AdamSmith

Another couple rare funnies from the Right...

Strategist Out of Closet and Into Fray, This Time for Gay Marriage By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG The New York Times Published: June 19, 2013 As the Supreme Court considers overturning California’s ban on same-sex marriage, gay people await a ruling that could change their lives. But the case has already transformed one gay man: Ken Mehlman, the once-closeted Republican operative who orchestrated President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election on a platform that included opposition to same-sex marriage. Now Mr. Mehlman, a private equity executive in Manhattan, is waging what could be his final campaign: to convince fellow Republicans that gay marriage is consistent with conservative values and good for their party. His about-face, sparked in part by the lawyer who filed the California lawsuit, has sent him on a personal journey to erase what one new friend in the gay rights movement calls his “incredibly destructive” Bush legacy. He remains controversial, both applauded and vilified. On the left, he is either an unlikely hero or a hypocritical coward. On the right, some Republicans embrace him; others deem him a traitor. Coming out “has been a little bit like the Tom Sawyer funeral, where you show up at your own funeral and you hear what people really think,” Mr. Mehlman said in a recent interview in his office at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, on the 42nd floor of a Midtown skyscraper. “A big part of one’s brain that used to worry about this issue has now been freed to worry about things that are much more productive.” Mr. Mehlman, 46, remains the hyper-intense, guarded strategist he was in his Bush days, with the same habit of looking past people instead of meeting their eyes. He shuns most interviews and still deflects personal questions, as he did back when rumors about his sexuality swirled. “I have a happy life today, and I had a happy life before,” he said. Freed of the burden of secrecy, he lives in the gay-friendly Chelsea neighborhood and summers in the Hamptons. Another friend called him “more and more comfortable in his skin.” He dates, but said he was not ready to marry. He will not talk about any guilt he might feel for serving as the 2004 campaign manager, when Mr. Bush, courting Christian evangelicals, called for a federal ban on same-sex marriage and conservatives marched to the polls. Mr. Mehlman was rewarded with the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, a job he held until 2006. Some who once taunted him now praise him, saying coming out is difficult and anyone can change. “If you’re going to have an epiphany, do it like Mehlman,” said John Aravosis, a gay blogger. Others are still furious. “I doubt Ken Mehlman will ever be anything more than a bitter footnote in the history of our movement,” said another blogger, Joe Jervis. And in Ohio, where Mr. Bush’s re-election coincided with voter approval of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, Mr. Mehlman is persona non grata, said Eric Resnick, a gay journalist who in 2005 confronted the party chairman about his sexuality at a dinner. (Mr. Mehlman ducked the question.) “Ken Mehlman did a lot of damage in Ohio,” Mr. Resnick said. “He has not come back to Ohio and said, ‘I’m sorry for what I did to you.’ ” Despite or perhaps because of this past, Mr. Mehlman has carved a rare niche as a go-to Republican in the overwhelmingly Democratic gay advocacy world. Deploying his vast Rolodex but staying mostly behind the scenes, he has worked with the White House (President Obama was his classmate at Harvard Law School) to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy; lobbied lawmakers to legalize same-sex marriage in states like New York, Minnesota and New Hampshire; served as an informal adviser to Republicans including Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who backed marriage rights after learning his son is gay; and recruited Republican donors, helping to raise $4.5 million for gay causes, including an antibullying campaign. He also founded a small nonprofit, Project Right Side, to develop polling data to appeal to conservatives. He sits on the board of the group that brought the case challenging Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, and gathered the signatures of more than 100 Republicans on a legal brief supporting the suit. When advocates in Maine, where voters rejected same-sex marriage in 2009, tried again last year, Mr. Mehlman helped retool their advertising. They won. “He brought a totally fresh perspective that nobody else had, and because he was so prominent, people had to take note,” said Matt McTighe, who managed the Maine effort. In articulating a conservative case for gay marriage rights, Mr. Mehlman invokes the term “civil marriage” as a reminder, he said, that he is talking about “marriage under the law, as opposed to marriage as a religious sacrament.” In speeches, he likes to say Republicans should back same-sex marriage “because we are conservative, not in spite of being conservatives.” He uses Republican-friendly words like “freedom” and “‘liberty” as opposed to “equality” — language that Mr. McTighe said resonated with Republicans and conservative Democrats in Maine. But nationally, Mr. Mehlman has an uphill battle. Polls show roughly two-thirds of Republicans oppose same-sex marriage, although support among those under 30 is higher. So reaction to him in his party is mixed. Friends from the Bush days, like Tim Goeglein, an evangelical Christian who works for the advocacy group Focus on the Family, do not broach the topic. “We know where each person stands, so we have not had a fulsome discussion,” Mr. Goeglein said. In the capital, where Mr. Mehlman remains a respected figure, many conservatives simply say they disagree with him. Beyond the insular inside-the-Beltway crowd, some Republicans want to know why a man who worked to unite Republicans is raising an issue that divides them. That was the case in Iowa, where same-sex marriage is legal but opposed by many social conservatives on religious grounds, when Mr. Mehlman went there last year. “People were asking, ‘Why are you coming here to stir the pot?’ ” said Craig Robinson, editor of The Iowa Republican, a political Web site. “It was kind of a head-scratcher.” Mr. Mehlman credited Theodore B. Olson, a solicitor general under Mr. Bush, with providing a spark that set him on his current path. In 2009, Mr. Mehlman, out of politics but still in the closet, invited Mr. Olson — who filed the California suit — to lunch. Mr. Mehlman said he had been thinking for some time that “a strong argument could be made from both the freedom and the family values perspective.” Mr. Olson told him that courts had deemed marriage a “fundamental right.” The next year, Mr. Mehlman told Mr. Olson that he is gay and wanted to help. Critics have called what followed “Ken Mehlman’s apology tour,” a coming-out strategy unveiled in August 2010 with the precision of a political campaign. Mr. Mehlman — who once flatly denied being gay — granted a lone interview to Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic, in which he said he regretted not being “where I am today 20 years ago.” He pledged to become an advocate and apologized to gay audiences. Mr. Mehlman’s friends say the apology tour is now over. Since many legal analysts expect the Supreme Court to leave same-sex marriage to the states, he is focused on efforts like Project Right Side, his nonprofit polling organization, which provided data last year to every Republican presidential campaign. How much difference he is making is difficult to determine, though some advocates, like Chad Griffin of the Human Rights Campaign, see small signs. They note that Karl Rove, the Republican strategist who is close to Mr. Mehlman, said he could imagine a pro-gay-marriage Republican running for president in 2016. Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican, supported an openly gay candidate for a federal judgeship. “This is not just any Republican — this is one of the single greatest successful strategists for Republicans,” Mr. Griffin said of Mr. Mehlman. “And now he’s on our side.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/us/strategist-out-of-closet-and-into-fray-this-time-for-gay-marriage.html?hp&_r=1&

Does that sound like a masturbation joke?

I can see you with Von Gloeden Fashion Models.

"Hands IN," I would think!

I love her too. Not to detract anything; just to note I saw her in passing in a hotel lobby about 10 years ago, and all the work done to keep that youthfulness has given her, up close in person, very much the Madame Tussauds look.

TY, in fairness you have a point. I knew a couple of people in NYC who did runway modeling, and the bewildering number of things they have to stay conscious of regarding physical presentation are daunting. Same here, i would think. Having to speak extemporaneously on top of it seems hard to imagine.

I have always wanted to be crowned Miss Cegenation.

WTF?! Supreme Court Rules That Pre-Miranda Silence Can Be Used In Court By JESSE J. HOLLAND 06/17/13 11:27 AM ET EDT WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court says prosecutors can use a person's silence against them if it comes before he's told of his right to remain silent. The 5-4 ruling comes in the case of Genovevo Salinas, who was convicted of a 1992 murder. During police questioning, and before he was arrested or read his Miranda rights, Salinas answered some questions but did not answer when asked if a shotgun he had access to would match up with the murder weapon. Prosecutors in Texas used his silence on that question in convicting him of murder, saying it helped demonstrate his guilt. Salinas appealed, saying his Fifth Amendment rights to stay silent should have kept lawyers from using his silence against him in court. Texas courts disagreed, saying pre-Miranda silence is not protected by the Constitution. The high court upheld that decision. The Fifth Amendment protects Americans against forced self-incrimination, with the Supreme Court saying that prosecutors cannot comment on a defendant's refusal to testify at trial. The courts have expanded that right to answering questions in police custody, with police required to tell people under arrest they have a right to remain silent without it being used in court. Prosecutors argued that since Salinas was answering some questions – therefore not invoking his right to silence – and since he wasn't under arrest and wasn't compelled to speak, his silence on the incriminating question doesn't get constitutional protection. Salinas' "Fifth Amendment claim fails because he did not expressly invoke the privilege against self-incrimination in response to the officer's question," Justice Samuel Alito said. "It has long been settled that the privilege `generally is not self-executing' and that a witness who desires its protection `must claim it.'" The court decision was down its conservative/liberal split, with Alito's judgment joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented. "In my view the Fifth Amendment here prohibits the prosecution from commenting on the petitioner's silence in response to police questioning," Breyer said in the dissent. Salinas was charged in 1993 with the previous year's shooting deaths of two men in Houston. Police found shotgun shells at the crime scene, and after going to the home where Salinas lived with his parents, obtained a shotgun kept inside the house by his father. Ballistic reports showed the shells matched the shotgun, but police declined to prosecute Salinas. Police decided to charge him after one of his friends said that he had confessed, but Salinas evaded police for years. He was arrested him in 2007, but his first trial ended in a mistrial. It was during his second trial that prosecutors aggressively tried to use his silence about the shotgun in closing remarks to the jury. Salinas was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Texas Court of Appeals and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction, with the latter court saying "pre-arrest, pre-Miranda silence is not protected by the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and that prosecutors may comment on such silence regardless of whether a defendant testifies." The case is Salinas v. Texas, 12-246. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/17/supreme-court-silence_n_3453968.html

http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/19/fisa-court-oversight-process-secrecy

One can sadly foresee his reckless driving escalating until he ends up on a vehicular homicide charge. http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/18/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/justin-bieber-accident/index.html?c=showbiz

You call Miss Utah's trash-vamp look understated?! Honeypot, you just qualified yourself to be a judge at RuPaul's next extravaganza of drag empresses.

You should go visit him.

My 7th-grade science teacher had a phrase: "clear as mud."

I think someone in this thread has his mind forever on marriage, but I don't think it is RA1.

Review of the economic, political, national-interest, and moral harms that may ensue from damaged trust in the Internet and all things borne thereon because of our government's spying: http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/17/chilling-effect-nsa-surveillance-internet