From Doug Berman, John McCain published his position on the future of the Department of Justice and the Federal Judiciary at the National Law Journal, entitled “Three priorities.”  The short take is this:

We face enormous challenges and you, the voters, deserve more than platitudes. I feel it is my duty as a candidate to tell you specifically how my presidency would improve our government and our country. In this column, I want to concentrate on what would be three important priorities in a McCain administration: keeping the Department of Justice politically neutral, focusing law enforcement programs on addressing important issues of the day and appointing strict constructionist judges.

It’s always interesting when someone denounces platitudes right before they lay a few down on the table.  Platitudes, of course, are the stock in trade of politicians, and both candidates have a whole closet full of them to pull out as needed.  Americans hate to think that all they’re getting is platitudes, even while getting fed a steady diet of them and “lovin’ it” (apologies to McDonalds).

Of the three priorities, the first one is inconsequential.  No one runs for office on a platform of politically corrupting a department of government, and no one expects John McCain to be the first.  What’s interesting is the first word of the priority, “keeping”.  This suggests that it is neutral now, and he plans for it to stay that way.  For this, McCain wins the first Monica Gooding Award.

The second priority is “focusing law enforcement programs on addressing important issues of the day,” which would at first appear to suggest that he’s planning on pulling them out of the bootleg whiskey and horse stealing operations.  Perhaps McCain remembers both well?  But he goes on to provide further explanation to provide a few particular areas where he would have law enforcement focus:

In particular, the FBI’s mortgage fraud task force is an important tool for keeping our markets clean. No matter who they are or where they hide, we must hold accountable those who would disregard the law, placing innocent citizens and investors in peril.

Preventing terrorist attacks would be a top priority of the McCain administration. As a number of observers have noted, our nation is safer than it was on Sept. 11, 2001, but not yet safe. Upon taking office, I would ensure we win the wars we are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will also review our counterterror operations to ensure their effectiveness.

Terrorists are not the only threat to public safety. Lax enforcement policies, judges who legislate from the bench and lack of support for law enforcement personnel all continue to force our innocent citizens behind the barred windows of their homes and allow criminals to roam free.

And now drugs are bringing waves of crime and organized gang activity to rural areas thought to be nearly immune from such problems. The federal government must both support state and local law enforcement and effectively enforce federal laws designed to root out violent crime, organized gangs and other interstate criminal activity.

Bearing in mind that this is a writing, produced after at least some thought and deliberation, did John McCain just compare the threat of terrorists to “judges who legislate from the bench?”  As for the rest of it, there’s little new.  This was the same rhetoric that was used in 1986.  Remember Rudy Giuliani raiding Wall Street brokers who ended up never getting indicted?  No need to discuss these “priorities”, unless you are one of those “innocent citizens behind the barred windows” while criminals “roam free.”  On some other planet named after Willie Horton.

Finally, we get to priority number 3:

None of these law enforcement efforts will succeed without a judiciary that understands its proper role and its proper mission. Senator Obama would appoint liberal activist judges and supply them with greater sentencing discretion. I will appoint judges who will strictly interpret our Constitution. Senator Obama’s judges would coddle criminals. I will appoint judges who will hold criminals accountable.

I was wondering when the “coddle criminals” prong would come into play.  While I have heard nothing from Obama to suggest that he’s prepared to show proper deference to the constitutional protections that have been emasculated over the years in favor of those “innocent citizens,” it was only natural that McCain would call him a criminal coddler and announce that he will appoint judges who nail them nasty criminals.  I wonder if that’s before or after trial?

Once again, I remind that this was a writing produced by the McCain campaign, if not Senator McCain himself, to express his vision of the future of law enforcement.  No mention of civil rights and liberties.  No mention of corruption and abuse.  The old, plain vanilla law and order agenda, with the criminal coddler slur thrown in for good measure.  I’m sure glad he didn’t just feed us platitudes.

What?  Were you hoping that John McCain, the Maverick, was going to show up?

Update:  Feeding off McCain’s article, comes Steven G. Calabresi, lawprof at Northwestern, who writes in this WSJ op-ed :

If Mr. Obama wins we could possibly see any or all of the following: a federal constitutional right to welfare; a federal constitutional mandate of affirmative action wherever there are racial disparities, without regard to proof of discriminatory intent; a right for government-financed abortions through the third trimester of pregnancy; the abolition of capital punishment and the mass freeing of criminal defendants;

Now this is the sort of professor I want to teach my children.  Calm, thoughtful, scholarly.  And totally insane.  Calabresi then goes on to conclude:

Nothing less than the very idea of liberty and the rule of law are at stake in this election. We should not let Mr. Obama replace justice with empathy in our nation’s courtrooms.

I never even realized that empathy was the opposite of justice.  And all these years I’ve been asking judges for justice together with empathy.  What was I thinking?

Thanks to Doug for the heads up, who notes:

I expect some hyperbolic tough-on-crime rhetoric coming from politicians like Senator McCain and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (heard on recent robocalls).  But I am both sadded and very disappointed to see this kind of silly over-the-top rhetoric coming from law professors.  Though I know this is an exciting time legally and politically, I think everyone should just take a deep breath.

Uh huh.