"To me the Beirut bombing started it all. The person they said was responsible was (Osama) Bin Laden's mentor, from what I've been told."

Said Kim Carlson, the sister of Jesse J. Ellison of Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, who died at the age of 19 in the bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The 30th anniversary of the bombing was Wednesday.

"I kind of held a lot of resentment against President (Ronald) Reagan at the time because he didn't take any action. It makes you wonder had they taken action would that have made (terrorists) think twice before coming after us with all the other bombings. But maybe it would have made it worse."...

Reagan sent Marines to Lebanon in 1982 on a peacekeeping mission during the Lebanese Civil War. Six months before the barracks bombing, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was hit by a suicide bomber, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans. The Islamic Jihadist Organization claimed credit for the bombings as well as kidnappings and other terrorist activities and demanded that Americans leave Lebanon.....

The Marine barracks bombing helped solidify what would later become informally known as the Powell-Weinberger doctrine: American troops would not go anywhere unless there was a clearly defined objective, a willingness to send a massive force and the American people were solidly behind the action, [said UW-Madison history professor John Hall].

New ad includes Laura Bush, Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney expressing support for same-sex marriage.

Laura Bush didn't approve of the use of this video clip (which comes from a 2010 interview with Larry King) and she's voiced her objection to it:



Who knows what she secretly thinks, but officially, she's saying you shouldn't have used me without asking. Of course, the group that made the ad — the Respect for Marriage Coalition — has the right to appropriate this clip and use it in their political message. Imagine how hard it would be to make political ads if you couldn't use clips like this. I suspect that secretly she's happy to influence opinion this way — especially as she's able to hold herself at some distance from politics. She clearly likes to seem modest and completely unpushy, as you can see in the longer clip from the Larry King show:



What a terrible shame that the Republican Party didn't accommodate itself to this idea at least 10 years ago. Really, it's a shame they didn't buy in even earlier, 18 years ago, when Andrew Sullivan's "Virtually Normal" came out. At the time, the left-liberals I knew were antagonistic to the institution of marriage and viewed Sullivan's contribution as an unwelcome conservative intrusion on the gay rights movement, which they saw as belonging within a left-wing ideology that transcended traditional institutions. Back in the 90s, I sat through serious, lawyerly presentations aimed at stopping the marriage equality proponents from changing the focus of the movement. There was a wonderful opportunity then for conservatives to embrace the issue, and they missed it.

The Republican Party saw the advantage elsewhere, and now they're stuck with the result.

UPDATE: The Respect for Marriage Coalition withdraws the ad.

"Powell: GOP has 'a dark vein of intolerance.'"

Dark?

So dark is... bad?

It's so hard to do racial politics. But keep trying, folks. It's worth building your skills here, because it's so helpful, so constructive.