WB: Senator John McCain

Senator McCain's time began with his campaign video that included footage of his experiences as a POW in North Vietnam, where as a Navy fighter pilot he was shot down over Hanoi.

McCain said he wouldn't trade his principles to get someone's vote.

"Values are the ideals we hold dear," McCain said. "All people are endowed by their creator with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

McCain pointed out that America faces challenges to her values from those who do not value human life, both at home and abroad.

McCain pointed out how past generations, his included, have been called on to fight evil. "Now we are summoned to fight the evil of radical Islamofacism," McCain said.

"Christianity has not been found tried and wanting, so much as it has been found difficult," McCain said.

McCain called our current struggle a "just war" and said that it was a necessary one.

"We didn't lose the Vietnam war on the battlefield. We lost it in the streets of Chicago and Washington, D.C.," said McCain.

He talked of the tortures he and other POWs were subjected to in Hanoi. One of the tortures involved having their limbs tightly bound into painful positions for hours on end. He mentioned a guard who loosened his bonds during his shift, then retightened them before he went off duty. Much later, McCain saw this guard outside and the guard drew a cross in the dirt, left it for a moment, and erased it before walking away. McCain said he wished he could talk to this man again.

McCain spoke highly of the Judge Roberts and Alito Supreme Court appointments. McCain said we didn't need to Constitutionalize issues where we should allow federalism to work; I believe he was referring to a Federal Marriage Amendment here. He did endorse the proper role of marriage and family.

McCain called for the courts to return to their proper role, and said he wouldn't appoint judges who legislate from the bench.

"I am pro-life because I know what it is like to live without human rights," McCain said. "I have a personal obligation to advocate human rights anywhere they are denied." Even in our own country, he said, where the rights of the unborn are not respected.