Nascar News

As both Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch argued last week, commenting on this article in The Weekly Standard, we are seeing the "last gasp of a losing argument" from opponents of gay marriage. A few days later, former Solicitor General Ted Olson, who argued Bush v. Gore for the Bushies, joined forces with liberal lawyer (and former Gore council) David Boies and filed a legal challenge to California's Prop. 8. Now former Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking at the National Press Club, affirmed his support for a federalist approach to same-sex marriage, telling assembled journalists that "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.

Via RealClearPolitics, which also has the video.

An AIDS conference scheduled for this week in Washington, DC, will not have 60 participants - Canadians who could not enter the US because they have HIV and didn't realize that they still had to jump through several hoops to get a temporary waiver:

As many as 60 Canadians had been turned away from the U.S. border in spite of "stated U.S. policy that foreigners living with HIV would no longer be barred from entering the country." However, even though Congress acted to repeal the law that keeps HIV+ visitors out, relevant U.S. Department of Health & Human Services regulations have not been revised, and HIV+ visitors are still not allowed to enter the country... "The 60 Canadians had planned to attend the North American Housing and HIV/AIDS Research Summit in Washington, D.C. from June 2 to June 5."

The situation echoes a recent incident in which a Cuban unsuccessfully sought to remain in the U.S. under a 1966 American law that provides for permanent U.S. residency for those who emigrate to American shores from Cuba. But in the case of Raul Hernandez, the long-standing law was superceded by the ban on HIV+ foreigners, even though Hernandez had been living in Arlington, Virginia, reported The Southern Voice in a May 20 article.

The Obama administration seems unable or unwilling to expedite this. People with HIV outside America need to know that there has been no change and the discrimination against the HIV-positive continues despite the law change and despite the change in administration. Travelers beware. They can and will detain you or turn you back.

• GM files for bankruptcy. Washington will give the company an additional $30 billion to play with, and will take a 60 percent stake in return. The U.S. isn't the only government taking ownership: Another 12 percent goes to Canada.

• The Nevada legislature overrides a veto and legalizes domestic partnerships.

• Someone who hasn't parsed the phrase "pro-life" very carefully has killed an abortionist.

• The emergency powers behind the Fed's Wall Street bailouts.

• Irony alert: A report making the case for stronger intellectual property rights was partly plagiarized.

This is a breaking story about which I'll have more to say in a column next week, but today the National Governors' Association announced that 46 states and the District of Columbia have joined a coalition in favor of common academic standards. Only South Carolina, Alaska, Missouri, and Texas have held back. From the NGA press release:

By signing on to the common core state standards initiative, governors and state commissioners of education across the country are committing to joining a state-led process to develop a common core of state standards in English language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. These standards will be research and evidence-based, internationally benchmarked, aligned with college and work expectations and include rigorous content and skills.

The caveat here is that once the coalition develops the standards, each state will be able to choose whether or not it will actually adhere to them. Unless the federal government provides some sticks and carrots, there will be little incentive for politicians from low-performing states, like Mississippi, to enact the standards. After all, doing so would reveal just how little those states' school children are actually learning, and to what a pitifully low standard they've been held.

But this is still big news. It wasn't that long ago that proponents of common standards believed the best they could hope for were regional standards. In other words, instead of our current system of 50 different state curricula, groups of states would band together and agree to share one system. But in recent months, the political calculus has shifted considerably, with national standards emerging as education reform common ground between teachers' unions and some of their opponents within the Democratic coalition -- those who broadly support teacher merit pay, an expansion of charter schools and vouchers, and alternative-certification programs for teachers. All of these folks can agree, seemingly, that the system would benefit from some regularization.

Of course, anti-testing advocates are likely to be quite skeptical of this move, which has the potential to lead to national assessments. At this early stage, though, it is totally unclear whether common assessments would even be an outgrowth of common standards.

--Dana Goldstein

by Mark Silva

Now that Newt Gingrich has suggested that "racist'' was too strong a word to apply to Judge Sonia Sotomayor, radio's Rush Limbaugh is standing on a lonely perch.

But Limbaugh's still standing:

"I got a little grief from people for saying that there's no such thing as reverse racism -- just call her a racist,'' Limbaugh says of President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, who is poised to become the first Hispanic on the high court and has suggested that a Latina may have a better perspective on some issues than a white male.

"So, that is a racist thing to say, and it's bigoted,'' Limbaugh tells FOX News Channel's Sean Hannity. "And she would bring, no question about it, racism and bigotry to the court if she is confirmed."

In a two-part interview on FOX's Hannity, the first part airing at 9 pm EDT this evening, Hannity discusses not only his feelings about Sotomayor, but also why he believes Colin Powell supports President Obama.

And once again, race is in play.

""I think two things were a factor in his endorsement of Obama, The first one is race, clearly,'' Limbaugh says of the former secretary of state in the second Bush White House and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the first Bush White House. " Nobody has the guts to say that, but, I mean, what else could it be?... Race is clearly a factor.''

He sees something else behind Powell's support for Obama: "

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.''