On Tuesday, John McCain announced that a pillar of his energy plan is to lift the ban on offshore drilling.

Sen. John McCain on Tuesday proposed lifting the ban on offshore drilling as part of his plan to reduce dependence on foreign oil and help combat rising gas prices. Sen. John McCain says it's time for the federal government "to put our own reserves to use."

"The stakes are high for our citizens and for our economy," McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, said at a press conference Tuesday in Houston, Texas.

This announcement represents a shift in policy of just about 180 degrees from his prior position, a flip flop that did not go unnoticed by Barack Obama.

"John McCain's support of the moratorium on offshore drilling during his first presidential campaign was certainly laudable, but his decision to completely change his position and tell a group of Houston oil executives exactly what they wanted to hear today was the same Washington politics that has prevented us from achieving energy independence for decades," he said. "It's another example of short-term political posturing from Washington, not the long-term leadership we need to solve our dependence on oil," he said.

Hell, even CNN called McCain out. Check out this piece from The Situation Room that frames McCain's entire energy policy as one big flip flop after another.

As Dana Bash says:

"What really came across in John McCain's speech [on energy] is how challenging it is for him to find his way...what you get are some contradictions."

Seriously, it makes you wonder if McCain is losing his base. Watch it:

Of course, one key point CNN misses is just how tied to big oil John McCain actually is. Brave New Films has a great new video in their Real McCain series that reveals exactly what big oil's $1 million+ worth of donations they've made to McCain has gotten them in return: his refusal to require oil companies to use their profits to invest in alternative energy.

But I think my favorite part about McCain's blatant pandering yesterday was that despite his ongoing efforts to distance himself from Bush, McCain just can't seem to catch a break. Guess what Mr. 28% is going to be doing today:

Hours [after McCain's speech], White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said President Bush on Wednesday will ask Congress to lift the ban on offshore drilling.

Hilarious.

Robert Lopez served 8 years in our military, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a tank commander. He was told he'd get his whole education bill paid for when he got out of the service. Mr. Lopez has fought and sacrificed for our country but like so many others, Mr. Lopez has faced the bleak reality of a government that has turned its back on its veterans.

That is why Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel proposed a new GI Bill, which would bring back WWII-style standards of providing vets with full tuition, room and board. And that is why 51 senators have signed on, including 9 Republicans like John Warner, giving this GI Bill tremendous bi-partisan support.

But it isn't enough. Faced with unprecedented filibusters, the only way to ensure Senate passage of the GI Bill is to get 60 cosponsors. So far, John McCain has refused. The same McCain who insists he supports our troops. The same McCain who is voting lockstep with the Bush administration (who have also resisted this bill). We need to get John McCain to do the right thing. We need him to sign now and signal to other Republican leaders that we should be strongly behind our vets.

The original GI Bill transformed American history, providing education for returning soldiers. Not only was this our nation's moral duty for the unbelievable sacrifices of our World War II veterans, it helped create America's middle class and spurred decades of economic growth for our country.

That's why, today, we're launching this new web video with an accompanying petition, urging Senator McCain to step up and be a leader for veterans, by signing onto the GI Bill.

The burden of ensuring that our veterans get the education they were promised and earned largely sits on his shoulders. If he won't stand up for the troops, he must explain why.

Vote Vets, WesPAC and Brave New Films feel passionately about giving our veterans the support they rightly deserve. Our government owes our troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan the opportunity to receive full educational benefits. These patriots have fought hard for our government; it's time our government started fighting hard for them.

Sign the petition to McCain here.

Update [2008-4-3 18:25:19 by Todd Beeton]:Watch the video below:

From Brave New Foundation, cross-posted from Alternet.

This year, the presidential election will not hinge on the emotionally divisive issue of immigration.

That's good news for everyone who believes that a moral society takes care of its most vulnerable members, forcing no one into the shadows. If the nativist wing of the Republican Party had seen its electoral goals realized, we would have witnessed a Republican primary dominated by a tragic debate about how best to expel the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in America, whether by deporting as many as possible, or by making legal conditions so inhospitable that they leave of their own volition. That debate would have trickled out into the general election, with Republican strategists trying to 'wedge' independent and Democratic-leaning voters with toxic appeals to national chauvinism and racial prejudice masquerading as distinctions of legitimate policy differences. Like the debate over what kinds of prisoner interrogation techniques legally constitute torture, these are the kinds of public discussions we engage in at the cost of our collective soul.

Happy now?

Keep tabs on Chris Matthews over at Media Matters' Matthews Monitor.

Brave New Films has released their latest Fox Attacks video, this one going after Fox for advancing vile talking points about Barack Obama, which then get picked up by mainstream media sources and spread like a virus.

Sign the petition to demand that the media stop enabling Fox's anti-Obama smear campaign.

Update [2008-3-14 16:4:5 by Todd Beeton]:Look, people, I do agree that Barack Obama got a free ride in the media for a while and Hillary Clinton could do no right. We've seen a shift in that lately but honestly, it doesn't make holding the media accountable no matter whom it smears any less important. This is going to be crucial for all of us in November no matter who the nominee is, unless of course you plan to vote for John McCain if you don't get your way in the primary, in which case I'm really not sure what you're doing at a Democratic blog.

I urge you all to check out Brave New Films's great primary coverage, hosted by Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks. They'll be discussing the state of the race throughout the country all day, including interviews with Senators Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer, Gov. Howard Dean as well as bloggers Jane Hamsher, mcjoan and yours truly (I go on at 8:30pm PST.) Hope you'll check it out.

For some alternate primary day coverage, Brave New Films has some streaming election coverage hosted by The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur and BNF's Robert Greenwald. Definitely worth checking out.

Our friends at Brave New Films recently launched a new campaign called The War On Greed in order to shed some light on a particularly insidious enemy of the middle class, namely the private equity buyout industry, which buys out companies, strips them of their assets, fires workers and reduces benefits for those that remain before selling them off at a profit. Not only that, the executives who benefit most from this practice are able to exploit a tax loophole that allows them to pay capital gains rates of 15% on much of their income as opposed to the 35% the average worker might pay.

Brave New Films has put a face on that industry, exposing the excesses of KKR president and CEO Henry Kravis (read more about the campaign against Kravis HERE), who makes in the neighborhood of $51,000 an hour, far more than the yearly income of many of the workers at the companies he so cavalierly acquires and strips to the bone.

To correspond with the Martin Luther King holiday tomorrow, Brave New Films has produced one of their excellent short films to remind us that King's dream was not only for racial and societal equality but it was a fight for economic equality as well, more specifically, a fight for the middle class and the pursuit of the American dream.

Watch it:

The outrageous economic inequality that exists in America has been addressed on the campaign trail by the Democratic candidates, in particular, Barack Obama spoke of executives who make "more in an hour than their secretaries do in a year" at the townhall I attended in Las Vegas last weekend. Our candidates get the problem and I believe are committed to reversing the widening income disparity that has only grown under this Republican administration, but we must hold them to their words. So, along with the video, Brave New Films is asking you to sign a petition demanding the Democratic candidates pledge to close the loophole that allows these destroyers of the middle class to pay less as a percentage of their income in taxes than the average worker does. The petition reads as follows:

Dear presidential candidates,

Buyout industry executives with multi-million dollar incomes have been exploiting a tax loophole that allows them to pay a lesser tax percentage rate than most of the workers in the companies they manage.  This is a disgrace!

Make a pledge, if elected, that you will work to close the buyout industry's tax loopholes.

Please join The War On Greed and sign the petition HERE.