House OKs Matthew Shepard Act to protect gays

It’s a big week for LGBT issues in Washington this week.

As our colleague Richard Simon reports from Capitol Hill, the House today approved a long-debated bill that would strengthen the federal hate-crime law to cover violence against gays.  The measure, expected to come before the Senate within days, faced a veto threat from President George W. Bush, but enjoys the support of President Obama.

Today’s action drew some complaints from Republicans because the measure, the Matthew Shepard Act, was attached to a defense bill. Shepard was a gay college student whose killing in Wyoming 11 years ago galvanized the gay rights movement.

On Wednesday, the president announced that he planned to nominate David Huebner, general counsel of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, as ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa. The Associated Press reported that, if confirmed by the Senate, Huebner would become the third openly gay ambassador in U.S. history.

This weekend Obama is scheduled to address the Human Rights Campaign, widely regarded as the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization. This will be second time a sitting president has addressed the group. President Clinton spoke to the organization in 1997.

Obama’s Saturday address will come the night before the National March for Equality, the climax of a three-day conference designed to further gay rights. Thousands of gay rights supporters are expected to gather in Washington starting Friday for the march and other events.

Among the events Saturday: A workshop on tactics for repealing the "don’t ask, don’t tell" rule and the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. Workshops include "How to Organize on Campus" and "Adoption Option: Adoption Is an Option."

-- Steve Padilla

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Photo: Matthew Shepard. Credit: Associated Press

Obama's donations, Dobson's misquote, Biden's schedule, Bush's life and the Blame Game

While you were sleeping, we were reading and writing:

How do you reconcile this?

As you read here, President Obama and wife Michelle released their 2008 joint income tax return, like all recent presidents. They reported $2.7 million in income. Not bad for someone who spent most of the year not working at his elected job in Washington.

The total means Obama will pay a higher tax rate this year under his own tax plans to get the very rich more than they're already gotten.

The taxes also show that last year the couple generously donated $172,000 to 37 charities, not counting not one dime to their former Trinity United Church in Chicago. That's about 6.5% of the liberal couple's adjusted gross income.

Don "The Pirate" Surber points out this morning that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, donated almost the same amount of money ($166,000) to charity the previous year.

But since Bush wasn't making millions off Obama's book sales, that similar sum was 23% of the Texan's income, nearly four times larger proportionately than the popular Obama's.

But since No. 43 currently resides on contemporary history's reviled list with one of the lowest exit approval ratings ever, we'll all have to overlook that inconvenient truth.

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All wet

The Washington Post took an interesting look the other day at the new life of retirement for Bush, who's starting his book, giving high-paid speeches and planning his presidential library at Southern Methodist University. The big news from Preston Hollow: Bush has improved the sprinkler system at his home on Dana Place in north Dallas.

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What are a few words here or there?

Speaking of retirement: In case you read somewhere else recently that Dr. James Dobson, the recently retired conservative evangelical founder of Focus on the Family, had conceded defeat on ...

Let the bidding begin: Dick Cheney's writing a book with 'a few scores to settle'

Oh-oh.

Yes, yes, Dick Cheney was a wrestler in school, like his buddy Donald Rumsfeld. And wrestlers going out there on the mat to grapple aggressively and viciously for six long minutes with opponents are rarely shy about confrontations.

However, most everybody pictured Vice President Cheney next week heading out of Dodge after the inauguration and virtually four decades of inside government experience -- and fishing, enjoying Wyoming, family, six grandchildren, hunting, all that.

He will.

But Cheney, the silent sly one who's words were mostly saved for the ears of the president, just told Sean Hannity today that he's seriously considering writing a book.

"I never have," Cheney said. "and my family has been bugging me about it. I've got 40 years since I came  to town to stay 12 months. I've got a lot of stories to tell. And a few scores to settle."

And he laughed. "I'm going out with a good heart," Cheney added. "It's been a tremendous experience.  It's been great serving with this president. And I think we did some good work. And I do look forward to family time, and a little more time on the stream and out in the fields. But I don't plan to retire yet."

Cheney, a Nebraska native who grew up in Wyoming and represented that state for five House terms, arrived in Washington in 1969, began work in the Nixon administration and became chief of staff for President Gerald Ford. In 1989 he became secretary of Defense for Bush I and oversaw two of the larger military operations in modern times -- in Panama and the first Gulf War.

These next few days will be Cheney's fourth presidential transition, after the Nixon resignation, the Carter inauguration of 1977, Clinton in 1993 and now 2009. The stories he might tell.

Cheney also told Hannity:

He's been in the government/political business long enough to know you rarely get credit for what doesn't happen. But he worries the longer the nation goes after 2001.

"I think the thing that I sense most is that as we get farther and farther away from 9/11, we've got more and more people sort of taking it all for granted, getting pretty complacent about the world we live in, and lose sight of the fact that there are some very bad actors out there still trying hard to find ways to kill more Americans."

He said like most Americans he wishes President-elect Obama well starting with next week's inauguration, but as a conservative, he expects to have major differences over time with a liberal Democrat.

In 1996, Cheney seriously considered running for the Republican nomination eventually won by Bob Dole, who lost to Bill Clinton. But he decided against it then and forever more. Which Cheney thinks helped him be a more effective vice president because everyone knew he had no agenda but President Bush's.

Of course, that situation also left the Republican Party with no experienced and well-known political heir-apparent now and for some time to come.

The book, on the other hand, will be Cheney's alone.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: David Bohrer / The White House (Dick Cheney's new signature in the 1902 desk of President Theodore Roosevelt used by many presidents and vice presidents over the years and signed by each before leaving office).

Still crunching the numbers on Barack Obama and John McCain

One week after election day, the votes in the presidential race continue to dribble in (democracy remains a messy process).

CNN, on its Website, conscientiously keeps updating the popular vote totals. The last time we checked, it showed Barack Obama with more than 66.1 million votes. John McCain was just shy of the 58-million mark.

Oddly, at least to us, the CNN site has yet to reflect Obama's apparent victory in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District which, in that state, means he claims one of its electoral votes (the other four go to McCain).

Assuming the Republican retains his ever-so-small margin in the one state several news outlets have been reluctant to call -- Missouri -- the electoral count will come in at:

Obama -- 365

McCain -- 173

With the Show Me State emerging as the election's quintessential battleground, what, we wondered, were the sites of the biggest routs -- the bluest of the blue and the reddest of the red?

Setting aside the District of Columbia (which Obama carried with almost 93% of the vote), the president-elect's best showing occurred in his native state of Hawaii. The New York Times' results map gives him 71.8% of the vote in Hawaii (making it the only state where either candidate broke the 70% mark).

Obama recorded his second-best showing in Vermont, where he garnered 66.8% of the vote. On the one hand, that's no surprise.  Vermont, to many, is synonymous with liberalism. 

On the other hand, Obama's showing in the Green Mountain State underscores its amazing transformation from a bastion of Republicanism. In the 34 presidential elections between 1856, the first to feature a Republican, and 1992 (when Bill Clinton won it), the GOP candidate failed to carry Vermont precisely once -- in 1964.

In 2004, the bluest of the blue (again excluding D.C.) was Massachusetts; John Kerry won his home turf with 61.9% of the vote. That was the only state ...

Sarah Palin: Old hunting photo, new role hunting votes

By now you may have figured out -- because the magazines and online websites sure have -- that Alaska Gov. and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is surefire box office. No accident that there's so much attention paid to John McCain's No. 2.

Good or bad, she sells.

So, as our blogging colleague Elizabeth Snead points out, there she is on the Newsweek cover with editor Jon Meacham and columnist Karl Rove arguing inside about her strengths and weaknesses.

Over on her Dish Rag blog, Elizabeth has links to the articles. In this cover image, Palin has a shotgun over her shoulder, just as her father taught his daughter when they went hunting in her teens.

So since when has the hockey mom of five had time to go hunting this fall?

She hasn't.

As Newsweek honestly explains, it's a file photo from 2002, long before Palin knew such images might help with some outdoors-people votes in crucial swing states in about four weeks.

So what's next, do you think? Barack Obama in hip waders and orange hunting jacket bitterly clinging to a dead goose's neck in a bid for the small-town Pennsylvania vote?

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Top of the Ticket, the start of Year Two

On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.

Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.

Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.

In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.

His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.

His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.

Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."

Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.

The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.

Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...

6-0 in his elections, VP Cheney watches from the sidelines this time

Vice President Dick Cheney -- remember him? -- finds some of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks "absolutely appalling." But Barack Obama's cousin is holding back his view of how the senator has "dealt with" his retired pastor’s inflammatory words.

"I've watched what's going on on the Democratic side with great interest, and sort of blowing hot and cold in terms of who is going to win -- whether it is going to be Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama," Cheney noted in a telephone interview with conservative talk show host Sean Hannity last night.

"I thought the controversy over Rev. Wright was remarkable,'' Cheney said. "I thought some of the things he said were absolutely appalling. And, you know, I haven't gotten into the business of trying to judge how Sen. Obama dealt with it, or didn't deal with it. But I really,...

Now, about that Texas GOP surprise for Hillary Clinton

One week ago at about this time of day we posted an item here headlined: "Do Texas Republicans plan a surprise for Clinton and Obama?"

It speculated on the possibility of Republican voters in the Lone Star state, faced with an uninteresting, essentially-decided contest between John McCain and Mike Huckabee, crossing over to make mischief in the Democratic primary by voting for Hillary Clinton to prolong the Democrats' damaging intra-party struggle for several more weeks. We'd heard rumors about this and the Dallas Morning News had written about the possibility.

Then, on his Monday broadcast, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh with his national audience of some 13 million aggressively pushed the idea to his listeners in Texas. Bill O'Reilly, among others, also talked about the possibility on his national radio program, but did not advocate such tactics.

By now, some of you may have heard, that Clinton did pull off....

Breaking News: Barack Obama rejects VP idea

Campaigning in Casper, Wyo., Friday night for the 12 delegates to come out of Saturday's Democratic county caucuses, Sen. Barack Obama refused the notion of becoming the vice presidential candidate on this fall's party ticket.

Obama was asked by a television reporter, "Can you ever see yourself on the same ticket as Sen. Clinton?"

And the freshman Illinois senator replied: "Well, you know, I think it’s premature. You won’t see me as a vice presidential candidate. You know, I’m running for president. We have won twice as many states as Senator Clinton, and have a higher popular vote, and I think we can maintain our delegate count."

Many Democrats have long thought of Obama-Clinton or Clinton-Obama as a dream ticket, offering both the first serious female candidate and the first serious African American candidate for the nation's top two political offices.

Clinton surprisingly broached the idea Wednesday morning after she won the popular vote in Texas and Ohio to regain some momentum after 11 straight ...

Yee hah, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton hit Wyoming

If this is March and people are traveling willingly TO Wyoming, then there must be an election going on.

Sure enough, the nation's least populated state is the destination today for just about everybody who's left competing for a presidential nomination, both of them. And the spouse of one of them was there yesterday.

In fact, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will both visit Vice President Dick Cheney's hometown of Casper today, not so much to honor him as to honor themselves and to seek support in this weekend's Wyoming caucuses. The windchill in Casper this morning was 12 degrees, which is...