Wb News

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) announced he will seek another term in the Senate, Tulsa World reports.

Last week, Ted Olson. Today, Dick Cheney:

Dick Cheney rarely takes a position that places him at a more progressive tilt than President Obama. But on Monday, the former vice president did just that, saying that he supports gay marriage as long as it is deemed legal by state and not federal government.

Speaking at the National Press Club for the Gerald R. Ford Foundation journalism awards, Cheney was asked about recent rulings and legislative action in Iowa and elsewhere that allowed for gay couples to legally wed.

"I think that freedom means freedom for everyone," replied the former V.P. "As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. I think 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."

We hate Dick Cheney here at AMERICAblog.com. Hate him. But, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And, as Sam Stein, who wrote the article above, notes, this statement make Cheney more progressive than Obama on marriage equality. If Cheney can support marriage equality, there's really no excuse for Obama and other leading Congressional Democrats.

Cheney has been using similar language since 2004, when he broke with his boss, George Bush, over the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage:

At a campaign rally in this Mississippi River town, Cheney spoke supportively about gay relationships, saying ?Sfreedom means freedom for everyone,? when asked about his stand on gay marriage.

?SLynne and I have a gay daughter, so it?"s an issue our family is very familiar with,? Cheney told an audience that included his daughter. ?SWith the respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone. ... People ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.

?SThe question that comes up with the issue of marriage is what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government? Historically, that?"s been a relationship that has been handled by the states. The states have made that fundamental decision of what constitutes a marriage,? he said.

And, Congress should stay out of it. But, in 1996, President Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which put the federal government in a position to regulate marriages at the state level. DOMA needs to go.

And, this further confirms all the polling that shows when people know someone gay, it makes them more likely to be supportive of issues like marriage equality. Frankly, I don't think Dick with be with us absent that. But, he is -- and here's the video. Cheney almost sounds human:

My full post out of the first day of the America's Future Now! conference in DC is below. But I wanted to highlight Howard Dean's strong push for a public option, which I wrapped into the story:

During a lunchtime press conference, Howard Dean, recent past chair of the DNC and a doctor, said that it's more important to have a public plan than a bipartisan plan. "Bipartisan," he said, "is not an end in and of itself."

He said that Republicans haven't helped Obama with the stimulus package nor do they seem poised to offer an assist with approving his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the nation's highest court.

"If they're in there to shill for the insurance companies, I think we should do it with 51 votes," Dean said, suggesting that it be accomplished via budget reconciliation.

Dean added: "The American people voted for real change. They knew exactly what he was proposing when he was on the campaign trail."

(JENNIFER SKALKA)

Steve Herzfeld managed an admirably inventive end-run around high healthcare costs for his Parkinson's- and Alzheimer's-afflicted parents. After in-home care was no longer possible, he priced American nursing homes, but found that the cheapest acceptable option was still $6,000. So he sent them to India. Quality elderly care in Puducherry cost less than his father's fixed income. According to the Guardian:

[In India, Herzfeld] could give his parents a much higher standard of care than would have been possible in the US for his father's income of $2,000 (£1,200) a month. In India that paid for their rent, a team of carers—a cook, a valet for his father, nurses to be with his mother 12 hours a day, six days a week, a physiotherapist and a masseuse—and drugs (costing a fifth of US prices), and also allowed them to put some money away...."In India, they really like older people," says Herzfeld, describing how the staff seemed to regard his parents as their own family.

Of course, the care was inexpensive because a couple thousand bucks goes further in Puducherry than it might in, say, Fort Lauderdale. Herzfeld, though, apparently believes that it was cheap because elderly care in America is greedily overpriced by providers. He vents about about healthcare and the profit motive: 

[Herzfeld] believes that India could teach the US and UK a lot about care of the elderly. "In America, healthcare is done for profit, so that skews the whole thing and makes it very inhuman in its values," he says.

I try not to begrudge a man his fantasies, but the idea that the nurses, valets, and masseuses of Puducherry were doing it all out of the goodness of their hearts—rather than the goodness of their paychecks—is condescending. It was simple outsourcing, not subcontinental altruism, that saved Steve Herzfeld so much money.

In Reason's May 2009 print edition, Ronald Bailey wrote about the outsourcing of hip replacement.