You know it's election season when the flip-flops come out of the closet.  No, not the shoes, but the accusations -- made popular beyond belief by critics of John Kerry in '04 -- that politicians are swapping an old position for a new one.  A little spring cleaning around election time, if you will.

The latest flip-flop accusation was yesterday, with Senator Robert Menendez accusing John McCain of flip-flopping on immigration in an interview with the Huffington Post.   From the article:

Democrats introduce a common-sense bill to compensate service members affected by the President's excessive use of the "stop loss" policy:

Service members whose military careers are involuntarily extended by stop-loss orders would be compensated $1,500 a month for each additional month of service under a bill introduced Friday in the Senate.

The bill, S 3060, would not only affect the estimated 4,000 soldiers now affected by stop-loss, but also would retroactively apply to the more than 58,000 people whose retirements have been delayed or whose enlistments have been extended because the services decided they were needed on active duty.

The $1,500 payment would be paid for serving even one day of a month beyond the period when service was supposed to end.

The average stop-loss has forced service members to remain on active duty for an additional 6.6 months, which means that the bill, if it were to become law, would result in average payments of $10,500 to those whose lives have been changed by the policy.

The bill is being introduced by Senator Lautenberg (D-NJ), and is cosponsored by Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Bob Casey (D-PA).

In 2004, when John Kerry was calling out President Bush on his abuse of the military's stop-loss policy, John McCain joined Kerry in calling the process a "backdoor draft." Stop-loss, McCain said, "a terrible thing for morale." Meanwhile, in this election season, John McCain's military advisor, Ralph Peters, has claimed that stop-loss is "a myth of the left."

So how will the "new" John McCain vote on this bill, if he shows up to vote at all (let us remember that McCain failed to even show up for the vote on the Senator Webb's GI Bill). Given his track record, a "yes" vote from McCain on this would be a pleasant surprise. As Matthew Yglesias notes:

It's worth noting that not only did John McCain oppose Jim Webb's bill expanding educational benefits for veterans, but he has a long track record of fairly stingy behavior on veterans' issues. As Hilzoy puts it "McCain has supported basic appropriations for vets. However, when there are two competing proposals, he generally chooses the cheaper one, and often, when only one proposal to increase benefits is available, he opposes it."

This was originally posted on Citizen Orange.

It may not be politically viable, I may be attacking allies in this post, but someone needs to say it.  In the wake of shocking exposes in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and 60 Minutes, it looks like there's actually some movement from the U.S. government to enact some pro-migrant, or better said, less anti-migrant federal legislation.   Nina Bernstein and Julia Preston of the New York Times report in "Better Health Care Sought for Detained Immigrants".

When I first decided to run for the Congressional seat in New Jersey's Fifth District, I did it because I knew that I wanted to be a voice for the families of North Jersey who have not had a voice in Washington the past five years.

Tuesday night, I met with leaders of the Ramapough Mountain Indians, whose land was used as a dumping ground for industrial waste for nearly two decades, and are now left to deal with the after-effects of an industry which has since pulled its jobs, and the wealth that came with it, out of the community.

Some of the excruciating details of their plight can be found at this invaluable website, http://toxiclegacy.com/ .  

Hillary Clinton really told off those those ELITIST economists on Sunday morning with Little George.   These so-called "experts" had the gall to oppose her gas tax pander holiday, and The Woman who has Testicles (h/t: James Matalin-Carville)  stood up and smacked them down good:

INDIANAPOLIS — This morning, George Stephanopoulos began his televised interview with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton by asking if she could name a single economist who supported her plan for a gas-tax suspension.

Mrs. Clinton did not. “I’m not going to put in my lot with economists,” she said on the ABC program “This Week.” A few moments later, she added, “Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.”

(more...)

You know it is truly the silliest of silly seasons when journalists get audibly excited (as WNYC’s Brian Lehrer did last week) because they get to take a break from covering Rev. Jeremiah Wright in order to cover what is being called an “actual issue.” I say the silliest of silly because that “issue” is the John McCain/Hillary Clinton proposal for a summertime federal gas-tax “holiday.”

Existing head of agency leaves for a high-paying lobbying job in the industry they were "regulating."
Check.
Another crony steps in to continue destruction of the agency.
Check.
Crony comes up for approval in the Senate amid dire warnings of "confirm or else" from the chimperor.
Check
Senate blusters about not confirming and then caves.
Check...No?

How did that happen?

By Michelle Richardson, ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

The press is reporting a big win for the White House yesterday in its ability to stop a more moderate spying bill from supplanting a grossly more intrusive one in the Senate debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reauthorization. But the bigger story is that those senators concerned with the privacy rights of innocent Americans are poised to turn the tide and reclaim some modicum of control over the government surveillance bill.