Historic

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release June 1, 2009
LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2009

- - - - - - -

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country's response to the HIV pandemic.

Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants, and across my Administration -- in both the White House and the Federal agencies -- openly LGBT employees are doing their jobs with distinction and professionalism.

The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect.

My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security. We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.

These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

BARACK OBAMA

GOP Civil War

Colin Powell fires back at tin soldiers Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh on the Sunday news shows. Powell a decorated Vietnam Veteran has been under malicious attack by two of the most infamous Chicken Hawks in American History.

New York Daily News writer Mike Lupica adds a fiery column of his own today, reminding the GOP you are in danger of shrinking your "base" to a tiny rigid fascist core thereby assuring the destruction of an American Political Party. The war for the Future of the GOP continues and in my personal opinion it is already lost.

Leave the ashes to Limbaugh and Cheney the GOP the DO Nothing Party deserves its coming OBLIVION!

GOP led by toy soldiers - Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh - insulting heroes like Gen Colin Powell

Mike Lupica
Monday, May 25th 2009, 4:00 AM

This was at 166th St. and Boston Road in the Bronx Sunday morning, in front of the amazing old building that was still called Morris High School when Gen. Colin Powell graduated from there more than 50 years ago and began a life of service to his country.

This was an hour before Powell would appear on "Face the Nation" to discuss comments made about him by former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose most famous moment carrying a gun came when shooting a lawyer once instead of quail.

These days there are now five smaller schools on the Morris campus. Once, though, this was the first high school in the Bronx. And even with a lot of construction going on, the place is still something to see.

"Like a castle," Michael Moran, 42, from the neighborhood, said.

"Colin Powell went here," he was told.

"You think we don't know that up here?" Moran said.

A week ago Cheney - whose idea of a foxhole is Fox News - went on "Face the Nation" and said he assumed Powell had left the Republican Party after endorsing Barack Obama. Then Cheney said if he had to choose between Powell and Rush Limbaugh to lead the Republicans, he would go with Limbaugh.

But that really is the current Republican Party, isn't it? Angry old white men like Cheney and Limbaugh talking to each other. Two toy soldiers who enjoy insulting a real one like Powell. Trying to convince the country that if you don't believe in torture, you don't want to keep it safe.

Only here was Powell, who came out of Morris High to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs and secretary of state, telling the real truth about his party Sunday, and about the old men who think they speak for everyone in it.

"In every demographic ... the Republican Party is losing," Powell said.

Of course Dick Cheney wants to talk about torture now. It's all he's got. He doesn't want to talk about the soldiers he sent off to die in Iraq. He doesn't want to talk about all the wounded soldiers from that war, or the trips he didn't make to Walter Reed while he was still vice president.

He doesn't want to talk about how the Republicans lost both houses of Congress and finally the White House while he was vice president, as millions left his party on the dead run. And he certainly doesn't want to talk about what kind of country he left to President Obama, and to the rest of us.

So he talks about the potential danger of closing Guantanamo and puts it all on Obama, failing to mention that his own boss, Bush, also wanted to close the place. It is completely gutless of Cheney, and completely predictable. He continues to live in a weird parallel world, accepting no blame or responsibility for Sept. 11, but making it clear that if anything happens again it's all Obama's fault.

In a quiet voice Sunday, Colin Powell pointed out the obvious about Guantanamo to Bob Schieffer:

"[Cheney is] disagreeing with President Bush's policy."

Then Powell said Obama wasn't closing down Guantanamo to appease the intellectuals of Europe, as Cheney snarkily suggested, "but to reassure people all around the world that we're a country of law."

Understand: Powell is not some kind of perfect American hero; he will always have to live with the appearance he made at the United Nations when he was helping Bush and Cheney sell their intelligence about weapons of mass destruction, reluctantly playing the good soldier to the end.

He is still better than the people to whom he was forced to respond Sunday. He has still led a great American life and served his country more honorably than Cheney ever has or ever will. At the end of his time on television Sunday, on the eve of Memorial Day, he praised the young men and women fighting Cheney's war in Iraq as "another greatest generation."

"This is a time when we reflect on the privileges we've had because we had other citizens put their lives on the line," he said.

Maybe Dick Cheney should do some reflecting, take a good look around this Memorial Day. Or just take in the kind of parade in which he'll never be asked to march. Maybe Cheney could then think about devoting the rest of his life finding ways to help the soldiers he sent off to war, instead of finding ways to keep pinning medals on himself.

It is worth remembering today that guys like Colin Powell, Morris High '54, put their own lives on the line. Cheney always did it with somebody else's.

Confronting the Beast,,of Dogma

No wonder the agents of intolerance and keepers of the flames of rigid religiosity despise Barack Obama. His appearance at Notre Dame was a tour de force and a ritual slaying of the beast(Ignorance)!
Yes the man IS the Antichrist! All hail!


The Notre Dame Postmortem
By Sonia Tsuruoka • on May 18, 2009

After treading treacherous waters for weeks, President Obama averted the jaws of political pitfall and successfully defused much of the faith-charged controversy surrounding Notre Dame’s Sunday Commencement.

Then again, maybe “averted” isn’t the right word. No, put it this way: with rhetorical machismo that would make a Spartan shake in his cleats, Obama leapt off the parapet, confronted the beast, and served its twitching head on a platter to every off-campus rabble-rouser that dared litter the scene with “hate-baiting” and hyperbole.

Which, of course, leads us to the most important question of the evening:

Would Alan Keyes like some ice for that third degree…burn?

As always, Obama settled the match without a drop of blood spilt. His strategy was subliminal: to subdue extremist beliefs on both sides of the fence by his advocacy of “middle-ground” politics and refusal to “shy away from things that are uncomfortable.”

As Winston Churchill once said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” And seize the opportunity Obama did, delivering a remarkable, no-holds barred address that discretely confronted – and conquered – the controversy surrounding the afternoon Commencement.

Yet the sensitivity with which Obama met his most recent ideological hurdle is largely representative of his own persona. He was clever, calculated and courageous, with an undeniable political swag that engaged Notre Dame students and faculty members on common religious ground.

To the probable chagrin of his right-wing counterparts, Obama emphasized the fact that all pro-lifers were not “ideologues” deserving of political dismissal. And it is here the President was careful to draw a clear distinction between the coherent on-campus protests of Notre Dame students (sans fetal pictures), and the demagoguery of far-right extremists in the media.

Watching the address brought me back to the primaries, where “Change you can believe in”, seemed like little more than hogwash poetry. But to media’s most seasoned political analysts, Obama’s uplifting slogan was nothing short of a political coup d’état, a declaration that shook — and eventually toppled – the crudest aspects of Cheney and Rove’s neo-con establishment.

Similarly, Obama’s call for “Open hearts, open minds, [and] fair-minded words,” challenged the tactics of people like Randall Terry who believe Obama’s stances on abortion make him “the adversary…of the global common good,” and Alan Keyes, who believes that the honorary degree being given to Barack Obama “not only honors evil [but] exalts and worships it.”

To that end, I disagree with the premise of many off-campus protests.

Take, for instance, the controversy surrounding Notre Dame’s decision to award Obama an honorary degree. Bill Donahue, President of the Catholic League, recently opined that Notre Dame giving Obama an honorary degree “would be like Howard University giving David Duke a degree in racial politics.”

But according to Larry Marsh, a former Notre Dame faculty member, that simply isn’t true. In his involvement with the Notre Dame Honorary Degree Committee, Marsh cites the body was glad to recommend (and eventually award) a Jewish scholar with an honorary degree.

In Marsh’s own words,“How can it be ok to award an honorary degree to a person who does not recognize the divinity of Christ, but not ok to award one to someone who might have a different conception about conception? Why should Christ’s divinity have to take a back seat to the disagreement over when a fetus becomes a child?”

Second, it’s important to emphasize that the President has no direct jurisdiction over a woman’s right to choice – this issue is a judicial precedent under the control of the Supreme Court, that, in the following years, will evaluate its constitutional legitimacy independently from the Oval Office.

Of course, the logical argument used by Catholic protesters on Notre Dame’s campus — and pretty much all pro-lifers — is that the President can influence Supreme Court decisions through new court appointments, should a replacement be necessary. That’s true. Of course, it’s also true that their argument is pretty much identical to the one used by disgruntled pro-choice advocates during the Bush Presidency, all of whom took to hysterics at the notion of a conservative court appointment.

Interestingly enough, the nightmare of many pro-choicers was soon realized in the appointment of Chief Justice Roberts — and as liberals know full well, utter chaos ensued. A day after the seasoned justice was sworn into office, Roe v. Wade was reversed, millions of teenagers became underage parents, America degenerated into violence, and locusts rained down from the sky into the streets of Washington. Then, seven Orc-like horsemen stormed the Capitol and delivered the Apocalypse. The end.

We all know this series of events never transpired. In fact, even the reversal of Roe V. Wade didn’t come close to becoming a reality under the watch of a conservative Chief Justice appointment. And therein lies two harsh truths:

For one, it will take more than a new Supreme Court appointment to challenge judicial precedent, regardless of his/her ideological slant. Since the landmark 1973 decision, conservative Presidents have only halfheartedly suggested that the Court “reconsider” the case, if at all.

Similarly, conservative Justices seated on the Supreme Court have been wary about any reversal; Chief Justice Roberts, though personally pro-life, has been careful to exercise judicial minimalism — the emphasis of legal precedent and decline of judicial activism — in order to preserve the status quo. Even if Obama were to suddenly cast off his liberal leanings, adopt a pro-life platform, and, like Bush Jr., appoint a conservative Justice to the Court, there would be no indication that any reversal of judicial precedent would take place at all.

And why?

Because regardless of what pro-lifers and feminists have come to believe, abortion is, in large part, a wedge issue; comparatively speaking, it has little to no sweeping national consequences. To that end, I have always been indiscriminate; any one-issue voter who concerns themselves solely with the matter of abortion — whichever end of the spectrum they occupy — will likely irritate me, regardless of my own political and religious inclinations.

With the US embroiled in two critical overseas wars and the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, it baffles (and vexes me) that anyone would preoccupy themselves with an issue so comparatively inconsequential. Sure, it’s possible to cook up an impassioned argument against “moral decay” but these qualms should not, in any instance, supersede government’s primary concerns : the economy and state of US foreign affairs.

In short, I applaud Obama’s fearless political dialogue regarding a subject that has proved untouchable for dozens of Democratic politicians. Well played, Mr. President, well played.

Source Scoop 44

Bishop John D'Arcy not a fan..

GOP Spurns the Young

"locked in the dogmas of their quiet past, unable to think and therefore act anew."

Excellent article from this mornings Los Angeles Times sure to be ignored by Republican Politicos, unthinking,uncomprehending and on the path to Partycide.








The Republican Party ignores young 'millennials' at its peril

The new generation of voters is unified, committed and, for the foreseeable future, overwhelmingly Democratic.
By Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais
May 10, 2009

If the Republican Party thinks it has problems now, just wait. The party's incredibly poor performance among young voters in the 2008 election raises questions about the long-term competitiveness of the GOP.

The "millennials" -- the generation of Americans born between 1982 and 2003 -- now identify as Democrats by a ratio of 2 to 1. They are the first in four generations to contain more self-perceived liberals than conservatives.

And a recent Daily Kos tracking poll should send shudders down the spine of any Republican who understands how powerful a voting bloc this generation could become over the next decade.

Only 9% of millennials polled expressed a favorable opinion of the Republican Party. Only 7% were positive about the GOP's congressional leaders. By contrast, 65% of millennials had a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, and a majority also approved of congressional Democrats. Though many people question the political sophistication of the millennials, they have been instilled with egalitarian and participatory values by their parents since birth.

This child-rearing produced a generation that was wide open to the personal appeal and message of Barack Obama and his party. Moving forward, the initial preference of millennials for President Obama and the Democrats will remain in place for a lifetime unless Republicans can quickly adapt their message and find a messenger who can speak to this powerful new force in American politics.

Only 41% of all millennials were eligible to vote in 2008, yet their overwhelming support for Obama transformed his win from what would have been a squeaker into a solid victory. Obama's popular-vote margin over John McCain was about 9.5 million nationally; millennials accounted for nearly 7.6 million of those votes.

In the 2010 off-year election, half of millennials will be eligible to vote, representing about a fifth of the overall electorate. By 2012, 60% will be eligible to vote, and they could make up about a quarter of the American electorate when Obama runs for reelection. By 2020, when virtually all millennials will be over 18, they will represent 36% of the electorate and will completely dominate elections and the political agenda of America.

And it seems likely that this civic generation, like its "Greatest Generation" great-grandparents, will vote in big numbers. Turnout among voters under 30 has been rising steadily since millennials began to replace the alienated and more cynical Gen-Xers in this age group. From a low of 37% in 1996, turnout increased to 53% of all eligible millennials, and 59% in the key battleground states in 2008.

Their unity of opinion and their numbers will make millennials' preferences for economic activism, a non-intrusive approach to social issues by government at any level and a multilateral interventionism by America in foreign affairs the policy paths to political success during the next decade.

It is simply inconceivable that the Republican Party can craft a winning strategy between now and then that doesn't accommodate these ideas.

But so far, Republicans appear to be tone-deaf on the issues that millennials care about.

Millennials have been reared with a desire to serve their community, and the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act provides them an opportunity to do just that, while at the same time dealing with their single biggest financial worry -- the high cost of a college education. Unfortunately, all but 25 House Republicans voted against the bill, despite its co-sponsorship by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

Millennials also are experiencing higher levels of unemployment than any other generation. They expect the federal government to take an active role in fixing that problem and support redistributing income if necessary. But the almost-unanimous Republican opposition to the "recovery" act helped convince millennials that only one party actually understood their problems and was prepared to act in accordance with their beliefs.

Polls consistently show millennials are more committed to environmental protection than any generation in American history, willing to sacrifice economic growth or endure higher prices in order to save the planet. Given the millennials' overwhelming concern with the environment, House Minority Leader John Boehner's comments recently that carbon dioxide isn't a real threat because "we all breathe it out" and, besides, "cows give out a lot of gas too," went beyond inanity into the realm of political suicide.

The only tentative Republican gesture to millennial power to date is the GOP's sudden fascination with a new social network platform, Twitter. By choosing Twitter -- with its limitations on content -- to connect to millennials, Republicans are actually demonstrating how little they know about this generation's commitment to engaging in the content-rich challenges of rebuilding the nation's civic institutions and national unification.

Republicans will need to find a new message and much better messengers than their last presidential ticket or their current congressional leaders if they want to truly connect with today's young voters. Failure to do so will leave Republicans, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, "locked in the dogmas of their quiet past, unable to think and therefore act anew."
Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais are fellows of the think tanks NDN and the New Policy Institute and the coauthors of "Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube, and the Future of American Politics."








Former GOP Congressman Micky Edwards has almost the same point of view as the above article, and explains why McCain and the GOP's debacle in November was far worse and more damaging than Barry Goldwater's 1964 rout. DH

The Nation NEEDS a Better GOP!
or a new party of the opposition.

Republicans have to put a leash on attack-dog tactics and engage in a constructive manner to deal with serious problems facing the country.

By Mickey Edwards
May 10, 2009

There are optimists within the Republican Party. They look at the wreckage left behind after last year's elections, and recall 1964. That was the year that Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for president, was so badly trounced that pundits proclaimed the GOP dead. But it was also the year that a new breed of conservative activists, myself among them, brought a new energy to the party that eventually reshaped it and led to years of Republican domination of the executive branch.

The whistle-past-the-graveyard crowd imagines that this year's doomsayers have simply forgotten history: Four years after the 1964 disaster, they remind us, Republicans won the presidency. We'll just do it again, they say. But the Republicans' defeat last year was far different from their 1964 loss -- and it will be a lot harder to come back from.

In 1964, Goldwater was seen as an anomaly. He was not representative of his own party, and, to a large extent, was rejected by it. The conservatives voters so soundly rejected in 2008 are seen not as anomalous but as representative of the larger party.

The Richard Nixon who won the presidency in 1968 had been vice president under Dwight Eisenhower, who left the White House with his popularity intact. The GOP candidate in 2012 will have to overcome the nation's memory of the previous Republican in that office, George W. Bush, who was less popular in most of America than the New York Yankees are in Boston. There will be no "glorious days of Republican leadership" to hark back to unless the party's candidates continue to dredge up memories of Ronald Reagan, who left Washington two decades ago, before a good many younger voters were born.

When Republicans rebounded in 1968, they were a national party, helped to victory by strong support in areas where, today, the party wanders in a political wilderness.

There are now large chunks of the country almost without a Republican presence. Draw a map of the east side of the U.S., from the tip of Florida to the Canadian border, and see how many Republican senators or governors you find. In 1969, by contrast, the GOP held both Senate seats in New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Vermont; there were Republican senators from New Jersey, Michigan, Maryland, even Massachusetts. In the House, Republicans held three of the six Connecticut seats, five of 12 in Massachusetts, both in New Hampshire, 15 in New York, seven of 10 in Wisconsin. You get the idea.

What can you say about the Republican Party in 2009? That it has Alabama locked up? Well, that's not even true: Democrats are far more competitive in the South than Republicans are in much of the country.

It's certainly true that to some degree Arlen Specter's defection from the Republican Party was opportunism. Specter, after all, became a Republican in the first place not because of any particular political point of view but because, in 1966, when both Republicans and Democrats were trying to recruit him to run for district attorney in Philadelphia, the GOP promised more support. Specter himself has said that he's now a Democrat because that's the best way to get elected again. To Specter, party has never mattered much.

But there's more to the story. While Specter will not march in lock step with Democrats any more than he did with Republicans, he will vote with them on many procedural issues, and in the Senate, that's no small matter. So the loss matters. And that's why Republicans need to take seriously the fact that Specter was not so much seduced by Democrats as driven away by a GOP that has become increasingly intolerant of disagreement within its ranks and seemingly incapable of putting forth an appealing platform.

At one point, Republicans put forth a coherent, idealistic vision of America, one that summoned it to greatness. There was a profound belief in the dignity of the individual, a reverence for the Constitution and the founders who proposed it, a belief in doing whatever it took (including spending tax dollars to build a military second to none) to preserve the peace. Republican platforms preached prudence and the virtues of small business.

Today, the Republican belief system has degenerated into an embarrassing hodgepodge that worships political victory more than ideas; supports massive deficits; plunges the nation into "just-in-case" wars without adequate troops, supplies or armor; dismisses constitutional strictures; and campaigns on a platform of turning national problem-solving over to "Joe the Plumber." It's hard to see how all that points the way to a reawakening of voters to trust in the GOP.

This may suggest, of course, that the party should just toss in the towel, accept its designated role as the Whigs of the 21st century and leave governance to its betters. But American freedom depends on power checking power. If Democrats control the legislative and executive branches without meaningful opposition, the country will be the weaker for it. Some of President Obama's initiatives would dramatically shift the boundaries between public and private, reshape the relationship between citizens and government and alter the lens through which America views its international commitments. These are serious matters and deserve serious, and constructive, engagement.

Merely attacking administration proposals and labeling Obama a "socialist" will only ensure that instead of rebounding, as the GOP did in 1968, the party will slip even further into irrelevance. And that will not be good for America.

Mickey Edwards is a former U.S. congressman, a lecturer at Princeton University and the author of "Reclaiming Conservatism."

The GOP Defends Torture

On a day when Sen Arlen Spector abandons a flailing GOP former VP Cheney wont shut up about his love of Torture. Who knew ole Dick Cheney was a Masochist? Or Sado-Masochist with the duress he is inflicting on the Republican Party!

Well you know what they say the party that plays well together stays together,, to the bitter end!

Cheney demands a Torture Commission
by Robert M Shum Tuesday, April 28, 2009

The Republicans finally think they’ve found an issue: They’re in favor of torture. Republican House Leader John Boehner channeled the party’s will when he spoke up for the torturers’ cause at a White House meeting with President Obama. But his voice was drowned out (metaphorically) by someone who had previously left the White House for an undisclosed location in suburban Virginia.

Dick Cheney, the avatar of the nonexistent threat of weapons of mass destruction, hastened onto the public stage to blast the President for endangering the national security. Obama’s crime? Releasing memos depicting waterboarding and other techniques borrowed from enemies like the Communist Chinese. It wasn’t Cheney’s first assault on Obama, but it captured singular attention because Cheney plainly was the Bush Administration’s driving force in this wholesale violation of national and international law.

From a Democratic perspective, the emergence of Cheney as the face of the Republican Party is a consummation devoutly to be wished. GOP strategists generally yearn to see Cheney just go away; the last thing they want is for Americans to see the former Vice-President, an antonym for public appeal, become a synonym for their party.

On the merits, Cheney doesn’t even argue half the case—whether torture is wrong in principle, wrong legally, or wrong for American foreign policy. Instead he insists that it worked to some unspecified extent. Secretary of State Clinton pungently understated the obvious when she dismissed him as not “a particularly reliable source.” In fact, last year FBI Director Robert Mueller, a Bush holdover, was asked by an interviewer whether any attacks had been foiled by what Cheney and his acolytes whitewashed as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Mueller was “reluctant to answer,” but then conceded: “I don’t believe that has been the case.” As early as 2002, a Pentagon study warned that torture would elicit “unreliable information.”

So what can torture’s apologists claim? For a while, their prime example was a plot to crash a plane into the tallest building in downtown Los Angeles. They pointed to information supposedly coerced from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top al Qaida operative, who we now know was waterboarded 183 times. It’s a scenario right out of the television show “24”; appropriately it’s also fictional. The plot was derailed in 2002; KSM, as government memos refer to the Sheikh, wasn’t even captured until 2003.

Cheney, seldom daunted by the inconvenient truth, is now demanding the selective declassification of two documents allegedly “proving” the effectiveness of torture—although, of course, he refuses to call it that. (Imagine hoping to be remembered in history as the “waterboarding Vice-President.”) The difficulty, as Bush State Department Counselor Philip Zelikow points out, is that the release of these documents “would only raise questions that would have to be answered with still more disclosures.”

In other words, Cheney hasn’t thought it through—perhaps no surprise from the official who propelled us into the folly of the Iraq War—but in effect he is demanding a Torture Commission to review all the documents and decisions on the dark engine he fired up. That would be the only way to make a definitive judgment on his claims.

The President has resisted the creation of such a commission, to the consternation of many of his own supporters. It’s ironic, to say the least, that Cheney has stumbled into agreement with them by insisting that “the American people [should] have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was.” But how can they do that without a through and independent inquiry?

I doubt Obama will take Cheney’s advice. The President has sought to navigate a fine line on this issue. Those who disagree with his decision to rule out the prosecution of CIA agents who engaged in torture have a point. Do we really want to validate a defense that pleads: “I was only following the memos”? At least why not prosecute the officials who authorized torture and the lawyers who rationalized it? Leave aside the reality that it would be difficult to convict them; the government would have to prove that the legal advice was intentionally and knowingly flawed (as opposed to merely adhering to the Bush norm of gross incompetence). The President’s real reason for resisting criminal cases—or a commission—is a belief that America can’t afford a wave of recrimination and bitter division about the past when we should be concentrating on the urgent business of saving our future.

Obama’s fine line also seems to me to be finely calculated. I think he recognizes that history, too, has its claims, and that the truth will out over time, as it did with Richard Nixon and Watergate. In releasing the memos, he’s sent a clear message of deterrence—that American operatives in the future can’t rely on legal camouflage to justify torture. Indeed what has been too little noted is how the FBI and the Pentagon refused to participate in the Bush-Cheney reign of torture.

The line Obama has drawn is likely to endure. There’s no guarantee, but there wouldn’t be even if the culprits found themselves in court or under inquisitorial klieg lights. And I doubt any subsequent administration would risk a repeat of this dark chapter in our history.

And that’s where Cheney will be left—to history—unless, that is, he inadvertently aids and abets the creation of a Torture Commission. That would only seal his ultimate disgrace; we might even discover, as some allege, that the real object of waterboarding was to extract false confessions endorsing Cheney’s concocted connections between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.

In the meantime, as we end the First 100 Days, which have marked not just an historic success for Obama but an ideological and political dead end for the Republicans, maybe the GOP will at last disclaim their former Vice-President. They’re already dumping on George W. Bush for the bailouts and “big spending.” Isn’t the betrayal of our laws, our reputation and our core values a graver offense? But if instead the party of “No” lets itself become the party of Cheney, well, in that case they’ll just keep torturing themselves.

source The Week.com
- ROBERT M. SHRUM has been a senior adviser to the Gore 2000 presidential campaign, the campaign of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the British Labour Party. In addition to being the chief strategist for the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign, Shrum has advised thirty winning U.S. Senate campaigns; eight winning campaigns for governor; mayors of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major cities; and the Democratic Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. Shrum's writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , The New Republic , Slate , and other publications. The author of No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner (Simon and Schuster), he is currently a Senior Fellow at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.

"Old School" Republicans Are "Scared Shitless"

Good speech but in my opinion a waste of time. The GOP seems adrift and about to ground itself on those jagged rocks of irrelevancy.

The party represents only One Political Thought: Failure they embrace it!

The No Nothing, Do Nothing Party!



April 18, 2009 09:46 PM

Speaking to an affectionate crowd of Log Cabin Republicans on Saturday evening, Meghan McCain ridiculed the party her father headed this past election, declaring that "old school Republicans" were "scared shitless" of the changing landscape.

The Senator's daughter, who has quickly become something of an iconic figure in the gay conservative community since the end of the election, took repeated shots at the GOP for its antiquated mores.

"I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes," said McCain. "There are those who think we can win the White House and Congress back by being 'more' conservative. Worse, there are those who think we can win by changing nothing at all about what our party has become. They just want to wait for the other side to be perceived as worse than us. I think we're seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party. But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past."

Later, she called out those officials in the Republican tent who insist that tactical improvements, technology and brass-knuckle politicking are the path back to relevance.

"Simply embracing technology isn't going to fix our problem," she said. "Republicans using Twitter and Facebook isn't going to miraculously make people think we're cool again. Breaking free from obsolete positions and providing real solutions that don't divide our nation further will. That's why some in our party are scared. They sense the world around them is changing and they are unable to take the risk to jump free of what's keeping our party down."

The remarks, delivered at the Log Cabin Republican's national convention in Washington D.C., drew healthy applause and the occasional high-pitched whistling. McCain, at one point, declared herself a proud member of the GOP. But her pot shots at the Republican Party and its flashier figures were not thinly veiled. Describing her public tiff with Ann Coulter as non-delicate, she went on to refer to the brash conservative talker as "overly partisan and divisive." Later in the speech she insisted that "most of our nation wants our nation to succeed" - a pretty clear dig at the now-infamous remarks of talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

As for the GOP establishment, McCain described it as a "party that was thriving at one point on a few singular issues" but could no longer "see long-term success."

"We've seen how it has contributed to some serious problems in our nation and world," McCain said, in an apparent reference to the government under GOP control. "Let me blunt, you can't assume you're electing the right leaders to handle all the problems facing our nation when you make your choice based on one issue. More and more people are finally getting that."

Vermont Gay Marriage

Yesterday, 7 April, 2009 the Vermont House of Representatives, by one vote, overrode Gov. Jim Douglas’s veto of a bill allowing gay couples to marry. By only one vote but that is all that was needed. Vermont is the first state to allow same-sex marriage through legislative action instead of a court ruling. This I support.

In 2000, Vermont became the first state to adopt civil unions for gay couples. It is now the fourth state to allow same-sex marriage. In addition to Iowa, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Also yesterday, the District of Columbia gave initial approval to a plan to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside of the District. That could open this to a Federal case because of Congressional oversight of the District. In 1996 Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. Bill Clinton signed that bill. As a result of that act the federal government may not recognize same-sex marriage, no social security survivors benefits etc.

Last week the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages. That is not the job of any court. Courts are not qualified to make laws. The judiciary of that state is out of line and it needs to be corrected as California voters did to its Supreme Court.

The founding fathers concept of separation of powers is more important to my mind than government recognition of gay marriage. My representative and senator speak for me and write the laws. The judiciary makes decisions based on the Constitution and those laws. The executive branch enforces those laws. Simple. (Then there are the separate states. As a Texan, I like that too.)

In California, Proposition 8 was approved by the voters. That act amended the state’s Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. This was in response to the abuse of power by the state Supreme Court which decided that a handful of lawyers dressed like Catholic Priests could change the will of a few million fellow citizens. They were wrong and the people told them so.

Now the California GLBT ‘community’ has an even greater hurdle to climb. It will take more that a few years to correct. 26 States have existing bans on same sex marriage. Some of those are constitutional bans I guess that is one critical vote to the negative if you are thinking of a U.S. Constitutional Amendment. In other words, it will not happen any time soon.

My point here is that to make a law; more specifically to change a law for same sex marriage, it must be done right. Through the law making bodies. Stop trying to back door this through the courts or executive decree. Be up front and honest.
Gays are quite literally asking straights to help. To grant recognition as equals. If they ask right, it might happen.

Californian faggots dressed in white face and French clown suits went into a Catholic Cathedral in San Francisco and took communion from the Arch-Bishop. These faggots don’t have the courage to show their real face or name. They then walked back down the isle sticking their tongue out at old ladies and young children with the communion host still on their tongue. This was clearly to help convince Christians on which way to vote for Gay rights. It worked like a charm. Prop 8 passed. Gay marriage is unconstitutional in California. Then gay people walked around with ‘H8 and Hate’ signs to show their appreciation. That pretty much secured the law for a generation or more.

As a Roman Catholic, conservative, expert marksman, disease free, father of four sons, TEXAN, I am proud to be the partner of this blogs owner. This is my first independent post here. I hope my position is clear.
Gay rights will happen. Get the idiots out of the spotlight. Maybe carry signs saying “I Love too!”, “I love You!”, stuff like that, no hate. It will happen faster. This ’in your face’ drag queen style crap will send exactly the message California voters sent back in the State Constitution. “NO.”

I applaud the Vermont House of representatives for it’s override of the governors veto. My partner, DeWayne and I look forward to this happening in more states.

Albert in Texas