Sometimes it requires tragic situations to help bring clarity in the international community

Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn) thinks that not only should we ban gay marriage, but exclude adulterers and divorced people from Congress. And make adultery a felony. He seems to be serious, except that he pronounces marriage murridge. About his own family: he and his wife have 3 daughters, Larissa, Lynn, and Libby, and five grandchildren, Ashton, Alexa, Andrew, Austin, and Adam. Two generations of alliteration.

(Update): the House has failed to pass an Amendment to the Constitution banning gay marriage. Surely the Republic will perish.

And stop calling the Republic Shirley.

Today Bush briefed some congresscritters about the G-8 meeting, then briefed the press about the briefing. In other words (you should be imagining this sentence spoken by Jon Stewart imitating George Bush) there was a lot of briefing goin’ on, heh heh heh. The briefing is like one of “his signing statements,” altering the meaning of something he’s supposed to be signing onto. I’ve read the G-8 leaders’ statement, and while it’s not what I’d have said, it was a whole lot more subtler than... well, I’ll let Bush dumb it down for us:

What was really interesting was that -- and I briefed this to the members -- that we were able to reach a very strong consensus that the world must confront the root causes of the current instability. And the root cause of that current instability is terrorism and terrorist attacks on a democratic country. And part of those terrorist attacks are inspired by nation states, like Syria and Iran. And in order to be able to deal with this crisis, the world must deal with Hezbollah, with Syria and to continue to work to isolate Iran.

He added, “Sometimes it requires tragic situations to help bring clarity in the international community.” Dude, they just spent an entire weekend with you, I think they’ve had all the tragic situations they can take.


Some reporter then asked the sort of sharp question he never gets asked (not that he answered it): “In trying to defuse the situation in the Middle East, is the United States trying to buy time and give Israel a chance to weaken Hezbollah militarily?” While Bush calls Hez the “root cause” of the problem six times in as many minutes, he is in fact focused on bigger fish: “Listen, Syria is trying to get back into Lebanon, it looks like to me.” I think there’s a division-of-labor deal with Israel, where they go after Hezbollah and our job is to keep Syria from intervening. Syria will know what usually happens after Bush accuses a country of doing something it isn’t doing.

Asked if he’s willing to let the Israeli offensive go on for weeks, he replied, “we’re never going to tell a nation how to defend herself”. Never? His only caveat: “It’s essential that the government of Lebanon survive this crisis.” Just the government, of course, not the actual people of Lebanon.