“The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights -- that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Since Harry Truman led the world in recognizing the State of Israel, the United States has been its staunches ally. Through decades of wars and near-death experiences, America has stood by Israel with military, diplomatic and financial support.
Vice President Joe Biden is today making an official visit to Israel to achieve two major goals. First, to reassure the Israelis that the United States remains its closest, most steadfast ally. And second, to convince the hard-line government of Benjamin Netanyahu to enter into good-faith negotiations with the Palestinians - and thereby defuse the perpetual ticking bomb of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This pressure has come as a shock to the Israeli establishment. During the George W. Bush years American policy had tilted away from the honest-broker posture of past Republican and Democratic administrations, to a noticeable pro-Israel bias. The prospects for a lasting peace moved further and further into the future as Palestinians felt abandoned by the historic American referee that had guaranteed them over decades of negotiations a fair deal.
But now these two very close allies are getting even closer. The prospect of a nuclear Iran, an Iran determined to be the regional superpower that checks Israel while dominating its Arab neighbors, has once again brought the U.S. and Israel into strategic confluence.
It has been reported that the Obama Administration is of the view that lasting stability in the Middle East cannot be achieved until a final peace is struck between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
American policy in the region has therefore focused on a simultaneous pressuring for a final peace accord while stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Israelis see a nuclear Iran as an existential threat - a threat repeated over and over again by the Islamic Republic's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an avowed Holocaust-denier.
If the United States is able to broker a final peace agreement between Israel and Palestine it will not only defuse the decades-long conflict, it will also create significant good will in the Arab world - and isolate Iran in the process.
It may even pave the way to a negotiated deal with Iran.
Or even create the political space to militarily destroy Iran's dangerous and unacceptable nuclear program without sparking a regional conflagration.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden emphasized the close relationship between the United States and Israel as he met with Israeli leaders Tuesday, a visit that also touched on relations with Palestinians and Iran.
Biden, who arrived in Israel on Monday, first met with Israeli President Shimon Peres at his official residence in Jerusalem.
"The bond between our two nations has been and will remain unshakable," Biden wrote in the guest book. "Only together can we achieve lasting peace in the region."
Biden said he hoped the talks with Peres would be "a vehicle by which we can begin to allay that layer of mistrust that has built up in the last several years" between the two countries.
"There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel's security -- none at all," Biden said.
Peres began a long discussion about what the United States should do about Iran and the Middle East peace process. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements about Israel, he said, were a coverup for the "hegemony" it seeks in the region.
"The United States should lead the Iranian policy," Peres said. "There is nobody else in the world."
From Al Jazeera a report on the challenges for peace:
From the AP, here's Vice President Biden speaking in Israel:
Family-man, "traditional" marriage advocate, and strong supporter of Proposition 8, is caught living his real, gay life.
To complete the picture, he is also part of the robustly conservative California Republican establishment, serving as a state senator.
In fact, he has voted against every gay rights measure that he could, standing in the way of equal protection under the law for gay people, and now he finds himself in the most awkward of situations.
State Senator Roy Ashburn, representing the 18th district near Los Angeles, was stopped by the Sacramento police earlier this week in his state issued SUV in the middle of the night.
He is alleged to have been intoxicated while driving, he was accompanied by an unidentified man, and they were coming from a gay nightclub.
While his personal life would normally be irrelevant, the fact that he repeatedly used his elected office to advance the anti-gay agenda makes his personal life, well, relevant.
Constricting some minority's civil rights has a long, dark history in American politics.
At different times, in different parts of the country, majority politicians of one sort or another have worked to deny equal rights to myriad groups: from African-Americans, to the Irish, to women, to Japanese-Americans, to gay people, to Latinos, just to name a few of the groups that were in some way oppressed.
So a closeted gay man that - for reasons that are frankly beyond the scope of this blog - decides to use his power to deny civil rights to other gay people sparks an ethical dilemma.
Can a person so obviously conflicted by his sexuality and who has acted on that pain by punishing other gay people in his official capacity ever hold the public's trust?
How is Ashburn any different from a politician that lies or uses his public office for personal benefit (in this case in order to seem straighter than an arrow)?
To be clear, the issue is not about living a double life; that is his business.
But when Ashburn used his political power to deny civil rights to gay people, he was in fact covering up his real self for personal benefit - at the expense of the gay community and its fundamental right to equal protection under the law.
This may simply be a case of hypocrisy and hubris. Perhaps he thought that he could be a gay-basher during the day and a club dude at night and no one would be the wiser. But whatever his thoughts on the matter, Ashburn's official anti-gay bias can be rightly questioned.
In matters of public service, personal gain (if that is what he got from being a gay-basher) is never acceptable.
Personal gain in politics is unethical, if pervasive, and at the root of the pernicious forces that are chipping away at our democratic system.
If Ashburn ever hopes to redeem himself, he should do the right thing and resign. He should get a really good therapist and work out his demons. He should spare his constituents any more dishonesty.
Here's Ashburn's post incident admission that he's gay and still able to represent his constituency:
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at 11:44AM 
What are you thinking about today's news and commentary?
