Updated: There's some interesting discussion below about how McCain's amendment is actually all but useless, I don't know enough about it to comment on.
I just love reading Andrew Sullilvan swoon over Republicans like John McCain:
THE EVIL EMPIRE: Now, Cheney and Rumsfeld have to dismiss Vladimir Bukovsky on the central matter of what torture does to a country. Thank God for McCain.
And while I group McCain as one of the two Republican Senators whose every word I don't assume to be a lie (Chuck Hagel being the other), his support of George Bush has been a big part of the reason Bush is still President and gotten away with his deceitful campaign tactics for so long (similar to Tony Blair being responsible for the veneer of international legitimacy when invading Iraq). And while the McCain-Feingold act is no doubt the reason for sites like Daily Kos's success, and the pending Democratic takeover of the Congress in 2006, its hard on reflection to not believe any genuine commitment to common sense progressive politics was probably insisted on by Feingold, or only to serve McCain's own political aims: after all he doesn't have Bush's name and therefore his blind corporate support.
In the 2000 primaries, who's campaign spread visciously racist rumors that McCain had a
gasp black child?
Standing next to Bush on the stage was a veteran who went right at McCain, questioning his Vietnam service while Bush remained silent. A whisper campaign told voters that McCain had a black child.
And while he was honorable enough to counter similar slander about John Kerry in 2004, he had no problem campaigning for Bush and therefore be apart of Rove's campaign. That John McCain, what a guy: he only supports, but doesn't voice slander!
Earlier in 2004 he bravely questioned why BushCo and their pig-speaker Hastert would push for tax cuts in a time of war, but this year, just in time for Christmas, voted for screwing students and the sick, just as Jesus Christ would have I'm sure.
And where was Bush when Katrina struck? Why with McCain celebrating his birthday, because you know as a powerful US Senator McCain couldn't have known that a class 4-5 hurricane was about to hit New Orleans...no doubt preparing for his 2008 campaign by shoring up Bush's political base was more important.