So John McCain's lobbyist problem forces him to fire yet another top official on his campaign...and his response is to attack Barack Obama over Bill Ayers. In the words of McCain flack Tucker Bounds, Ayers is "an unrepentant domestic terrorist...if Barack Obama is going to make associations the issue, we look forward to the debate about Senator Obama's associations."

Ha! Talk about a non sequitur. These lobbyists were top officials on John McCain's campaign! We're not talking about flimsy associations (like G. Gordon Liddy, perhaps?).

There's no equivalence -- whatsoever. What a stupid argument to make.

Of course, what's really going on here is that the McCain campaign is doubling down on its only strategy for the fall elections: portraying Barack Obama as a radical terrorist sympathizer.

But if John McCain really wants to make being terrorist sympathizer a central plank of his campaign, it's about time he explained why he sided with pro-life extremists and opposed essential new legislation to protect women's reproductive health clinics across the nation from a wave of domestic terrorism.

In the early 1990s, patients, doctors, and staff at these clinics were the targets of physical intimidation, including bombings and murder. After the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal government could not use civil rights laws to go after the domestic terrorists, Congress passed legislation to give the Federal government the power to protect women, their doctors, and clinic staff.

The legislation, which was signed into law in 1994, was important because the campaign of violence against the women's health clinics crossed state lines -- and it worked. Violence fell dramatically after President Clinton signed it into law.

Extraordinarily, however, John McCain opposed the law, voting against it not once but twice, each time joining a small band of thirty extremist pro-life Senators.

Here's how the New York Times described the law:

Senate Passes Abortion-Clinic Crime Bill
By ADAM CLYMER

The Senate voted overwhelmingly today for a Federal law to prohibit bombings, arson and blockades at abortion clinics, and shootings and threats of violence against doctors and nurses who perform abortions..

The vote was 69 to 30. Twenty-eight senators who voted against Federal financing of abortions six weeks ago supported the measure, seeing it as a law-and-order matter rather than as an abortion issue.

So John McCain was one of a tiny minority of radical anti-choice Senators to oppose this new law, and he did so not just once, but twice.

:: ::

If John McCain is going to raise questions about Barack Obama's acquaintances, no matter how flimsy they may be, isn't it fair to ask him why he sided with pro-life extremists in opposition to tough new anti-terrorism legislation?

Aside from being entirely relevant on a substantive level, forcing McCain to confront his record on domestic anti-choice terrorism will help better inform independent voters about his strident opposition to reproductive freedom.

McCain has developed a moderate image on reproductive freedom, largely because of his battles with the National Right to Life Committee. The thing that many people don't realize is that NRLC's dispute with McCain has nothing to do with his views on choice -- their dispute was over McCain-Feingold and campaign finance reform. Here's the conservative publication The Weekly Standard:

Arizona senator John McCain, currently a bit behind Rudy Giuliani as Republicans' favorite presidential choice for 2008, is far and away the most consistently anti-abortion of all the top contenders. During his 20 years in the Senate (plus four in the House), he has never failed to cast his vote in favor of whatever abortion restrictions are arguably permitted under Roe v. Wade: bans against partial-birth abortion, abortions on military bases, transporting minors across state lines to obtain abortions behind their parents' backs, and government funding for abortion both in the United States and abroad (all but the transporting-minors bill have become federal law). In addition, McCain has voted to confirm every "strict constructionist" judge (that is, disinclined to find, à la Roe, a right to abortion and related activities enshrined in the Constitution) appointed by the various Republican presidents who have served during his tenure, including Robert Bork for the Supreme Court. In February McCain declared that Roe v. Wade ought to be overturned, and he was one of 35 senators who signed an open letter to President Bush earlier this year pledging their support for any veto by Bush of efforts by the Democratic-controlled Congress to change federal law on abortion. Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, the leading abortion-rights advocacy groups, detest McCain and consistently award him ratings of absolute zero on their scorecards.

Nonetheless, McCain has a major problem with the nation's largest and most influential anti-abortion advocacy organization, the National Right to Life Committee. And the source
of that problem is . . . not abortion at all. It's the McCain-Feingold Act, that set of restrictions on political advertising during election seasons that McCain (along with a number of Democrats) started pushing in 1995 and succeeded in enacting into federal law in 2002.

As the article says, McCain opposes Roe v. Wade and would appoint justices to the Supreme Court that would overturn it. Unfortunately, far too many people don't know this, particularly independent women voters.

According to a March, 2008 survey of women in battleground states conducted for Planned Parenthood, half of women voters do not know whether McCain is pro-choice or anti-choice. Even more striking, 46% of women who support McCain want are pro-choice, and 36% of those pro-choice, pro-McCain women said they were less likely to vote for McCain once learning about his staunch anti-choice record.

Engaging John McCain in a lively debate about his refusal to support efforts to fight anti-choice domestic terrorism will serve two purposes.

First, it will turn his efforts to smear Obama as a terrorist sympathizer right back around on him.

Second, it will inform independent voters, particularly women, that John McCain is actually an extreme anti-choice conservative.

The McCain campaign has inadvertently given us another gift. Let's make sure we take advantage of it.