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The Constitution was written to provide a framework. John McCain and many public servants like him need to ponder that.


 

 

 

John McCain and the Constitution

He's the darling of the media, the heroic champion of campaign finance "reform" and the independent maverick who finally outmaneuvered the U.S. Senate leadership to get his way. John McCain is also one of the greatest enemies of the U.S. Constitution in any position to affect it.

Just as McCain's ignominious role as one of the Keating Five, his own brush with serious ethics violations, is now rarely discussed by the media, his ignorance of or disdain for constitutional protections arouses little interest.

The proof, ample and abiding, is in the record. John McCain has served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and is currently in his 3rd term in the U.S. Senate, amounting to more than 18 years in Washington. In all that time, while he has given some requisite lip service to other legislation, he has truly been exceptionally active in the passage of only four bills, one of which is a story for another day because, while quite informative about the real John McCain, it does not impinge on constitutional issues.

Exhibit One, not law today because the U.S. Supreme Court said it could not be, is the line-item veto, passed in 1996. It would have provided the President with the authority to strike individual provisions from spending and tax bills without having to veto omnibus bills in their entirety. John McCain had been a longtime advocate and forceful sponsor of the legislation, which was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in a concurring opinion with the 6-3 majority, chided the Congress. "Failure of political will does not justify unconstitutional remedies. Abdication of responsibility is not part of the constitutional design," he wrote.

Exhibit Two is the so-called "Children's Internet Protection Act," again championed by John McCain. Passed in December 2000, the law mandates that schools and libraries apply filters to computers to deny Internet access to obscene materials. Those schools and libraries that do not comply will lose federal technology assistance funds.

In March 2001, the American Library Association and the American Civil Liberties Union filed separate lawsuits, likely to be combined, to have the legislation overturned. Those groups have twice before been successful in constitutional challenges to Internet restrictions.

Exhibit Three is McCain-Feingold, the campaign finance "reform" bill, for which McCain has been campaigning for years. Finally passed by the Senate in April, the bill faces an unknown fate in the House, but an almost certain one at the U.S. Supreme Court if it eventually passes and is signed by the President. The weight of unconstitutional provisions is so great that the only real question is how many lawsuits will be filed.

That each of these three bills championed by McCain has popularity is unquestioned, and he has had co-conspirators aplenty in his disregard for the Constitution. A line-item veto might well bring more cost effectiveness to a system that is often out of control. The evil of those who prey on children, on the Internet and otherwise, is unspeakable. There is abundant corruption in politics. But for each of these problems, and others, there are solutions that are sound and constitutional.

The Constitution was written to provide a framework, an inviolable structure for the Republic that would persevere. The Bill of Rights was written in recognition that the politically popular course is sometimes, perhaps painfully, not the right course. For neither expediency nor exploitation can any of those tenets be cast aside. John McCain and many public servants like him need to ponder that.

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