Defending the Freedom and Dignity of the World's Vulnerable

PR Release Today by the John McCain Catholic Coalition:

TALKING POINTS: DEFENDING THE FREEDOM AND DIGNITY OF THE WORLD'S VULNERALBE

Topline Messaging Points:

· As President, John McCain will act to defend the freedom and dignity of the world's vulnerable. He will promote religious freedom, combat human trafficking and protect women and children.

· John McCain believes that these issues demand presidential leadership. It will take determined leadership to promote these basic freedoms and combat evils that seek to strip others of their basic human dignity.

· Freedom confers responsibilities and John McCain believes we must be diligent in supporting human freedom and opposing those who would strip others of their dignity.

Promoting Religious Freedom:

· John McCain will make respect for religious freedom a priority in our international relations. There is no right more fundamental to a free society than the free practice of religion.

· As President, John McCain will make promoting religious freedom a subject of great importance for the United States in our relations with other countries.

Combating Human Trafficking:

· John McCain will enhance our efforts to combat human trafficking and provide aid and compassion for victims. Human trafficking – slavery by another name – persists throughout the world and the United States. This crime demands strong presidential leadership.

· John McCain will establish an Inter-Agency Task Force on Human Trafficking to increase cooperation and communication between all government agencies. The Task Force will focus exclusively on prosecuting human traffickers and rescuing victims by strengthening cooperation and coordination across all levels of government.

· John McCain will act to ensure that other governments crack down on human trafficking. We must also identify and destroy criminal networks engaging in human trafficking.

Encouraging Other Cultures To Abandon Practices That Afflict Women And Children:

· John McCain will act to encourage and coax other cultures into abandoning practices that afflict women and children. This includes practices that mutilate bodies and impose marriage before maturity and without informed consent.

· As President, John McCain will insist that our diplomacy actively raise and discourage customs that degrade and physically threaten people.

Protecting Children:

· John McCain will use every means at our country's disposal to protect children from those who would use the Internet to commit harm.

· Recent years have seen an explosion in the proliferation of child pornography and child sexual exploitation cases involving the use of the Internet and email as a means for predators to stalk and lure children.

· As President, John McCain will clear obstacles between federal agencies and their state and local counterparts to ensure maximum cooperation in pursuing and prosecuting child predators.

· John McCain will elevate the importance of international cooperation to ensure that criminals who traffic in images of child abuse find no haven in other countries.

· John McCain has called for requiring convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail and instant message addresses with the Department of Justice's national offender registry.

· John McCain has a record of working aggressively to promote the safe use of the Internet and crafting legislation to ensure that children are secure.

McCain to Appoint Pro-Life Judges as President

Yesterday, John McCain made his pitch to pro-life conservatives about judicial activism in the Federal Courts, saying that he would want to appoint judges who resemble that of Justices Roberts and Alitio, two great judges that stand for life in all forms, especially in the womb.

"I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and my friend the late William Rehnquist -- jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference," said John McCain.

Senator Sam Brownback on his Presidential campaign always spoke of the fact that we are one justice away from overturning Roe vs. Wade. As McCain continues to court Catholic voters, we can be sure that the next justice who will be appointed under McCain will be the one who will overturn Roe vs. Wade.

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0651670920080506

McCain and Healthcare

This was an email I received recently from Mike Dewine, Chairman of the Ohio for McCain committee on health care:

----- Original Message -----
From: Mike DeWine
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2008 1:48 PM
Subject: McCain Campaign Update

April 30, 2008

Dear Friends,

I thought you might be interested in reading the editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, praising Senator McCain's forward-thinking and constructive plans to reform America's health care system. As you know, John will be in Cleveland tomorrow hosting a healthcare Town Hall meeting, where he will be discussing his proposals. I hope you can join us.

Once again, the event will take place at the InterContental Hotel at 9801 Carnegie Avenue in Cleveland. Doors open at 8:00 am, with the Town Hall starting at approximately 10:00 am. It is free and open to the public.

Mike DeWine

"McCain's Progress"
Editorial
The Wall Street Journal
April 30, 2008

The Grand Guignol between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has to end eventually, and then the public discomfort over health care will resurface as a genuine policy dispute between the Democratic and Republican nominees. For a man whose heterodoxies have no doubt triggered GOP heartburn, John McCain delivered another speech yesterday on health care that offered a sophisticated set of policies that could lead to some of the most constructive changes to the system in decades.

It is good news for his candidacy if Mr. McCain is making space now for political creativity and policy risks. Last week he laid down an economic plan, even venturing to Democratic redoubts like Youngstown, Ohio, and New Orleans's Ninth Ward. Now he has returned to his health-care reform, based on market principles and increased consumer choice, which he first outlined during the primaries.

The Senator is also starting to enfold these ideas in a larger narrative that will be indispensable in the philosophical fight that is so clearly ordained for the general election between private and government health care. Mr. McCain undertook yesterday to recast this looming argument in a new mold. He contended that the health insurance and delivery system is in fact failing many Americans -- but that it was failing because of market distortions mostly created by the government itself. Fixing these irrationalities would both make insurance more affordable and increase overall coverage in the bargain. Nor would it require the vast new entitlement programs Democrats are eyeing.

His major proposal would change the tax treatment of insurance. To review: Today's tax code permits businesses to deduct the cost of providing insurance to their employees, but it doesn't do the same for individuals. This creates third-party payment problems; workers aren't aware of the full, true costs of many treatment decisions, part of the reason the U.S. has double-digit health-care inflation. And it makes insurance less affordable for everyone outside the employer-based system, who must pay with after-tax dollars besides. Mr. McCain would correct this imbalance with a refundable tax credit, restoring the parity of health dollars.
As the Senator argued, coverage shouldn't be "limited by where you work" and said that "Americans need new choices beyond those offered in employment-based coverage." Focusing on equity is a canny political argument. For those who don't get insurance through their employers, the current system is patently unfair. As the private market for health insurance became revitalized, everyone else would be more liberated from their bosses' system. A significant portion of the uninsured population at any given point is people who left or lost employment; but portable individual policies would follow them from job to job.

That's a broader political and economic argument than the exclusive liberal concentration on the uninsured. Mr. McCain is saying that the health-care system isn't working as it should, or delivering the quality it should, for the large majority of Americans. "The real reform," he noted, "is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves," introducing more competition on price into the system.

It's true that individual subsidies might be required for some people with severe chronic illnesses who might have a harder time finding private insurance in this kind of world. So Mr. McCain sharpened his proposal for high-risk pools to cover "uninsurables," building on current insurance experiments in about two dozen states. Such provisions are crucial to a functioning market but also blunt a political liability that Democrats were eager to exploit in the fall's debates, suggesting that Mr. McCain is preparing to frontally assault liberal health-care assumptions.

If Mr. McCain's plan is short of ideal, the innovative portions outweigh its false lunges. It also energizes the intellectual progress conservatives have made in recent years in their health-care thinking. Not least, it marks significant progress for Mr. McCain, who often hasn't seemed as engaged with domestic policy as he ought to be. Fortunately, it looks as though the curtain is rising for a necessary debate about the role of government in health care.

Read <http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120951260482454447.html> The Full Editorial On The Wall Street Journal Website