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"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32
WEBCommentary Contributor
Author:  Michael J. Gaynor
Bio: Michael J. Gaynor
Date:  February 2, 2008
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McCain, Politically Opportunistic Liar

McCain's true attitude toward Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. recently became public and McCain is lying about it!

Some of John McCain's alleged conservatism is real, but hardly all of it.

It has been revealed that McCain publicly proclaimed the conservative position on issues, but quietly cooperated with the liberals on them.

It also has been revealed, by John Fund of The Wall Street Journal, that McCain privately dismissed Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. as a person who "wears his conservatism on his sleeve" and not McCain's idea of what a United States Supreme Court Justice should be.

It got worse: McCain lied about it instead of admitting it.

McCain's a liar.

It's sad, but true.

Ann Coulter just said so too.

Ann, January 30, 2008: "...McCain lies a lot...."

Ann elaborated:

"Recently, McCain responded to Mitt Romney's statement that he understood the economy based on his many years in the private sector by claiming Romney had said a military career is not a 'real job.'

"McCain's neurotic boast that he is the only Republican who supported the surge is beginning to sound as insane as Bill Clinton's claim to being the 'first black president' -- although less insulting to blacks. As with the Clintons, you find yourself looking up such tedious facts as this, which ran a week after Bush announced the surge:

'On the morning of Bush's address, Romney endorsed a troop surge.' -- The National Journal, Jan. 13, 2007

"And yet for the 4 billionth time, at the Jan. 5, 2008, Republican debate, McCain bragged about his own raw courage in supporting the surge despite (apocryphal) Republican attacks, saying: 'I said at the time that Gen. Petraeus and his strategy must be employed, and I was criticized by Republicans at that time. And that was a low point, but I stuck to it. I didn't change.'

"A review of contemporaneous news stories about the surge clearly demonstrates that the only Republicans who were so much as 'skeptical' of the surge consisted of a few oddball liberal Republicans such as Sens. Gordon Smith, Norm Coleman and Olympia Snowe.

"They certainly weren't attacking McCain, their standard-bearer in liberal Republicanism. But even if they were, it was a 'low point' for McCain being 'criticized' by the likes of Olympia Snowe?"

Ann warned, "like the Democrats, McCain thinks if he simply says something over and over again, he can make people believe it's true. Thus again at the South Carolina debate on Jan. 10, McCain was proclaiming that he was 'the only one on this stage' who supported the surge."

It's a big problem that the much of the media is helping McCain peddle his lies, and a bigger one that McCain became the kind of candidate he's supposed to despise.

Ann did not allow McCain to get away even with his political analysis lies.

Ann:

"Mr. Straight Talk ...announced...: 'One of the reasons why I won in New Hampshire is because I went there and told them the truth.' That and the fact that Democrats were allowed to vote in the Republican primary.

"Even in the Florida primary, allegedly limited to Republicans, McCain lost among Republicans. (Seventeen percent of the Republican primary voters in Florida called themselves 'Independents.')

Ann asked the obvious question, "... why would any Republican vote for McCain?," and warned: "At least under President Hillary, Republicans in Congress would know that they're supposed to fight back. When President McCain proposes the same ideas -- tax hikes, liberal judges and Social Security for illegals -- Republicans in Congress will support 'our' president ...."

Even more importantly, as stated, McCain's true attitude toward Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. recently became public and McCain is lying about it!

Wendy Long, Judicial Confirmation Network General Counsel, in a Bench Memo title "He Said It" at National Review Online:

"It is incontrovertible. Multiple sources confirm that they remember it the same way. And they are not John Fund's source, as Novak reports.

"Maybe McCain forgot. Other people didn't. They, and many Americans, are genuinely concerned about this issue. As my post on Alito testimony reflects, this was indeed an issue in his confirmation. That Alito was purportedly a 'conservative ideologue' was a myth cooked up by liberal antagonists trying to bring down his nomination. Which is why so many people from across the political spectrum who knew then-Judge Alito came forward to refute it.

"McCain, long after the fact, repeated what the Ted Kennedy / Moveon / People for the American Way crowd said about Alito. We don't know what to make of it, because it's as outlandish as if McCain had said, 'As President, I will not send a man to the moon, because the moon wears its green cheese on its sleeve.'

"It makes no sense. But he said it. Whether he remembers the specific comment or not, he did say it. So we need to try to understand it, or at least get some pretty detailed commitments from Senator McCain going forward. I hope he, and others, will understand why this is necessary. A President who confuses adherence to judicial restraint with conservative political decisions is very confused about how to select judges. It is one thing to vote for, and even praise, judges some other chief executive has picked (especially when it would be political suicide not to). It is another to discern good Supreme Court appointments. Just ask Ronald Reagan, or George Bush (pere or fils, take your pick)."

A man of McCain's age forgetting such a remark might seem plausible, as Mrs. Long indicated, but a reliable source said that McCain is furious that Mr. Fund discovered what he had said and opted to lie.

McCain owes Americans the truth and Justice Alito an apology.

Mrs. Long's post on Alito testimony, aptly titled "McCain and Alito: 'conservatism on his sleeve'...not": "Senator John McCain, as recently reported and discussed here and on The Corner, has said privately that he would not appoint jurists like Justice Samuel Alito, because he 'wears his conservatism on his sleeve.'

"To refresh recollections: many of Justice Alito's former law clerks, fellow Article III judges, and others — a good number of whom were liberal Democrats — testified during his Senate confirmation to the exact opposite proposition: that Justice Alito did not wear any political ideology or convictions 'on his sleeve.'

"Just a sampling of that testimony:'Katherine L. Pringle (former law clerk, 'committed and active Democrat'): 'I learned in my year with Judge Alito that his approach to judging is not about personal ideology or ambition, but about hard work and devotion to law and justice. . . . Judge Alito did not, in my experience, ever treat a case as a platform for a personal agenda or ambition. Rather, his decisions are limited to the issue at hand. They demonstrate an effort to interpret honestly, and faithfully apply, the law to the parties that seek justice before him . . . .'

'Jack White (former law clerk, member of the NAACP and the ACLU): 'Working for Judge Alito, I saw in him an abiding loyalty to a fair judicial process as opposed to an enslaved inclination toward a political or personal ideology. . . . What I found most intriguing and particularly exceptional about Judge Alito’s judicial decision-making process was the conspicuous absence of personal predilections. . . . After a year of working closely with the judge on cases concerning a wide variety of legal issues, I left New Jersey not knowing Judge Alito’s personal beliefs on any of them. The reason I did not know Judge Alito’s personal beliefs was that the jurist’s ideology was never an issue in any case he considered while I was in his chambers. In fact, it is never an issue in any case. My fellow former co-clerks have agreed and communicated this notion in a letter we provided to this committee.'

'Judge Edward Becker (Third Circuit Court of Appeals): 'The Sam Alito that I have sat with for fifteen years is not an ideologue. He is not a movement person. He is a real judge, deciding each case on the facts and the law, not on his personal views whatever they may be. . . . Sam is said to have certain ideological views, expressed in some twenty-year-old memos. Whatever these views may have been, his judging does not reflect them. . . . Sam is faithful to his judicial oath.'

'The Honorable Anthony Scirica (Chief Judge, Third Circuit Court of Appeals): 'Judge Alito approaches each case with an open mind, and determines the proper application of the relevant law to the facts. He has a deep respect for precedent. His reasoning is scrupulous and meticulous. He does not reach out to decide issues not presented in the case. His personal views, whatever they might be, do not jeopardize the independence of his legal reasoning or his capacity to approach each issue with an open mind.'

'Mr. Stephen L. Tober (Chairman, American Bar Association): 'The Standing Committee has unanimously concluded that Judge Alito is 'Well Qualified' to serve as Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court. His integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament are indeed found to be of the highest standing.

'Judge Alito is an individual who, we believe, sees majesty in the law, respects it, and remains a dedicated student of it to this day.'

'Charles Fried (Former United States Solicitor General, who worked with Justice Alito in that office from the latter part of 1984 until he left the office at the end of 1985): 'Alito was highly respected. Nor do I recall anyone bothering to mention that he had any particular political coloration. In preparation for this testimony I have checked my recollection with several alumni of the office from that time and they confirm what I report here.'"

Don't count on McCain apologizing now, however.

As McCain admitted after the 2000 presidential campaign, he deceived and pandered to South Carolinians because he was desperate to win the primary.

If Justice Alito ever gets that apology, it will be AFTER McCain's figures telling the truth will not hurt his political prospects.

Pray that Justice Alito gets that apology (for McCain's sake, not Justice Alito's sake).

Michael J. Gaynor

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Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.


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