For McCain, A Switch On Telecom Immunity?

Source: Wash Post

A top lawyer for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign said telecommunications companies should be forced to explain their role in the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program as a condition for legal immunity for past wiretapping, a statement that stands in marked contrast to positions taken by President Bush, McCain and other Republicans in Congress.

"There would need to be hearings, real hearings, to find out what actually happened, what harms actually occurred, rather than some sort of sweeping of things under the rug," Chuck Fish, a former vice president and chief patent counsel at Time Warner, said last week at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in New Haven, Conn., according to an audiotape available on the conference Web site. "That would be absolutely verboten in a McCain administration

The comments -- first noted last week on the blog of the technology magazine Wired -- contradict McCain's voting record, and they are almost certain to disrupt negotiations between Democratic leaders in Congress and Bush administration officials, who are seeking blanket immunity for the telecoms' cooperation with the surveillance program

snip

Fish's comments and the campaign's responses indicate that McCain appears to be taking a new stance that undermines the GOP's negotiating position as well as the party's efforts to label Democrats as weak on terrorism.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/28/AR2008052802967.html

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Wow. McSame must be trying to break away from Bush! The Repukes will be pissed over this. Watch for him to reverse this soon. He voted repeatedly to give the telecoms immunity. What's up?

in some group or another that McCain s courting.

I am not sure McCain is breaking with Bush. I think McCain is breaking with McCain.

He was for immunity before he was against it

Besides puppies, babies and god, McCain is for everything he was against and now he is against everything he was for.

The straight-talk express just pulled a "U"-ie.

still gets it wrong.

with all his flipping and flopping. Geesh

because I was about to double post this.

Jay