In yesterday's New York Times, Charlie Savage reports
"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."
More after the jump.
This goes to the very heart of the argument that voting for McCain equals a third term for George Bush. Regardless of how he may try to distance himself from dubya, this piece reveals that he shares dubya's belief in virtually limitless executive power, and demolishes his claim to represent any kind of real change.
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.
I care much less about McCain's support for Bush's tax cuts and many other policy positions -- this piece proves that a McCain presidency would mean yet one more administration that is answerable to no one, and that the protections afforded us by the Constitution would continue to vanish, moving us ever closer to a police state.
The Obama campaign hit back clearly and directly, refusing to allow McCain to have it both ways:
Greg Craig, an Obama campaign adviser, said Wednesday that anyone reading Mr. McCain’s answers to The Globe and the more recent statement would be "ttally confused" about "what Senator McCain thinks about what the Constitution means and what President Bush did."
"merican voters deserve to know which side of this flip-flop he’s on today, and what he would do as president,"Mr. Craig said in a phone interview.
Full story here:
Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps