McCain

Carrying forward a conservative attack on the Obama administration’s handling of the interrogation and prosecution of would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), at this morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates whether Abdulmutallab should be tried in a military commission instead of a federal court. Gates deferred, [...]

Robert Gates vs. John McCain! Decency vs. bigotry! National security vs. … well, bigotry!
The Senate Armed Services Committee was probably always going to get into discussing President Obama’s call to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” during its Tuesday hearing with the defense secretary about next year’s proposed defense budget. But just now the [...]

President Obama called on Congress to repeal the ban on openly gay people serving in the military last night. The path to doing so runs through the Senate Armed Services Committee, where Defense Secretary Robert Gates — who applauded the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” line in Obama’s State of the Union — is set to [...]

It’s not exactly surprising that some Republicans would be using the failed Christmas terror plot to grandstand and try to thwart President Obama’s plans to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, but there’s something particularly disconcerting when leading senators such as John McCain (R-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) intentionally distort [...]

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) sent a letter to President Obama today asking him to halt the transfer of six Guantanamo detainees to Yemen. The request, they say, is in light of the danger they’ve apparently just now realized Yemen poses, because Nigerian terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has [...]

With the expected announcement of the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois, a Republican-driven hysteria is virtually guaranteed. That’s as empty as it is uninteresting. What’s interesting is whether the Republicans’ 2008 presidential nominee and national security elder statesman, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), joins in the action.

And here we are at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. The two leaders of the committee have their own issues with the Afghanistan strategy, judging by last week’s hearings with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sen. [...]

One day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hammered him for “flip-flopping” on Medicare cuts, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) fired back this morning on the Senate floor (starting at 0:16 in this clip). McCain cited a FactCheck.org analysis from the 2008 presidential campaign that debunked a claim in one of then-Sen. Barack Obama’s ads [...]

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), after having pledged support to the strategy articulated by his presidential rival, gets upset over the July 2011 transition “strategic inflection point.” He all but called it deceitful, and asked Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if setting the date contradicts counterinsurgency principles that call for reassuring [...]

There’s talk about how Iran’s apparent rejection of President Obama’s outreach represents the end of a 2008 campaign goal. And it’s not exactly wrong, though it may be premature. But in today’s Washington Post, it’s clear that another, darker campaign vow is returning, this time about Pakistan.
Beginning in 2007, candidate Obama suggested that his administration [...]