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QUESTION: Considering you were one of the leading advocates of immigration reform in 2007, do you intend to take up on that role again with President Obama? Or is it too much of a political liability, considering you're running for re-election? MCCAIN: Running for re-election has never been a concern of mine as far as issues like that are concerned. I intend to discuss that with the president-elect. It's pretty clear that our agenda, that all Americans are, is our economy, but I still am committed to comprehensive immigration reform, with the need to secure our borders and a guest-worker...

Via the Standard. This is what they’re going to do to pass the time in Congress between bailouts? Jerk around with a hot-button issue guaranteed to enrage all sides and exacerbate Democratic infighting while the economy’s melting down and the Iran nuclear clock ticks on? Why not toss social security onto the table too, just to really get the juices flowing?

In his first real news conference since the week following his defeat for the presidency, Senator John McCain emerged today in Phoenix to talk about his own future. He said he plans to run again in 2010 — it may seem a long time from now for you but so many are already gearing up for the midterm elections that maybe it’s no surprise. The longtime Arizona senator — at age 72 — had already returned to the Senate earlier this month and tried to deflect media inquiries every time he ventured into one of its public hallways. At his...

DHAKA (AFP) — Defeated Republican US presidential candidate Senator John McCain will visit Bangladesh early next month to talk with its leaders and politicians ahead of the country's key polls. The US embassy in Dhaka said Sunday Senator McCain, who lost to Democrat Barack Obama in the November 4 US presidential election, would be accompanied by two senior congressmen, Senator Joseph Lieberman and Senator Lindsey Graham during a broader regional trip.

Gov. Janet Napolitano's spokeswoman confirmed Thursday that U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Phoenix) called to congratulate her on being the "top contender' for the job of Secretary of Homeland Security in President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet. A release put out by McCain Thursday said: "Senator McCain called and congratulated Governor Janet Napolitano on her emergence as top contender for Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Senator McCain said 'Governor Napolitano's experience as the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, Arizona's Attorney General, and as Governor warrants her rapid confirmation by the Senate and I hope she is quickly confirmed.' Senator McCain looks...

South Carolina's Mark Sanford is one of three GOP governors now being widely mentioned as potential saviors of the Republican Party between now and 2012. All are conspicuous for calling on their own party to live up to its principles. Most notably, none have advocated the GOP move to the left. Mr. Sanford is a two-term governor known for vetoing spending bills, pushing market-oriented policy reforms (such as moving his state's Medicaid system to a private account-based model) and criticizing the lapses of the national GOP. "Some on the left will say our electoral losses are a repudiation of our...

President-elect Barack Obama says he and Republican Sen. John McCain plan to work together to "fix up the country." The two former rivals met in Obama's transition office Monday in Chicago. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's incoming White House chief of staff, participated in the meeting, as did McCain's close friend, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.

WASHINGTON — John McCain’s close friend and ally from South Carolina, fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, will be on hand in Chicago Monday as McCain meets with his former rival, President-elect Barack Obama. Also attending will be Obama’s new chief of staff, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. In an interview Friday, Graham said Emanuel asked for the meeting about a week ago. “We were talking about some things that we could work together on,” Graham said.

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina (CNN) – South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on Friday became one of the first high-profile Republicans to publicly criticize John McCain following his electoral defeat, blaming the Arizona senator for betraying conservative principles in his quest for the White House.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama will meet with his former rival, Republican Sen. John McCain, on Monday to talk about ways they can work together, an Obama spokeswoman said on Friday. The meeting between the former competitors will take place in Chicago at Obama's transition headquarters two weeks after the Democratic senator won a decisive victory over McCain in the November 4 election. It will be the first time the two have spoken since McCain called Obama to concede the election. McCain gave an emotional speech after the concession in which he promised to help his former rival address...

Cutter also said the two will be joined at Obama's Chicago transition office by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a McCain confidant, and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the Illinois Democrat whom Obama has chose to be his White House chief of staff.

The Republican Party will file federal lawsuits Thursday seeking to overthrow the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance regulations, Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan revealed Wednesday night at a private dinner with the nation's Republican governors. The move is considered a slap in the face of the Republican Party's failed 2008 presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was dramatically outspent by Democrat Barack Obama, and of President Bush, who signed McCain-Feingold into law in 2002. "We will bring two federal suits tomorrow to strengthen the Republican Party," Mr. Duncan told The Washington Times. Mr. Duncan said one...

The Republican National Committee's decision today to file suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenging the constitutionality of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, is a clear signal that it is concerned about its ability to raise money under the current system.

It's standard fare for a president to make a bipartisan gesture by including one member of the opposing party in his cabinet - just as it's always the case (lest we forget) that every president-elect vows to change the tone in Washington and reach out magnanimously to his vanquished opponents. But John Podesta, the former Bill Clinton former chief of staff who's spearheading the transition for the 44th president, said today that there would be independents and Republicans in Barack Obama's cabinet and "not just at a token level".

/PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- A nationwide survey of actual voters reveals that Americans strongly support immigration enforcement, and that less than one-third of Obama voters favor granting amnesty to illegal aliens. The poll conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) on November 5 and 6 also found that a decisive majority of voters believe that an illegal alien amnesty would "further harm the interests of struggling American workers." Among the key findings of the poll are: -- Only 32% of Obama voters considered his support for amnesty as a factor in their decisions...

Now what? The Republican Party -- nationally and in Pennsylvania -- lies in tatters. Having lost the White House to Barack Obama, suffered historic losses in congressional elections, been almost shut out in statewide races and experienced further erosion in the state House, there is no doubt the GOP has hit rock bottom. It is, most significantly, a loss for so-called moderate Republicanism. Party moderates have opined time and again that a more middle-of-the-road presidential candidate could win Pennsylvania. McCain was touted as that candidate. It was a double-digit trouncing.

Newsweek has published a deep, multi-chapter account of the entire 2008 presidential campaign, with a lot of inside perspective. Somewhere in the middle, it deals with Sen. John McCain's friendship with Sen. Joe Lieberman. McCain had apparently pitched Lieberman's name for the No. 2 spot on the ticket, but the idea was quickly shot down by his advisers.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Friday the GOP lost the White House because the party was tainted by corruption, overspending and "sometimes came across as a bunch of grumpy old men." . . . . . "All we have to do is go back to the basics of fiscal conservatism, with a smile and come up with new ways to communicate with the younger voter," said Graham, who captured 58 percent of the vote in winning re-election against a little-known opponent.

Now the daggers come out. The paleocons and Obamacons and many others will plunge them into the back of John McCain. This is shameful. The American people have issued a referendum on the 2008 mutation of the Republican Party, whose ticket John McCain had the misfortune to lead. Let's recount briefly: enough bribe taking, page preying, foot tapping felons and filchers to fill the local jail; a record deficit; a financial crisis; a badly managed war; an incompetent response to a hurricane; an incumbent in the White House with record-low levels of approval. Against all this and into a headwind...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A jury acquitted an undocumented immigrant of killing a mother and daughter. Police thought they had plenty of evidence to convict Jose Murillo Sosa. Now, the victims' family and prosecutors are trying to understand the verdict. Relatives are upset, and so are prosecutors who thought they had plenty of evidence to at least put Sosa away for the rest of his life. Tim Rountree said his 16-year-old niece Adrian Rountree loved to draw and color. "We were all stunned," he said. But Rountree will also have to remember Adrian and her mother by what some are saying...