Dick Cheney is a hypocrite

Vice President Dick Cheney, who argued during the 2000 presidential campaign that the issue of gay marriage is best left to the states, said Friday he would support a presidential push to ban same-sex marriage.

Cheney, whose gay daughter, Mary, is a close adviser, said recent action by courts in Massachusetts and other states that recognize gays' rights to the civil benefits of marriage has caused the administration to revisit the need for a constitutional amendment.

Colorado has become a focal point in the effort to ban gay marriage, with four members of its congressional delegation having drafted or supported legislation late last year restricting marriage to a "union between a man and a woman." During the interview, Cheney said he will support President Bush if the president pursues a ban on gay marriage.

"What I said in 2000 was that the question of whether or not some sort of status, legal status or sanction ought to be granted in the case of a relationship between two individuals of the same sex was historically a matter the states had decided and resolved, and that is the way I preferred it," Cheney said.

But "at this stage, obviously, the president is going to have to make a decision in terms of what administration policy is on this particular provision, and I will support whatever decision he makes."

I don't understand this - perhaps I'm missing the point. When it looked like there was no chance of gay marriage passing through into law, Cheney said that it wasn't really to do with him - that the states should be the one to legislate. Now, when there is a 'threat' that their most feared position will become reality (and so annoy millions of Republican voting Christians), the administration feels that it now can act, that something has changed.
Whilst over the weekend we've had Paul O'Neill calling Bush "a blind man in a roomful of deaf people" during cabinet meetings, the policy of the White House has shifted 180 degrees on Cheney's new remarks. Does the regime of Bush even know what they're saying to the public, do they know what they're doing? O'Neill said that when he had his first meeting with Bush, a one hour sit-down, the President didn't engage: " As I recall, it was mostly a monologue". The question of whether Bush knows what's going on, whether he understands, has been pushed out of the public eye because he has so many advisers who can be a mouthpiece for him and they're the people who actually understand what's going on. This is still worrying though - that the when the most powerful man in the world discusses the economy of his nation, he doesn't know what to say!


and that's not even mentioning this:

“From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

link - Denver Post article