Mccain

On September 8, 2004 JUANITA MCCAIN. Friends may call at the FAMILY OWNED MARCH FUNERAL HOME WEST, INC., 4300 Wabash Avenue on Monday after 8:30 A.M. Family will receive friends on Tuesday at the Faith Tabernacle Church, 2422 W. Patapsco Avenue at 12:00 P.M., with services to follow at 12:30 P.M.

Sarah Palin says it's a lie. Her press spokeswoman calls it "sick. " Other supporters of the former Alaska governor refer to it as a "hit job" - concocted by Hollywood leftists and the liberal media. Filmed in and around Baltimore last year, " HBO "s "Game Change," won't premiere until next Saturday. But even mostly sight unseen, the two-hour made-for-TV movie about John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign has generated a torrent of debate. Taking on a polarizing figure like Sarah Palin already makes "Game Change" one of the most evocative productions of the year.

The first of "the Keating Five" senators, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., went before the Senate Ethics Committee yesterday to be cross-examined by committee members and counsel. It was not a pretty spectacle, and it suggests much uglier business next week.Senator McCain and Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, who also testified yesterday, appear to be the least culpable of the five senators accused of improperly influencing government regulators on behalf of financier Charles Keating. Robert S. Bennett, the Ethics Committee counsel, has recommended that the committee drop charges against the two.Yet consider one exchange yesterday between Senator McCain and Ethics Committee Chairman Howell Heflin, D-Ala.

It's good to see that U.S. Sen. John McCainis still just as clueless as he was four years ago, but I'm sure the Chinese were not as amused as I was by his warnings that the "Arab Spring" was coming soon to China. It's too bad they didn't point out to Senator McCain that the "Arab Spring" has already come to America, under the banner of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I'm sure the senator would have found their remarks just as amusing as they found his. William Smith, Baltimore

DES MOINES -- You didn't need a map the other night to know that the six surviving Republican presidential candidates were debating in Iowa. Except for Sen. John McCain, who isn't actively competing in the Jan. 24 precinct caucuses here, they bent over backwards to tell Iowans what they wanted to hear: a pro-farm family, anti-abortion, Christian message.And each of the other five candidates -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, Gary Bauer, Sen. Orrin Hatch and Alan Keyes -- tried to outdo the others in convincing such folks that he is the most God-loving, child-protecting and farm-preserving of the bunch.

WASHINGTON -- It may well be that the only reason Republican Sen. John McCain entertained Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle at his digs in Sedona, Ariz., over the weekend was to gaze at the sagebrush. But the timing and circumstances that provided the backdrop for their cozy meeting made more speculation of a McCain party switch inevitable. With Sen. Jim Jeffords' own leap to independent party status fresh in the public mind, it was only natural that the little get-together would send tongues wagging of yet another political love affair -- or at least a soft Democratic shoulder for another unrequited Republican to cry on. One or more of Mr. McCain's own political aides fanned the speculation with reports of conversations with other Democrats and McCain insiders about the chances of a third-party McCain bid for the presidency in 2004 -- if he finds himself mishandled by President Bush between now and then.

On a day he became the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain arrived at a veterans hall in Halethorpe, where he was greeted by about three dozen supporters waving signs and chanting his name. But not all inside were as enthusiastic last night about the Arizona senator. Many had bought tickets to see former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, only to learn yesterday he had abruptly dropped out of the race. At least one person in the audience wore a Romney shirt, and others said they were voting for McCain reluctantly.

My 401(k) is down $21,000 since the end of September. And Sen. John McCain thinks I should be worried about William Ayers. Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are strange days. And it's difficult not to empathize with the Arizona senator, who has spent these last weeks flailing like a man trying to hit a fastball in the dark. His campaign has lurched about looking for ways to connect; the attempt to tie Sen. Barack Obama to Mr. Ayers, a one-time '60s radical, is among the most desperate and disappointing.

WASHINGTON -- Whatever his future, it is already fair to say that John S. McCain has left an impressive legacy in American politics. In his brief walk across the national stage, the Republican from Arizona has demonstrated that there are a substantial number of Americans who will respond positively to a candidate who says what's on his mind without parsing every sentence. That substantial number was not, of course, a majority of those who voted in Repubican primaries. They were outnumbered by those who preferred a far more conventional politician, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.

"Senator Obama didn't support the surge, wanted to pull out, said that it would fail. I supported it when it was the toughest thing to do. I believe that my record on national security and keeping this country safe is there. And the American people will examine our records, and I will win." That's John McCain explaining why he'll win. He's wrong. He's leading a loud chorus of conservatives and Republicans desperate to make the surge the defining issue of the campaign. It's understandable why so many Republicans see the surge as an ideal political battleground.

The politics-by-the-numbers game we play has been quirkily friendly to Mitt Romney. He was able to waltz into New Hampshire a week before its Republican presidential primary boasting of being a winner in the Iowa caucuses. He could do so despite the fact that he beat former Sen. Rick Santorum, a mere asterisk in the standings a week earlier, by the infinitesimal margin of eight votes. In doing so, and after spending millions in an 11th-hour effort to make up for his near-absenteeism in Iowa, he actually won six fewer votes than he had garnered in his second-place finish there four years ago. Until that late gambling surge, the former Massachusetts governor had pretty much kissed off Iowa as unwelcome terrain.

Michael Ian Black facetiously named his stand-up special "Very Famous" — but it's true, depending on whom you ask. Black, the snarky comedian best known for his pop-culture takedowns on VH1, is a cult-hero for his work on MTV's '90s sketch-comedy show "The State," playing McKinley in "Wet Hot American Summer" and as a strange bowling alley manager on the NBC show "Ed. " He's currently headlining his "Black is White" comedy tour (which stops...

"I would find myself trussed up and left for hours in ropes, my biceps bound tightly with several loops to cut off my circulation and the end of the rope cinched behind my back, pulling my shoulders and elbows unnaturally close together. It was incredibly painful. " — Sen. John McCain from his book, "Faith of My Fathers" "[John McCain] doesn't understand how enhanced interrogation works. " — former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum For the record, John McCain was learning "how enhanced interrogation works" when Rick Santorum was still trying to find a good acne cream.

For those who don't know, U.S. Senator John McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for five years, where he saw up close the terrible, ineffective nature of torture. McCain has since spoken out against torture (aka "enhanced interrogation techniques") for these very reasons.  "In my personal experience, the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence, but often produces bad intelligence," McCain said on the floor of the Senate recently. "Under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear -- whether it is true or false -- if he believes it will relieve his suffering.

On weekday mornings, I'll post the most controversial, shocking and (of course) ridiculous stories for your reading pleasure. That way, when you walk into work, you'll be the master of witty conversation. National  • Flip flop? Romney says he'd undo Obama's health care program . (USA Today)  • More reason to be glad he's dead: Bin Laden obsessed with more U.S. attack s. (Washington Post)  • Ruppersberger to see  bin Laden death photos . (Baltimore Sun)

A Marylander who served as George W. Bush 's No. 2 at the federal Small Business Administration — one whose name was out there four years ago as a possible running mate for then-Gov. Bob Ehrlich — has popped up in a less flattering political context. Melanie Sabelhaus appears in an infomercial that helped sink former Arizona Rep. J.D. Hayworth 's hopes of beating Senator John McCain in the Republican primary. In the infomercial, which McCain used as an issue in the campaign, Hayworth played pitchman for National Grants Conferences, a company that made dubious promises to hook people up with free government grants, earning it an F from the Better Business Bureau and getting it crosswise with 24 state attorneys general.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is learning, if he didn't already know it, that his Republican colleague, John McCain, is not a man to be trifled with. When Mr. McCain discovered last week that Mr. Lott was holding back the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill passed by the Senate rather than sending it to the House for consideration, he pushed through an unusual resolution calling on the Senate leader to do so. It was an embarrassment to Mr. Lott, particularly coming at the instigation of the Senate Republicans' most prominent maverick.

WASHINGTON -- Republican Sen. John McCain is not a man to thumb your nose at. He made that clear once again the other day in serving notice to would-be scuttlers of the new campaign finance law he spent seven years helping to steer through Congress. Barely more than a week after the law went into effect, Mr. McCain fired the opening volley of a new drive to confront artful dodging by the national parties, including his own, and others to evade the "soft money" ban. The ban is the core reform of the law that he, Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Democratic Rep. Marty Meehan of Massachusetts and Republican Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut pushed through earlier this year.

Leonard Pitts' column appears regularly. His e-mail is lpitts@miamiherald.com. We are gathered here today to pay our final respects to John McCain's integrity. It died recently — turned a triple somersault, stiffened like an exclamation point, fell to the floor with its tongue hanging out — when the senator told Newsweek magazine, "I never considered myself a maverick." This, after the hard-fought presidential campaign of 2008 in which Mr. McCain, his advertising team, his surrogates and his running mate all but tattooed the "M" word on their foreheads.

As we observe today's first anniversary of Barack Obama's inauguration, Sen. John McCain must be having quite a laugh. Back during the 2008 presidential election, my liberal friends warned me that if I voted for Mr. McCain, America would stay in Iraq and escalate in Afghanistan, propping up the corrupt government there. They said that Guantanamo would stay open, harming America's image abroad. Unemployment would rise, and the Bush-era deficits would continue to mortgage America's future.