During an interview this afternoon with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a reporter from local Washington, D.C. area CBS affiliate told McCain that some “commentators” and even some “personal friends” have asked, “Where is the John McCain from 2000?” The reporter then asked, “Did that guy go away? Has something changed?” But McCain took issue with the premise of the reporter’s question, claiming that nothing has changed since 2000:

MCCAIN: You’ll have to tell me what’s changed. I love it when they say, “Oh McCain has changed.” And I say, “What have I changed on?” They can’t name a single issue or they’ll name an issue and its false. I’m the same guy. I’m proud of our campaign.

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In fact, ThinkProgress has identified at least 44 issues that McCain has flip-flopped on, including President Bush’s tax cuts, comprehensive immigration reform and torture.

Last week after it published a Technology Policy Scorecard, Wired contacted the Obama and McCain campaigns for a debate on tech policy. After the Obama campaign offered former FCC chair Reed Hundt, Wired requested former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina for the McCain campaign. Fiorina’s people said she’d be happy to participate, but the McCain campaign “vetoed her.” Wired’s Nicholas Thompson writes:

I was told she’d [Fiorina] be happy to participate and her people were extremely accomodating and helpful. But she is controversial and the McCain people vetoed her — claiming that they wanted someone with policy expertise, not just general wisdom about technology. [...]

Finally, after some begging, approval appeared to come in for Ms. Fiorina to participate. It looked like the debate would happen: 12:30pm, on Thursday October 30th: Fiorina v. Hundt. But then: kaboom. Word comes again this morning that the McCain camp must, must have someone with policy expertise. And, since there’s no one else, the debate’s off.

Thompson notes that Fiorina “does know about policy issues.” It appears that the McCain campaign is still trying to keep Fiorina in hiding after she said that neither McCain nor Sarah Palin could run a major business.

Gov. Sarah Palin has attacked Sen. Barack Obama for being “so off base in his proclamation that he would meet with some of these leaders around our world who would seek to destroy America and that, and without preconditions being met.” When asked by NBC’s Brian Williams what are some of those preconditions she envisions, Palin was stumped:

WILLIAMS: Governor Palin, yesterday you tied this notion of an early test to the new president. Would this notion of precondition –

PALIN: Right.

WILLIAMS: — that you both have been hammering the Obama campaign on. What — first of all, what in your mind is a precondition?

PALIN: You have to have some diplomatic strategy going into a meeting with someone like Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il, one of these dictators that would seek to destroy America or her allies. It is so naive and so dangerous for a presidential candidate to just proclaim that they would be willing to sit down with a– a leader like Ahmadinejad and just talk about the problems, the issues that are facing them. So that — that’s — that’s some ill-preparedness right there.

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Ilan Goldenberg offers this tutorial: “What Palin is describing is what would be called preparation, not preconditions. Just to be clear. Not negotiating until preconditions are met means not starting your negotiating until the other side has met some kind of condition you imposed. ”

Yesterday, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) held a rally in Henderson, NV, during which she made a direct appeal to women voters. She claimed that it was McCain who embraced equal pay for equal work, and charged Obama with underpaying the women on his staff. Discussing the help working women need, Palin declared, “Women also need equal pay for equal work. And not just be a talking point.” Watch it:

It is true the women on McCain’s staff on average make more money than the women on Obama’s staff, but it is because “McCain has more women in senior, higher-paid positions — not that women [on Obama's staff] are being paid less than men for the same job.” McCain can be rightfully praised for employing women in higher positions, but to claim that Obama pays his staffers unfairly is an outright lie.

More importantly, Palin’s claim that working women would have an “advocate” in a McCain-Palin White House requires completely ignoring McCain’s record of opposing equal pay. He skipped the vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — which would have made it easier for women to take discriminatory employers to court — and said women just need more “education and training.” (In fact, over half of all Americans with bachelor’s or graduate degrees are women.)

McCain dismisses concerns about women’s pay by throwing out conservative buzzwords. He explained his opposition to the Fair Pay Act by claiming it “opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems.” In the last presidential debate, he mocked the bill as “a trial lawyer’s dream.”

On Saturday, Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC) said that “liberals hate real Americans that work, and accomplish, and achieve, and believe in God.” The comments first appeared in a report by the New York Observer. Hayes’s spokeswoman told Politico that the congressman “absolutely denies making the comments that appear in the Observer article.” However, Hayes backed down when audio of his comments surfaced:

I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way. I actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible, so this is definitely not what I intended.

But Hayes is back to his old denial ways. In a debate last night against his opponent Larry Kissell, Hayes denied that he ever denied his comments:

One more time, I did not deny what I said but the context in which it was presented to us, Larry, was that I hated liberals. That is absolutely false and for you to say that it is shows a clear misunderstanding and a lack of a desire to find out what went on.

UPDATE: Watch Hayes’s denial here:

The Bush administration and Iraq are in contentious talks over a security agreement calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. In an interview with CNN today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) refused to directly answer whether he would support the agreement and its timeline, quickly changing the subject:

BLITZER: So you would accept this if it’s on the table right now?

McCAIN: I’ve always said we would be out based on conditions, and honor and victory, and not defeat. And it’s very clear to any observer now that if we had done what Senator Biden wanted to do, break Iraq up into three countries, if we had done what Senator Obama wanted to do, which was immediate withdrawal and setting firm dates for it, we would have probably been defeated in Iraq.

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