Vice President Dick Cheney is unapologetic about disastrous and, in the case of torturing detainees, potentially criminal actions of the Bush administration. But then again, that’s what we’ve come to expect.
In recent interviews Cheney offered no regrets about warrantless wiretapping, torturing or his expansive view of presidential power — essentially, that a president can do whatever he wants during wartime. Cheney also still backs former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and suggested that the administration would have gone to war with Iraq even if it had known that Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Cheney also isn’t sorry or embarrassed about telling Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., to go “bleep” himself. “I thought he merited it at the time,” he told Fox News Sunday.
Meanwhile, the latest FOX News poll shows Cheney with his lowest approval rating yet — 29 percent — and a new CNN poll found that 23 percent of those surveyed think Cheney is the worst vice president of all time.
The selection of Rick Warren, whose Saddleback Church in California was the site of a candidate forum with Barack Obama and John McCain in August, is an early taste of the Democrats’ post-election effort to reach evangelical Americans.
White evangelicals supported McCain over Obama by a huge margin, 73 percent to 26 percent, but that was a 4-percentage-point improvement over John Kerry’s showing with that group four years earlier.
The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies also announced that Joseph Lowery, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Martin Luther King Jr., will deliver the benediction.
Warren and Lowery make for interesting bookends to Obama’s inauguration: a reminder of liberals’ faith-based past and a promise for what they hope can be a faith-based future.
- Dan Gilgoff, usnews.com
Obama is, for the time being, without a pastor of his own, so we knew he’d have to turn to someone else to deliver the inauguration invocation. Unfortunately, Obama chose Warren.
This is not too big a surprise, but it is disappointing. Obama and Warren have been friends for some time, and Obama accepted an invitation to appear at Warren’s presidential forum over the summer.
So why is it disappointing? Because, though Warren is certainly more tolerant of discussion than activist leaders such as James Dobson and Pat Robertson, his beliefs run counter to Obama’s on most of the major social issues of the day. Warren is opposed, on religious grounds, to abortion rights, gay rights, stem-cell research and euthanasia. In 2004, he described these issues as “non-negotiable” and “not even debatable.”
- Steve Benen, WashingtonMonthly.com
A memorial service Sunday was a needed reminder of the hardship the homeless face this time of the year and our responsibility to help them. The service, held by Advocates to End Chronic Homelessness, was for those who died while homeless — at least eight people in Wichita this year. Thankfully, the city’s faith community has stepped up to provide an overflow shelter during cold months. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, also announced last week that Kansas was awarded $1.3 million to assist individuals and families needing food and shelter. But the city government needs to follow through with its commitment to provide more assistance to the chronically homeless and help them move into permanent housing.
Vice President Dick Cheney is unapologetic about disastrous and, in the case of torturing detainees, potentially criminal actions of the Bush administration. But then again, that’s what we’ve come to expect.
