The Hollywood Liberal

McCain Voted To Protect Domestic Terrorists Who Carry Out Violence At Abortion Clinics
This morning on CBS’s Early Show, McCain-Palin campaign spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer attempted to defend Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) debunked claims that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has been “palling around” with former radical William Ayers. Referencing a

This morning on CBS’s Early Show, McCain-Palin campaign spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer attempted to defend Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R-AK) debunked claims that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has been “palling around” with former radical William Ayers. Referencing a recent New York Times article, Pfotenhauer claimed that if McCain “hung out with somebody who had bombed abortion clinics” it would be a legitimate topic of discussion. She explained:

PFOTENHAUER: The article also concluded is that if Senator McCain had hung out with somebody who had bombed abortion clinics, no one would consider [raising the issue] illegitimate.

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Pfotenhauer’s invocation of abortion clinic bombers in defense of McCain is ironic given that McCain has repeatedly voted against protecting Americans from domestic terrorists in the anti-choice movement. On multiple occasions throughout his career, McCain sought to limit the government’s ability to punish violent anti-choice fanatics by:

– Voting against making anti-choice violence a federal crime. As the Jed Report notes, McCain voted in 1993 and 1994 against making “bombings, arson and blockades at abortion clinics, and shootings and threats of violence against doctors and nurses who perform abortions” federal crimes.

– Opposing Colorado’s “Bubble Law.” McCain said he opposed Colorado’s “Bubble Law,” which prohibited abortion protesters from getting within 8 feet of women entering clinics [Denver Post, 2/27/00]. The law was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

– Voting to allow those fined for violence at clinics to avoid penalties by declaring bankruptcy. NARAL Pro-Chioce America notes that McCain “voted to allow perpetrators of violence or harassment at reproductive-health clinics to avoid paying the fines assessed against them for their illegal acts by declaring bankruptcy.”

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Is This a Replay of 1929?
WASHINGTON — Watching the slipping economy and Congress’ epic debate over the unprecedented $700 billion financial bailout, it is impossible not to wonder whether this is 1929 all over again. Even sophisticated observers invoke the comparison. Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator for The Financial Times, began a recent column: “It is just over three score years and ten since the (end of the) Great Depression.” What’s frightening is not any one event but the prospect that things are slipping out of control. Panic — political as well as economic — is the enemy. There are parallels between then and now, but there are also big differences. Now as then, Americans borrowed heavily before the crisis — in the 1920s for cars, radios and appliances; in the past decade, for homes or against inflated home values. Now as then, the crisis caught people by surprise and is global in scope. But unlike then, the federal government is a huge part of the economy (20 percent versus 3 percent in 1929) and its spending — for Social Security, defense, roads — provides greater stabilization. Unlike then, government officials have moved quickly, if clumsily, to contain the crisis.