Principles?

Fairness can be a tricky thing. One feels compelled to stand behind and defend the Democrats if one is (somewhat of) a liberal. And indeed I will defend Obama for continuing the War in Afghanistan and the domestic wiretapping thing. I think he has to do these things because if he ended them abruptly, he would be accused of being an angry black man with an agenda (after all) and we would not have another black President for fifty years. Of course, Obama is still accused of being an angry black man with an agenda (after all), but only by people who seem pretty transparently to have their own agenda.

I am not happy, however, that Obama is continuing (even ramping up) the war in Afghanistan or continuing the wiretapping thing, among other things he is doing. I think he could make a case for dropping at least one of those activities without appearing to be a socialist.

But back to fairness, the tricky thing about it is if you want to give credit where credit is due. Or draw equivalencies.

The "credit where" part is in relation to Ann Coulter. She agreed to speak at "Homocon", a convention of gay conservatives (surely the very essence of an oxymoron - gay conservative). She is now getting pressure from other conservatives, for example WorldNetDaily has dropped her from a speaking engagement. Now, as of right now she is sticking to her guns, saying she was hired to speak like she is hired to speak at a lot of places, and that is what she is going to do (will she provoke them? this would be a target rich environment for her).

Of course there are Log Cabin Republicans (maybe this is the same group) but at the moment I would not think that gays would want to stay in the Republican party. After all, it seems like mostly Republicans leading the charge to reinstate Proposition 8 in California (although Governor Schwarzenegger does oppose it, for example). Ross Douthat suggested on his NYTimes blog that conservatives/Republicans should have pushed long ago for civil unions for Gays to defuse the issue. I think that would have been a good temporary compromise that could have evolved over time, but it would no longer be possible. Now you wonder what gay conservatives think of Republicans that seem to hate them.

Meanwhile, there was one other point I wanted to throw out there (so to speak). After Dr. Laura went on her "n-word" binge the other day (11 times in a few minutes?) and then retired from the radio shortly there after, Sarah Palin has apparently asked who liberal attacks on her are any different than conservatives demanding Rahm Emanuel resign after he called some fellow Democrats "f-ing retards" in a closed door meeting. Now there are some differences between a closed door meeting and speaking over the radio, and context/usage, but really, at the end of the day, Palin has a point.