On his new 2012 presidential campaign website, Republican Representative Thaddeus McCotter lists what he’d like you to believe are his “Five Core Principles”:

1. Our liberty is from God not the government
2. Our sovereignty is in our souls not the soil
3. Our security is from strength not surrender
4. Our prosperity is from the private sector not the public sector
5. Our truths are self-evident not relative

But if truth is really self-evident and not relative, then we should be able to see it from what Thaddeus McCotter has actually done in the Congress, not just on the basis of what he has said. These are the Real Five Core Principles of Thaddeus McCotter:

McCotter Principle 1: Support the Arbitrary Exercise of Government Power. In the 109th Congress, Thaddeus McCotter voted for H.R. 6166, a bill which installed undemocratic executive committees without review to designate citizens and noncitizens alike as enemy combatants without standards for proof. It granted President George W. Bush amnesty for his past violations of law. It granted the President supreme authority to decide whether an interrogation technique qualifies as torture. It allowed hearsay evidence to be used to convict an accused person. It permitted indefinite detention without review, without meeting standards of evidence the U.S. Government has followed for centuries.

In the 110th Congress Thad McCotter voted for the FISA Amendments Act, which when passed set up a system for the federal government to spy on you electronically, reading your email, listening to your telephone calls, watching what web pages you visit, following your financial transactions, engage in physical searches of your property and possessions without an explanation, without congressional oversight, without a probable cause warrant, without the ability of a judge to stop it, with permission for the government to use illegally-obtained information, granting telecommunications companies retroactive immunity for breaking the law and violating the rights of millions of Americans.

In the 111th Congress, Thaddeus McCotter voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act with provisions for spying on Americans without establishment of probable cause or so much as a demonstration that the person being spied upon is even tangentially connected to terrorism. This reauthorization of the most controversial of Patriot Act powers made it through the House hidden within Medicare legislations and contained no reforms whatsoever.

In the 112th Congress, Thaddeus McCotter voted for the Patriot Act again in a roll call taking place after mere minutes of debate, despite a lack of any committee consideration and without any provision for amendment. This bill reauthorizes provisions of the Patriot Act, a law that allows agents of the U.S. government to spy on, search and seize the property, papers and communications of individuals without a constitutionally-guaranteed finding of probable cause for that action.

McCotter Principle 2: Prop Up Military Pork Projects for Big Corporate Contractors. This year alone, Thaddeus McCotter has voted to preserve the flow of government money to four huge corporate military construction projects — on the deadly V-22 Osprey, a second unneeded F-35 jet engine, the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle and the Surface Launch Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile System. All four of these systems cost the government huge amounts of money. All four of these systems make military contractor corporations huge amounts of money. And all four projects have been classified by the Defense Department as unnecessary. Thaddeus McCotter voted to prop up government spending for all four.

McCotter Principle 3: The Heck with Religious Liberty. Use Government to Promote Christianity and Enforce Christian Theocratic Standards. In the 109th Congress, Thaddeus McCotter cosponsored H.R. 1070, a bill that prohibits federal courts from ruling on the constitutionality of government officials who use their positions of power to push their own parochial religious standards onto others. In the same Congress, McCotter voted for H.R. 2862, a bill that tried to make it illegal for anyone to enforce a federal court ruling that governments shouldn’t be erecting Christian religious monuments. In the 110th Congress, Thaddeus McCotter voted to let Christian churches take government money, use that money to hire workers for Head Start (which is NOT a religious program), and when doing so only hire people who promise to be Christians. In the 111th Congress, McCotter cosponsored a resolution encouraging American governmental bodies to use their power to erect tributes to the Christian God. In the 112th Congress, McCotter voted for H.R. 471, a bill to redirect government funds to religious schools in Washington DC, schools that are overwhelmingly Christian.

McCotter Principle 4: Restrict Free Speech. In the 110th and 111th Congresses, Thaddeus McCotter pushed legislation that would make it illegal for Americans to exercise their right to free speech by burning an American Flag.

McCotter Principle 5: Take Away Citizenship from Babies Born in America. In the 110th and 111th Congresses, Thaddeus McCotter cosponsored legislation to take away citizenship of babies born right here in the USA. The only American-born babies who would be permitted to have American citizenship would be those that could establish acceptable bloodlines. That’s the citizenship standard of Nazi Germany, by the way.