Kenosha News

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick had a very interesting column this weekend cautioning her fellow liberals against smearing Justice Clarence Thomas as they mount their defense of Judge Sonia Sotomayor:

The temptation to smack back and argue that we deserve to seat Sotomayor because Thomas was a lousy affirmative-action pick who turned into a third-rate justice is hard to resist. But it's flat wrong. Liberals achieve nothing by suggesting that Thomas' elevation to the high court was preposterous on its face or that his tenure there has been a disgrace....

Claims that Thomas is too stupid to ask questions and in constant peril of embarrassing himself at the court are just not that different than claims that Sotomayor is mediocre. Nobody who has followed Thomas' 18-year career at the Supreme Court believes him to be a dunce or a Scalia clone. Whether you accept Jan Crawford Greenburg's claim that Thomas' constitutional theories are so forceful that they have shaped Scalia's or you believe the more common view that Thomas has a deeply reasoned and consistent judicial philosophy that differs dramatically from those of the court's other conservatives, accusations that he's been a dim bulb are just false. They also reveal that the name-calling that originates now, during the confirmation process, engenders a mythology that can never be erased.

It's nice to see Lithwick make this point (even if she has done a little name-calling of her own). Whether you agree with his opinions or not, Thomas has quite obviously proven himself on the Court. Yet the ridiculous idea that he's less capable than his fellow justices still persists, even among people that ought to know better.

by Mark Silva

On the eve of President Barack Obama's address to the Muslim world from Cairo, where he will deliver an appeal for mutual understanding, the Arab world has heard from another voice: A recorded audio-tape attributed to Osama bin Laden, fugitive leader of al Qaeda, accusing Obama of fomenting "hatred'' with military action in Pakistan.

The purported broadcast of bin Laden's words, aired by the Arab-language Al Jazeera satellite television station as Obama was arriving in Saudi Arabia today, stood as a stark reminder of the hurdles that the United States still faces throughout the region.

While the president is intent on "resetting''' U.S. relations with the Muslim world in his planned televised address from the campus of Cairo University in Egypt, some of the long-elusive sponsors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults against the United States remain at large and refocused on overturning the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"I don't think it's surprising that al Qaeda would want to shift attention away from the president's historic efforts ... to reach out and have an open dialogue with the Muslim world,'' Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, said as the president was holding private meetings with the king of Saudi Arabia.

Bin Laden, son of a Saudi family that gained enormous wealth in construction and built the royal palaces of the late King Saud, became involved in the militant Jihadist movement in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union invaded that nation. After returning to Saudi Arabia, he was confined to house arrest, and left the country in the early 1990s - his Saudi citizenship publicly revoked in 1994.

If Obama's mission in the Middle East has a clear purpose, the administration maintains, so does the timing of al Qaeda's message.

The tape's broadcast follows comments from al-Qaeda's second- in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urging Egyptians to shun Obama and contending that the "torturers of Egypt" and "slaves of America'' had invited the American leader to speak in Cairo.

The administration has attempted to draw a contrast between an al Qaeda in hiding and an American leader taking a high-profile stance with his appeal to the Muslim world.

"You have, you know, the leader of the free world speaking from one of the great cities in the world, and you have, you know, bin Laden speaking from an undisclosed... location,'' said Philip J. Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs. "That speaks volumes in terms of the contrast.''

Last week, Ted Olson. Today, Dick Cheney:

Dick Cheney rarely takes a position that places him at a more progressive tilt than President Obama. But on Monday, the former vice president did just that, saying that he supports gay marriage as long as it is deemed legal by state and not federal government.

Speaking at the National Press Club for the Gerald R. Ford Foundation journalism awards, Cheney was asked about recent rulings and legislative action in Iowa and elsewhere that allowed for gay couples to legally wed.

"I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," replied the former V.P. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish. The question of whether or not there ought to be a federal statute to protect this, I don't support. I do believe that the historically the way marriage has been regulated is at the state level. It has always been a state issue and I think that is the way it ought to be handled, on a state-by-state basis. ... But I don't have any problem with that. People ought to get a shot at that."

We hate Dick Cheney here at AMERICAblog.com. Hate him. But, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And, as Sam Stein, who wrote the article above, notes, this statement make Cheney more progressive than Obama on marriage equality. If Cheney can support marriage equality, there's really no excuse for Obama and other leading Congressional Democrats.

Cheney has been using similar language since 2004, when he broke with his boss, George Bush, over the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage:

At a campaign rally in this Mississippi River town, Cheney spoke supportively about gay relationships, saying ?Sfreedom means freedom for everyone,? when asked about his stand on gay marriage.

?SLynne and I have a gay daughter, so it?"s an issue our family is very familiar with,? Cheney told an audience that included his daughter. ?SWith the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone. ... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.

?SThe question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that?"s been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage,? he said.

And, Congress should stay out of it. But, in 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which put the federal government in a position to regulate marriages at the state level. DOMA needs to go.

And, this further confirms all the polling that shows when people know someone gay, it makes them more likely to be supportive of issues like marriage equality. Frankly, I don't think Dick with be with us absent that. But, he is -- and here's the video. Cheney almost sounds human:

A presidential proclamation marking Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

Available in full after the jump.