When will John McCain again make an ass of himself?

In case anyone hasn't noticed, Arizona Senator John McCain has been making a fool of himself lately, on a weekly if not daily basis, his rants seeming to be fueled by an unhealthy mix of anger and envy, with not insignificant hints of racism and misogyny thrown in for good measure. The direct, and at times indirect, object of his rage has been President Barack Obama, who beat McCain substantially in the 2008 presidential election and who had the gall to be reelected by a significant electoral margin again this month--much, apparently, to McCain's chagrin.


McCain has never liked Obama. Ever. Their feud goes back to Obama's first years in the U.S. Senate, when McCain felt that Obama betrayed him over lobbying reform legislation. It resulted in a scathing letter issued to Obama (and reportedly drafted by McCain's then alter-ego Mark Salter) in February of 2006:


...


That there are significant questions that still need to be answered in respect to the Benghazi attack goes without saying. But McCain's anger-driven grandstanding brings us no closer to the light.

As McCain insiders have noted for some time--and, for my book, The Lies of Sarah Palin, I interviewed many of his longtime associates, both on and off the record--there have always been two John McCains. One is the avuncular, fun-loving McCain who guided the Straight-Talk Express with a pirate's patch over one eye in the 2000 Republican presidential primary; the other is the brooding, mean-spirited curmudgeon who has come to define his persona ever since his loss to Obama in 2008. Think Ahab in an ill-fitting suit. "McCain can be an absolute asshole," one of his advisers told me two years ago. "There's no escaping that."

Given his profound antipathy toward Obama, it's the latter John McCain that has dominated what will surely be his final term in the U.S. Senate. He's become a bitter, petulant bully, with nothing left to lose, except, apparently his personal dignity and what is left of his political reputation. Which is too bad. It was the bipartisan, independent maverick that first catapulted McCain to national prominence. Today, it is the ever more conservative and impulsive party hack that promises to stain his legacy permanently.

Unfortunately, this is also the same John McCain who appears virtually every Sunday morning on the network talk-show circuit, launching attacks on President Obama and his associates. It's a poor choice by the networks for a dance partner. McCain's anger-driven, personalized, caustic, and often fact-free ramblings do little to advance this country's cause, either at home or around the world.
much more

which the former fighter pilot

The only ranking Republican spot available to him next session will be on the Indian Affairs Committee.

Members of the 7th Cavalry attacked Big Foot's band of Sioux ghost dancers in retaliation for Sitting Bull's humiliating defeat of George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, fourteen years earlier. At Wounded Knee, the soldiers used four semi-automatic Hotchkiss guns to massacre an encampment of mostly women, children, and old people.

http://www.savagesandscoundrels.org/events-landmarks/1890-wounded-knee/

WASHINGTON (CBS / AP) — The controversial detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be closed and the 166 detainees being held there could be absorbed safely by U.S. prisons, a government report says.

Many of the detainees are accused of plotting terrorist acts against the United States.

“This report demonstrates that if the political will exists, we could finally close Guantanamo without imperiling our national security,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman who released the Government Accountability Office study Wednesday.

The GAO study (.pdf) shows that U.S. prisons already hold 373 prisoners convicted of terrorism in 98 facilities across the country.

“As far as I know, there hasn’t been a single security problem reported in any of these cases,” Feinstein said. “This fact outweighs not only the high cost of maintaining Guantanamo—which costs more than $114 million a year—but also provides the same degree of security without the criticism of operating a military prison in an isolated location.”

The study said there are six Defense Department prisons and 98 Justice Department prisons that could take the detainees, but it does say that existing facilities likely would need to be modified and current inmates may need to be relocated to make room for the new arrivals.

President Barack Obama ordered the closing of the Guantanamo’s detention facility when he took office in 2009, but that was blocked by a Republican-led bill that cut off funding to move the detainees to the U.S. The lawmakers cited security concerns, saying the presence of the detainees would encourage terror attacks in the states or cities where they were being held.

Feinstein commissioned the study in 2008 to find out where the detainees could be held, if the White House was able to move ahead with Guantanamo’s closure.

Many of the detainees are accused of plotting terrorist acts against the United States.