But on the other hand...

You have this:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday Supreme Court nominee John Roberts should not have to release Justice Department documents he wrote earlier.

It's almost as if he's schizophrenic. How does he get it right on the one issue and wrong on the other? It's maddening I tell you, simply maddening!

On the one hand

Senator McCain apparently seeks to do for the War on Terror what he did for campaign finance reform:

"What we're trying to do here is make sure there are clear and exact standards set for interrogation of prisoners," McCain said on the Senate floor. "To fight terrorism, we must obtain intelligence, but we have to ensure that it's reliable and acquired in a way that's humane."

Senate aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to let their names be used, said the measures were not toned down even though White House lobbying against them intensified late last week.

And before anyone chooses to jump down my throat, I do not condone torture. As soon as you can show me that the US systematically and as a matter of policy tortures those it holds in the WOT, I will scream as loudly as needs be to make it stop. In the meantime, we don't.

If we're not careful we're going to codify the kind of stepping back that began after Abu Ghraib. I don't personally think it a good idea.

The Last Boob reference

Yes, I promise!

From the Republic's Quick Hits today:

Senate candidate Claire Sargent made news in 1992 by calling for the election of "senators with breasts" because "we've been voting for boobs long enough." Her opponent in that race, Sen. John McCain, this week echoed her old joke. Shrugging off criticism for a cameo in a racy movie, he quipped to Jay Leno: "In Washington, I work with boobs every day."

The Movie Star responds

"I work with boobs every day!"

So says Senator McCain (tongue firmly planted in cheek) in response to the Drudgereport posting last week on his Wedding Crashers cameo. I enjoy politician's with a sense of humor, and it appears that Senator McCain is plenty willing to display his now and then.

Need more proof? The SNL skit where he attempts to turn the tide on Barbara Streisand should be all you need to see...

UPDATE: Tom Bevan weighs in with this at Real Clear Politics:

Via Drudge, I see John McCain has won the battle over the "boob-raunch fest" controversy by delivering the ultimate crowd-pleasing one liner: "In Washington, I work with boobs every day."

Thus has McCain turned a rather embarrassing case of hypocrisy into a humorous expression of the public's enmity toward Congress and a perfect extension of his image as a maverick. Touché.

Guest Starring

Senator McCain as Himself.

Hopelessly misguided

FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith is no longer serving on the Federal Elections Commission and shares some interesting things on the topic of McCain-Feingold and Campaign Finance reform. And a few things about Senator McCain as well.

Read the whole thing here. Some nice points include, but are not limited to:

Actually, there’s been only one truly major campaign-finance issue during Smith’s time at the FEC, and he hasn’t changed his mind about it. “I think McCain-Feingold has been demonstrably a failure,” he says. “I don’t know how people could say much else. On the other hand, I don’t know that it’s been as harmful as some people thought it would be, in part because the outlet remains there for 527s.”

Ouch!

After watching the senator for years, Smith believes McCain doesn’t truly understand his own signature issue. “He is woefully ill informed on campaign-finance issues,” Smith says. “I have seen him repeatedly misstate what the law is, misstate what court decisions held, and I think that’s one reason he gets so angry when he talks about it. It’s because he doesn’t really understand what a complex issue it is, what a difficult issue it is, he doesn’t understand the court hearings, he doesn’t understand how we’ve gotten where we are — so he just gets mad.”

Double Ouch!

Not worth the paper it was written on

Most of us figured as much when we originally heard the details of the agreement. Many of our worst fears appear borne out in this story today:

But several Senate Democrats who co-authored that deal countered that ideology is a legitimate line of inquiry and potentially a reason to block a nomination. "In my mind, extraordinary circumstances would include not only extraordinary personal behavior but also extraordinary ideological positions," said Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), a moderate the White House has been hoping to enlist to give bipartisan backing to the nominee.

The schism in interpretation suggested that the Senate filibuster deal crafted just two months ago to resolve an impasse over lower-court judicial nominations could unravel in the higher-stakes fight over the first Supreme Court vacancy in more than a decade.

At the same time, Drudge offered this little nugget straight from the horses mouth:

Schumer proudly declared: "We are contemplating how we are going to go to war over this." Schumer went on to say how hard it was to predict how a Supreme Court justice would turn out:"Even William Rehnquist is more moderate than they expected. The only ones that resulted how they predicted were [Antonin] Scalia and [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg. So most of the time they've gotten their picks wrong, and that's what we want to do to them again."

Schumer later went on to mock the "Gang of 14" judicial filibuster deal and said it wasn't relevant in the Supreme Court debate.

Granted, it's Drudge. You must make your own judgment and take it for what it's worth. That said, this just completes the picture of absolute ridiculousness that Senator McCain and Graham have given us.

Thanks guys! (Of course the silver lining in all this is that should things fall apart, the nuclear option becomes a possibility again.)

The Official Statement

Here is the official statement (in it's entirety) from Senator McCain on the Senate Energy Bill vote.

Arizona on Energy

Arizona's Republican Senators both voted against the Senate Energy bill. The bill passed with overwhelmingly bipartisan support yesterday, 85-12. Frankly, I'm perplexed.

In a joint statement, GOP Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain said the bill will not solve the nation's energy problems."

This bill does little to address the immediate energy crisis we face in this country," McCain said. "The handouts to big business and oil companies are irresponsible and will be disastrous for . . . Arizona."

He said the bill requires the use of 8 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012, up from the current annual use of 3.4 billion gallons. Arizona, he said, does not produce its own ethanol. Analysts said the ethanol provision was critical to gaining support from farm-state senators. "I predict that if this bill is enacted, gas prices in Arizona will increase, and air quality will be impaired because of its ethanol mandates," Kyl said. "The bill does little to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and will impose huge new costs on Arizona power consumers because of the bill's national one-size-fits-all renewable portfolio standard."

Of course Arizona does not produce it's own ethanol; we don't farm any corn here in the Sonoran desert. We already import every drop of gasoline we use today, regardless of formulation. How exactly is importing ethanol going to result in more- or less-expensive fuel at the pump? Details, please...

Some of our Senators colleagues disagree: The chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, Pete Domenici, R-N.M., hailed the legislation as "an energy bill worthy of our times." Citing incentives for nuclear power and for energy sources such as wind and solar, Domenici said, "This is a bill that could indeed be called the clean energy act of 2005."

This cuts to the heart of the matter; is the point of any new Energy policy to move the nation toward greater energy independence or is it something else? If it is something else, I'd love to hear from the Senators exactly what they think that is. As the second Republic piece puts it: But the Senate bill sets an ambitious goal of weaning the country from its dependence on oil and contains far more provisions than the House version to encourage the production of alternative fuels. The Senate measure contains $16 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for energy producers and consumers, double what the House bill provides.

Yet Senators Kyl and McCain both argue against it, claiming that the bill is a boon for big oil. I am beyond confused at this point.

UPDATE: 7/1/2005:

In an effort to clarify the McCain/Kyl votes on the Senate Engergy Bill, I give you this from The Arizona Republic:

To get the efficiency and renewable power that America needs, a Senate energy bill would make us choke on ethanol. For Arizona, the tradeoff is dicey.

...

But the big fuel in the Senate bill is ethanol: a mandate for Americans to use 8 billion gallons of it annually by 2012. That's 2 1/2 times our current consumption. And it doesn't work for Arizona.

We'd pay more money than drivers in many other states, which have the corn supplies to produce their ethanol close to home. And we'd have dirtier air. Adding ethanol to gasoline in warm months would contribute to air pollution. The bill actually recognizes this problem for California, which would get a summertime exemption. The Senate and House bills are loaded with goodies for individual members of Congress. Do we really need to spend $8 million to study the prospects for producing fuel from sugar cane? The ethanol requirements and the size of the tax incentives were among the reasons Arizona Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain voted against the bill.

Now, as I said in the original post, of course we'd have to import any and all ethanol. So?

I cannot speak to the point of clean air and burning ethanol in the heat of summer; I presume the position as stated is true. But when it comes to whether or not this is cheaper, I'm not sure I get the argument.

Check out this post from April and compute the difference between $2.27 and $1.83. Having done that, please then enumerate the argument as to why mandatory ethanol use will increase the cost of fuel and energy in Arizona.

Given the current dynamics of the gas & oil markets, I have a hard time swallowing that.