McCain

‘Birther’ lawsuits have been immediately dismissed on standing, rather than facts, stirring a conspiracy that can never be disproved by its faithful believers.

People have been tweeting at me to provide a roll call for yesterday’s OMG-worth vote to kill the F-22, so here’s one. As it appeared yesterday, the vote was relatively nonpartisan: while the 58-40 tally to end funding for the fighter jet was carried by the Democrats, 15 Republicans joined the successful effort. The votes [...]

Here’s Sen. Carl Levin’s (D-Mich.) statement on today’s passage of his amendment to strip F-22 funding from the defense authorization:
Today’s vote is a significant victory for our men and women in uniform, for the taxpayers and for reforming the way we do business in Washington. The Senate faced a simple question today: If not now, [...]

Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.)’s amendment to strip funding for the F-22 fighter jet passed five minutes ago on the Senate floor. Levin’s office recorded the vote as 58 in favor and 40 against. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has just won his first major legislative fight over defense reform. It’s a significant [...]

In this corner: President Obama, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, (reluctantly) the service secretary and chief of staff of  the Air Force, this very smart Air Force captain, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), and the current threat environment the U.S. faces. In that corner: Rep. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a [...]

Today was supposed to be a critical day for the Obama administration’s efforts to kill the troubled F-22 fighter jet. It goes like this: the Senate is taking up the fiscal 2010 defense authorization, which 13 pro-F-22 Senators on the Armed Services Committee last month used as a vehicle to overturn Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ [...]

Something I didn’t know but Brandon Friedman at VoteVets did: a staff sergeant leading an infantry squad in Afghanistan makes, with combat pay, about $44,500 per year. And it costs about $42,000 per hour to fly an F-22, a fighter jet never used in post-9/11 combat at a time when the two wars the United [...]

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wants to know why the Justice Department’s David Kris thinks the military commissions need to withstand constitutional scrutiny by the courts. Does this mean the administration thinks the detainees might have constitutional rights, McCain asked. “Yes, they do,” Kris answered. “Our analysis, [...]

Obviously I don’t have any stake in the reputation-destruction fight going on in Politico between Bill Kristol and ex-McCain campaign foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann on one side and ex-McCain strategist Steve Schmidt on the other. But I couldn’t stop laughing at this:
Scheunemann, confirming that his e-mail had been searched, accused Schmidt of “acting in [...]

Jake Tapper of ABC News uses Twitter to goad Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) into saying what he’d be doing about Iran if roughly nine million Americans had done something different with their ballots. Quick transcription:
jaketapper: WH says it needs to focus on Iran’s nuke program/support for terror, must deal w Iran we have not 1 [...]