SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- On Friday afternoon, following a contentious televised altercation with a former Obama appointee, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) ridiculed as insufficient the president’s plan to continue supporting the Free Syrian Army (FSA) -- a moderate terror group that, like the United States, opposes al Qaeda’s al-Nusra Front, the regime of Syria’s Bashar Assad and ISIS. McCain accused President Obama of rejecting recommendations from national security advisers to further arm and train the FSA. “The commander-in-chief needs to start behaving like one; he needs to get his head in the game,” McCain told reporters Friday. “This is foreign policy 101. You arm one terror group to eliminate another. And when those guys turn on you, you arm a new extremist sect to put down that rebellion.” Because ISIS is now threatening Western targets, McCain is seeking support for a bold move to arm American domestic terrorists such as the Ku Klux Klan, Symbionese Liberation Army and Aryan Nations to take up the fight.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Aging legislator John McCain (R-Ariz.) stunned his family Monday when he revealed in a Twitter post that he had crossed the border into war-ravaged Syria where he met with rebels who are fighting to overthrow the tyrannical regime of Bashar Hafez al-Assad, the country's dictator. McCain's daughter, Meghan, admitted that she learned of her father's whereabouts only after discovering his tweet. She posted in response: "Nothing quite like finding out via twitter that my father secretly snuck into Syria and met with rebel leaders." The 76-year-old senator appeared dazed and incoherent when asked how he wound up more than 7,000 miles from Arizona, but indicated that he had been searching for one of his many homes, the exact number and locations of which he famously can't remember.

KABUL, Afghanistan (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- In the worst helicopter accident since August 2011, when 30 soldiers perished over eastern Afghanistan, six U.S. Marines crashed in the southern part of the country Thursday when their helicopter went down. All aboard have been declared dead. A spokesperson for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said Friday that no Taliban fighters had been active in the area. This latest incident represents just one in a long series of safety issues involving military aircraft. At least 283 personnel have been killed in helicopter crashes since the invasion of Iraq, with another 19 downed in fixed-wing vehicles. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) allegedly told other members of Congress that the number of aircraft-related "murders" has become too large to ignore. Unnamed sources said Graham called the report "a troubling threat to our troops that we can no longer ignore. These helicopters are killing our service men and women, and in that regard, I would urge you to consider them enemy combatants."

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- In 2008, then presidential candidate John McCain alluded to the rise of a third political party. More recently, the cantankerous Arizona senator, also known in some circles as “He Who Shall Not Be Named...President,” has hardened his views on the inevitability of a three party system. McCain said: “All these big government federalists, they’ve done nothing for the people. Well, we’re fed up with feds and fancy-pants fat cats.”

Some pundits who share McCain’s vision believe the conservative Tea Party will produce a viable presidential candidate, but McCain disagrees: “That’s a movement, not a party. Nothing to get excited about. But then again, at my age, having a movement is cause for a party -- if you know what I mean.”