John McCain talked on Tuesday about how he disagreed with the President to try and convince his critics that he won't be Bush's third term. He backed that up with dissing a Bush fundraiser for Congressional candidates (not money for him of course). Political theater aside, John McCain really is another George Bush. He wants to continue his tax cuts, his wars and now he wants to continue shredding the Constitution by making it a-ok to illegally wiretap American citizens without a warrant.
From The NY Times:
WASHINGTON — 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.
Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.
And if Mr. McCain is elected president, Mr. Holtz-Eakin added, he would do everything he could to prevent terrorist attacks, “including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.”
I guess in their minds, Article II trumps the Bill of Rights, especially the one that prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." Just like under George Bush, Article II trumps everything, including the checks and balances system set up to prevent the President from becoming too powerful. Our Congress has failed recently to rein in George Bush's abuses of the Constitution, but now it is the people's turn to ensure that another Bush-like Presidency with John McCain does not occur. This year the people want change and there is nothing to believe in when you have John McCain up in front of an audience....unless perhaps if they were a bunch of telecom executives.
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