of politicians and their empty rhetoric. We need to take our
children in hand and we must be the teachers of that which
is right in life. We need let them know that not all politicians
lie...just the selfish ones. The ones that care not about
The Seeds Of Deceit they plant, that are ruining this country.


The Seeds Of Deceit ...can only be killed...eliminated, with truth.

[williamg]

Three things you will find in McElderly's (or any 71 year old's) pocket at any given time :

1) Snotty handckerchief

2) Pocket watch

3) Werther's hard candy

[SouthpawSass]

lol - my grandfather always carried around butterscotch candies... as well as a snotty handkerchief. Not sure about the pocket watch, though...

[TiffanyHusseinBanned]

Mine too. I really miss my grumpy grandpa.

[Rose52]

Williamg,
You're probably really far from 71, I am too, although closer I think than you are.
But don't make the mistake of assuming all 71yr olds are like McC. They aren't.

[gladys46]

willamg, my old dad had a real snotty one and he told me that the genius of the devil was to cause people to think he didn't exist!!

I've seen so many devilish Mc's lately!

[ducksawce]

And Viagra -

Think Bob Dole

[littlepuffycloud]

LOL! I bet he also has a stick of Beeman's Blackjack gum in there; probably stuck to the hanky.

[gotalife]

Oil up 9 bucks today. Market crashing.

Time for the gop to act to save corporate with more billions.

w to speak on the oil crises at 2:00.

[WLA]

W: "These oil prices are awesome."

[williamg]

Kinda feels like everything is crashing down today.

[williamg]

Each time he speaks, he just makes things worse.

[Gdebs]

I'm 77. I guess I will just have to get used to this kind of old farts stuff. Just remember, getting old is not for sissies.

[gladys46]

Bless your heart! No getting old is not for sissies ... but, had our country used better wisdom and elected people perhaps youthful with vision instead of political hacks we may have begun long ago a comprehensive transformation on our oil addictions!

Surely, we can ill afford Mc, he has no high tech. thought processes ... it's time for him to just step aside ... now really!

[BWonka]

"w to speak "

Wonder if anyone 1) will be listening or 2) will understand his fractured English and lack of facts/believeability?

[Crozier]

In such cycles as these, then as now, the Republican Party sends out an old token stalwart to fly the colours until the next time.

Since 1933, when FDR took office and defeated incumbent President Hoover, the defeated candidates were: 1936 - Governor Alfred Landon of KS 1940 - Businessman Wendell Wilkie
1944 - Governor Thomas E. Dewey of NY * (Dewey was renominated in 1948 against Truman but lost in a squeeker).

With Eisenhower, it was the Democrats' turn to nominate the same man twice in 1952 and 1956. I would continue my list with: 1964- Senator Barry Goldwater of AZ and 1996 - Senator Bob Dole of KS.

THIS TIME - McCain will benefit from bigotry, homophobia, racism and ironically sexism and agism. He is a wholly converted neocon, and yet he will hypocritically run like the man he was eight years ago.
If you believe anything progressive about McCain...forget it.....he is now deeply in extreme right wing.

[williamg]

I can't help but laugh each time McCrankyoldman says, "That's not change you can believe in".

[suzyhein]

but before that he does that little fake laugh and says, "my friends."

[Rose52]

And then smiles as though he's said something really clever.

[LibDrummer]

or needs a diaper changed, its is the same look either way!

[WLA]

He's shown that if there's one thing you can believe in, it's that his positions have changed.

[TiffanyHusseinBanned]

Instead of criticizing O’s ideas, when he is he going to tell us what he wants to do?

How will he be different from the current Administration?


Hey where are the breaking news headlines, williamg?

Everyone thinks I fell off because “I” haven’t come up with any new breaking news funny
headlines. Wink-wink

[williamg]

Did you notice that he is even biting off of O's graphics now too?

[BWonka]

The only thing he can change are his Depends.

[SaviourMachine]

Has anyone noticed how McLame pronounces Washington?

"Warshington"

[tbrnotb]

I just wish they'd fix his dentures, so he doesn't whistle everytime he has to say an "s"!

[jsrl317]

He's an idiot, is that a surprise.

I can't wait till he is defeated.

Unless the GOP stops running facists guised as patriots, I see no need in any REAL American supporting that party.

[lisakaz2]

If they don't steal another election.

[BWonka]

Cheap dentures and loose lips.

[KQuarksSuperKollider]

The ways McBush = Bush

-Both are going to keep ALL the Bush tax cuts including tax cuts for the rich.
-Both support spying on all Americans were 99.999% are innocent of any crime.
-Both support water boarding and say it is not torture.
-Both are against the new GI Bill.
-Both support permanent war/occupation and bases in Iraq.
-Both will put lobbyists in control of their government agencies.
-Both have no health care plan and support privatizing Social Security.
-Both voted against an expansion of SCHIP.
-Both have been underfunding education and have no plan for helping college students pay for college.
-Both are neocons who believe in interventionalist military deployments, McBush is actually more of a neocon.
-Both are staunchly against female reproductive rights.
-Both say they believe in climate change but do not want to make any policies that will "hurt" business.
-Both will pay for the war in Iraq with Chinese loans drive up the deficit.
-Both do not recognize that Chinese economic expansion is our biggest challenge of the 21st century.
-Both are sanctimonious when it comes to ethics and values.
-Both are consistent underachievers that got where they are based on who their father was rather than who they are.
-Both don't know anything about economics, while McBush is even worse on economics which is really saying something.
-Both do not support equal pay for equal work for women.

cont...

[Kristen777]

But the very best part of the speech was when CNN cut him off to return to the news about the primary results!!! HATS OFF!!!

[SaviourMachine]

Yes,I remember that..and not a minute too soon they knew their ratings were slipping due to viewers slipping into a coma en masse.

[SouthpawSass]

Can you hear me now?

[fact finder]

Sass; Nope turned off my cell phone and shot it.

[conned]

This article is by a former Regan administration official. He is giving the country the Paul Revere treatment. Hopefully others we as a nation will soon realize how serious our situation is. This essay does a great job of screaming it from the rooftop.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts06032008.html