Austin Bay tips us to a letter written by Senator John McCain (R — AZ) to Senator Barack Obama (D — IL) in which Sen. McCain questions Sen. Obama’s integrity.
From the letter (the full text is available on Sen. McCain’s Web site):
As I noted, I initially believed you shared that goal. But I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn’t always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.
A good way to get into a bar fight is to challenge another man’s integrity or honesty, especially if you do it in a very public way. If I were looking to pick a fight with another man, these are the types of words that I would use. A real man would invite you outside and then punch you in the mouth for calling him out this way. A coward will merely pay his tab and leave the bar.
In this case, I’d say that Sen. Obama has left the bar. Probably didn’t even finish his virgin strawberry daiquiri.
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McCain’s a phony. If he wants a burnish his reputation with a strong anti-corruption bill who do you think is going to provide that? Democrats want to run against corruption this year so it stands to reason that their bill will be stronger. It sounds like McCain is saying he prefers a mere slap on the wrist for K Street- maybe he plans on reuniting with his old Lincoln Savings and Loan buddies (are they out of jail?)
If he wants to be a ‘man’ he’d spend less time flapping his jaw and introduce a real reform bill.
You wouldn’t know much about this, but wise men can see when someone is making an ass of himself, and realize that ignoring him is all that is required.
I’ve not been a fan of McCain, but he may have just come up a notch or two on the ladder as far as I’m concerned. Obama approached McCain in the first place and gave him assurances that he wanted a bipartisan effort on lobbying reform. Then, he approached McCain again with a letter in which he reneged on his word (at least that’s what McCain’s letter indicates). Obama deserved a swift kick in the ass and he got it.
If he wants to be a ‘man’ he’d spend less time flapping his jaw and introduce a real reform bill.
Has Sen. McCain introduced a new reform bill (other than the 2002 McCain-Feingold bill)? If so, I haven’t read it. If he has, and it truly has no teeth, than the Republicans will and should suffer because of it. But if he has not released/sponsored/endorsed a new campaign reform bill, than I’m not sure how you can deride him for not introducing a “real” reform bill.
One of my biggest problems with today’s Democrats is there automatic, reflexive dismissal/hatred/disagreement with anything that the Republicans propose or do.
Hell, the State of the Union Address was already being criticized hours before it was delivered. There are Democratic leaders on record saying that they would contest any SCOTUS nominee from President Bush — regardless of who it is. And they did exactly that:
President Bush: “To fill the next seat on the Supreme Court of the United States I would like to nominate…”
Sen. Ted Kennedy: “Agggghhhhhhh…I will filibuster and block that nominee. He is way too extreme and would shift the gravitational pull of the Earth if…”
President Bush: “But I haven’t even told you who I am going to nominate yet.”
Sen. Kennedy: “So?”
President Bush: “Shouldn’t you wait until I make my nomination before you reflexively oppose them?”
Sen. Kennedy: “I’m not sure I understand what you mean?”
Sen. John Kerry: “I served in Vietnam.”
President Bush: “Can I finish?”
Sen. Kennedy: “I can’t remember what we were talking about, but I oppose it.”
President Bush: “I nominate Sen. Edward Kennedy as the next Supreme Court Justice.”
Sen. Kennedy: “Agggghhhhhh…Not on my watch! He’s a radical, he’ll overturn motherhood, he can’t be trusted with the…???…what?”
President Bush: “I nominated you Senator.”
Sen. Kerry: “Why not me? I would be a good Justice. Did I mention I served in Vietnam and Cambodia?”
Sen. Kennedy: “I object and will do everything to get my face on the news and in the papers to oppose this nomination…Wait…Do they have an open bar on the Supreme Court?”
There are Democratic leaders on record saying that they would contest any SCOTUS nominee from President Bush — regardless who it is
Who?
Yale law professor, Bruce Ackerman, wrote an article in the February, 2001, edition of the liberal magazine The American Prospect that encouraged the use of the filibuster to stop President Bush from placing any nominee on the Supreme Court during his first term.
Sen Schumer also:
I think Chuck Schumer’s reply to that article on the very same page argues against that point better than I could:
I have voted to confirm over 200 of President Bush’s nominees, almost all of whom have deeply conservative views and many of whom were anti-choice.
It is the Republican majority who has marched in lock-step, unanimously supporting not only John Roberts, but virtually every other Bush nominee.
Moreover, while senators received more than 50,000 pages of internal documentation, they were largely unilluminating and useless.
Most of it was technical material that was over 20 years old. The most recent and important documents from the solicitor general’s office, where Roberts was making policy, not just following it, were absent.
Roberts will serve as chief justice of the United States for life, and the American people deserved to know his full record.
As every poll bears, Democrats, Republicans and independents all want to know a nominee’s views on important issues.
If the president takes Podhoretz’s advice and nominates a polarizing figure like Janice Rogers Brown, who believes, for instance, that the New Deal was the triumph of a “socialist revolution,” there will be no avoiding a fight.
I hope the president will, instead, choose consensus over confrontation.
Charles E. Schumer, Senator
Washington, D.C.
In short, I’m pretty confident that no sitting Senator has ever said they would vote against any and every Bush nominee to the Supreme Court.
It’s funny how conservatives both want credit for and yet deny that they are packing the court with conservatives.
I love how lefties equate nominating someone to fill a vacancy on the court is “packing the court”.
I think the president has the prerogative to nominate people to fill vacancies. I know you lefties hate that when the president in question is not to your liking (i.e. somewhat to the right of chairman Mao), but the president can do that, nonetheless.
So whine on, harvest moon.
I’ll ignore the snotty attitude and rephrase my comment: “It’s funny how conservatives both want credit for and yet deny that they are nominating conservatives to the court. ”
I don’t deny that it’s the President’s prerogative to do so. It is also the Senates prerogative to reject these nominees.
I’ve never denied that the President is appointing conservatives to the court. The President promised to appoint Constitutional interpreters rather than those who would use the bench to legislate. It so happens that conservatives fit the mold of interpreters and originialists. Liberals fit the mold of legislators.
To oppose his nominees as “idealogues” is absurd. All nominees are going to share an ideology with the President who appoints them…and thus a majority of the country.
To oppose the nomination because they are on the opposite side of your minority ideology is not the Senate’s prerogative. Their role is “advise and consent”, and the last nominee that there was not serious objection to from the left was a member of the ACLU. Sorry, but we’re not going to meet you guys on that one while the balls in our court.
Thus, I do give President Bush full credit for fulfilling his campaign promise to appoint Justices in the mold of Scalia. Nor do I deny that these great men also happen to be conservatives.
I hope you’re conscious of the spin you’re repeating. Conservative judges are forced to look for the meaning of the Constitution just as liberals do. Just looking at a case such as Bush v. Gore shows that judicial principles often last just as long as they are convenient. The god of Originalism, Antonin Scalia, picks and chooses as much as anyone:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/01/another_scalia_contradiction.php
Even by their own standards it is not possible to judge decisions based on the Constitution of 1787 because of the revolutionary impact of the Civil War amendments and other changes in legal interpretation over the past 200 years. The greatest ‘activist’ decisions of the past fifty years typically rest on the 14th amendment’s guarantee of due process of the law http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment14/
Furthermore- I understand you’re not a religious man but if you were would you see yourself as a fundamentalist or would you recognize that there are sometimes contradictory dictates in the document and that some earlier pieces were effectively nullified by later additions? I’m not sure how interpreting the Constitution would be different.
I need to pipe in here. This country was founded on Christian values. However, I’m glad it wasn’t founded on Muslim values so I recognize the potential problems because I would be one damned unhappy woman forced to wear a Burka. At the same time, this is a country with freedom of speech and the U.S. press is being bigoted. They will denigrate Christianity and Jews all the time, but ohhhh no, not radical Islam. I’m beginning to think we are on the brink of world wide war and the liberal news media in this country better damn well wise up and stand up or shut up.
The founding fathers were Christians (of a sort) but the values that the country was based on were Enlightenment values. The writings of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau are infinitely more present in the founding documents than the Bible is.
That said, I’m also glad that we do not live in a repressive Muslim theocracy. But it’s a mistake to assume that every Muslim state in history can be equated with Saudi Arabia. The Ottoman Empire, for instance, (whatever its faults) was much more diverse and accepting of differences than equivilent Christian nations in Europe of its time.