Why McCain is a hypocrite on “don’t ask don’t tell”

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has vowed to block a defense appropriations bill if an amendment that’s been added to it which would end the military’s anti-gay policy isn’t taken out.

This is ironic, because the tactic of adding unrelated pieces of legislation to existing bills without a committee vote or floor debate was invented by none other than John McCain.

As Hal Espen wrote in an article I edited for Men’s Journal,

Southwestern activist David Hodges, policy director of the Tucson-based Sky Island Alliance, recalls McCain working behind the scenes in 1988 to craft a rider that exempted the construction of a University of Arizona telescope facility, in the middle of habitat for a critically endangered subspecies of red squirrel, from the Endangered Species Act. It was an unprecedented tactic, and soon anti-environmental riders were being attached to all kinds of legislation in Washington. “I don’t know that he knew what he was unleashing,” Hodges says, “but we certainly did.”

Just another day at the office for the Republican hypocrisy machine.