Voting records
 

This website http://www.vote-smart.org/index.htm allows you to look up the voting record of most officials in and out of office. You can look up by name or by state. It's a fairly decent tool. As with all websites, I'd double check everything. Another warning on looking up any bill strictly by title - there are a lot of things hidden in a bill, so make sure you look beyond a title to see what's really there. Amendments get tacked on to things pretty regularly to defeat certain bills and then politicians get in all kinds of trouble for not voting for something titled a certain way that actually contained a ton of pork barrel provisions at the end.

Just out of law school I worked as a lobbyist for a high-tech company and one of the most critical things we did was try and keep random add-on amendments from killing bills we were championing.

So long answer, as far as McCain's position on guns - I'd look at his record and not necessarily what he's said in speeches.

ETA: That site doesn't have an easy way to see the entire text of a bill. THOMAS does however (Library of Congress) it's easy to do if you have the bill number or you can search based on year and a key word: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c110query.html

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110010163

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL

Right Said Fred
Thompson excites the conservative base. But will his unorthodox campaign succeed?

Monday, June 4, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

RICHMOND, Va.--He lacks the compelling story of Rudy Giuliani during 9/11. He isn't a war hero with a 24-year record in Congress like John McCain. He doesn't have the M.B.A. smoothness and business success of Mitt Romney. But what Fred Thompson demonstrated to an enthusiastic Virginia Republican Party dinner Saturday is that he has gravitas, a presence and the ability to make people comfortable. Most importantly, many at the dinner saw him as a conservative who doesn't alienate or cause angst with any element of the GOP coalition.

University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato says the failure of any of the current candidates to excite chunks of the Republican base has given Mr. Thompson an opening. Conservatives "seem to look for reasons to like Thompson," Mr. Sabato told the Roanoke Times.

They certainly got some from Mr. Thompson's Saturday speech. After slightly ragged tryouts before audiences in California and Connecticut, he hit his stride with a speech that mixed warnings about the state of the country with optimism that the American people can overcome the challenges facing them.

He called on Republicans to build "a new coalition" in 2008 that avoids some of the mistakes that led to last November's disaster. "Some of us came to drain the swamp [in Washington] and made partnership with the alligators," he said, explaining how the GOP Congress ended up tagged as soft on spending.

"Folks, we're a bit down politically right now, but I think we're on the comeback trail, and it's going to start right here," he assured his listeners. "It's like the American people are waiting for us," he continued. "They're waiting for us to remember why we're doing what we're doing, about the ideas that inspired us, to remember who the leaders were that inspired us."

To that end, Mr. Thompson said the next president should have the courage to talk straight with the American people and bluntly say that Americans will have to confront both the soaring cost of entitlements and the need to remain committed in the war on terror, even when Iraq is "in the rear-view mirror."

"This is a battle between the forces of civilization and of evil," he said, noting that reports over the weekend of a foiled plot against John F. Kennedy Airport in New York was proof positive that terrorism remains a real threat. "I listen to the Democratic congressional leaders and I hear them talking about how many [House and Senate] seats they're going to pick up because of this war," he said. "I listened to one of their presidential candidates talk about that this is a phony war, the war on terror. This is what passes for policy today in the Democratic Party."

Mr. Thompson also zinged Democrats for proposing a budget that boosts spending dramatically while remaining silent on the extension of investment-focused tax cuts that expire in 2010. "The Democrats are hot after repealing all of that, the engine that's driving this economy."

On judicial nominations, Mr. Thompson recalled his role in helping guide John Roberts through the confirmation process. He said nominees like Chief Justice Roberts are necessary because too many judges were "waking up in the morning and deciding what social policy should be." He warned federal judges: "If they continue to act like politicians, the American people are going to start treating them like politicians, and that's not good news for them."

But Mr. Thompson's biggest response came when he addressed immigration. "We are a nation of compassion, a nation of immigrants," he told the crowd. "But this is our home, and whether you're a first-generation American, a third-generation American or a brand newly minted American, this is our home and we get to decide who comes into our home." At that, much of the crowd rose and applauded midspeech.

While it was clear Mr. Thompson has found a way to excite the Republican base, his impending candidacy is at a crossroads. He has run what Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard calls "the greatest non-campaign campaign I've ever seen" and has managed to land in the upper ranks of the crowded GOP field without spending any money. But when his actual campaign begins next month, a different standard of success will be applied.

Many doubt he can catch the front-runners with such a late start in raising money, organization and endorsements. He responds that "it's too late to follow those rules even if I wanted to, and I don't want to." Instead he plans to use new technology in innovative ways that include everything from the Internet to distributing videos to cell phones. Less tech-savvy primary voters can expect to see Mr. Thompson as a constant presence on talk radio and cable TV news. Will that be enough? Much of it may depend on just how much Mr. Thompson can build on the success of Howard Dean in 2004 in harnessing the power of the Internet as a fund-raising tool.

One obvious shortcoming is that Mr. Thompson hasn't run for office since 1996. After he announces and enters the maelstrom of a national campaign, he will inevitably make mistakes, misspeak and demonstrate a lack of knowledge on issues the other candidates have had months to bone up on. How he handles adversity and crises on the campaign trail will be the true test of his mettle and adaptability.

His competitors will no doubt belittle Mr. Thompson's eight years in the Senate as lackluster. Few bills passed bearing his name as a chief sponsor. Mr. Thompson told the Associated Press that he plans to correct the record by pointing out that a senator's accomplishments don't "always have to do with putting your name on a piece of legislation. There was an awful lot of bad legislation that I helped to stop for one thing."

A related charge is that he was something of a slacker, both in his Senate duties and in campaign fund-raising. But the evidence for this claim is thin. Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told Reuters that he saw Mr. Thompson as a thoughtful lawmaker who reached across party lines: "He worked plenty and he absorbed plenty." For his part, Mr. Thompson says "that's one rap you can cure," by showing his energy level as he courts voters and as contributors respond to his appeals.

As for his ambivalence about running for president until age 64, he jokes that voters may like someone "who hasn't lusted for the job since they were student body president." He maintains that "if a person craves power for the sake of power, if he craves the office for the sake of holding the office, he's got his priorities mixed up. It [should be] a desire to do something not be something."

Mr. Thompson will run an unorthodox campaign, one that will challenge the conventional wisdom about how to run for president. Even if it proves unsuccessful, it's useful for a candidate to occasionally come along and ask if the rules everybody is following were made for a different time and new approaches are appropriate.

That attitude is part and parcel of the innovation and injection of new blood that animates so much of American life, and from Barack Obama on the left to Fred Thompson on the right, it's a healthy development that this year's presidential election is seeing different kinds of candidates.

I like it.

I think that comment covers Special Forces candidates as well.

I want the guy who wants to serve with me and accomplish the mission, not the guy who wants the beret and tab to show off to others.

TR

The Senator just keeps looking better and better.

Just a heads up, Fred Thompson will be appearing live on Hannity and Colmes (Fox) tonight, 9pm EST.

I'm with Fred
 

Well...here's his site. I just joined.

http://www.imwithfred.com/index.aspx

Saw him on H&C. I'm convinced.

Already joined and donated.

Cowboy up, and do your part, or STFU when Hillary or Obama are in charge.

TR

Done.

Right said Fred
 

He was exactly as I wanted him to be. Quick witted, knows the issues, has an answer, and willing to speak his mind with a rather clever way of putting things.

I also heard him talking about Hillary and her usage of the "raising revenues" term that she said about 20 times in the debate the other night.

Why doesn't she just come out and say "raising taxes" Not like any of us haven't noticed her usage of the term "raising revenues"

As if it's going to slip by anybody with half a brain. :rolleyes:

Definately time to get out the vote.

Those of you reading this who have not registered to vote in your home State GET ON IT.... Track down you voting assistance officer. There are some states that will not allow you to vote in the General election if you did not participate in the primary.

+1 to TR's statement. Become part of the process or a victim of it.

That's the kind of candidate I'm looking for. One who knows the answers or at least has some thoughts on the issue. Much better than one who crams the night before a debate. I don't see this his lack of "boning up" as a liability.
"and demonstrate a lack of knowledge on issues the other candidates have had months to bone up on."

Fred Thompson Too Lazy to Be President???
 

There is an article Newsweek is running today saying that Fred Thompson's record in the Senate shows that he is too lazy to be the President of the United States. An experpt from the article:

"The criticism seems fed by Thompson's time in the Senate, where he maintained a less rigorous schedule than his colleagues and was known to duck out of late-night debates. Of the 90 bills he introduced during his eight years in the Senate, only four became law.

Thompson has never denied being irritated with the pace of Senate life and cited it as one of the reasons he opted out of a 2002 re-election bid. "I don't like spending 14- and 16-hour days voting on 'sense of the Senate' resolutions on irrelevant matters," he said in 1998. "There are some important things we really need to get on with—and on a daily basis, it's very frustrating."

Why can't more politicians be like this? I currently work in Legislative Affairs for a COCOM, and spend quite a bit of time up on the Hill with my boss, and have met a lot of Congressmen and Senators. Many of them you can tell that they honestly care about what they are doing up there, but there are just as many that it is easy to see they are in it for themselves.

If Fred Thompson runs he has my vote. He is not pandering to anyone. He says what he believes, and lets the chips fall where they may. He doesn't change his response based on the constituent asking the question.

The New York Observer was bashing him for his lack of experience with only seven years in the Senate.

I am curious how Wonderboy Obama and New York Native Hillary's experience trumps that?

TR

You mean former VP Hillary? :rolleyes: