Last night, in preparation for the Oscars, I watched “Half Nelson,” starring Ryan Gosling as a drug-addicted teacher in Brooklyn.
His nomination for Best Actor is well deserved. His performance is so subtle, so real – he doesn’t even seem like he’s acting.
But most importantly, he’s SOOOOOOO easy on the eyes.
Excuse me as I collapse into a little puddle.
Regarding the debate over whether Hillary Clinton should apologize for her Iraq war vote and say that she made a mistake:
I’ve heard some people compare this situation to that of the current president. For example: “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s inability to admit that she was wrong to support the authorization of the Iraq war is reminiscent of nothing so much as George W. Bush’s inability to admit that he was wrong in leading us into that war.”
Except that that’s total bull.
Bush’s problem isn’t that he won’t admit he was wrong in leading us to war. There are plenty of politicians who never admit mistakes. Politicians often switch sides on an issue while professing total consistency. (See Rudy Giuliani on abortion and Mitt Romney on gay rights.) Bush’s problem isn’t that he won’t admit mistakes – it’s that he won’t change his policies. It’s his actions that matter, not his words. Would people be happy if Bush admitted making a mistake but just kept to his current course?
I don’t see why it matters whether or not Hillary apologizes or admits to a mistake. First of all, she’s already said that if she knew then what she knows now, she wouldn’t have voted the way she did.
Of course, it’s totally possible that her vote was a political calculation meant to insure her against Republican accusations that she was antiwar. It’s also possible that she doesn’t really regret her war vote but just wants to win the Democratic nomination. It’s also possible that she doesn’t have strong feelings on the issue one way or another.
If she apologizes, it’s going to be seen as just another political calculation. And it probably would be one.
What matters is the future. What she would do about Iraq if she were elected president?
Unfortunately, that’s totally unclear to me. If anything, that’s the big issue – not whether or not she makes some dumb apology.
Okay, here’s a case where legally defining same-sex relationships as “marriages” instead of “civil unions” makes a difference. According to today’s NY Times:
The Rhode Island attorney general said Wednesday that same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts, the sole state where they are legal, should be recognized in Rhode Island. …“This is about Rhode Island citizens who entered into a valid, legally recognized same-sex marriage and returned here to live and work,†[Rhode Island’s attorney general said]. “There is no way, no law, no constitutional provision and, in my estimation, no right to allow the denial of basic human rights.â€
Here’s the full text of the attorney general’s letter. (Here’s the request that prompted the letter.) A legal opinion of the state’s attorney general has no legal force on its own, but it’s likely to be followed by state agencies nevertheless.
The letter mentions only same-sex marriage, which today is legal only in Massachusetts. It says nothing about civil unions. If the New Jersey legislature had just gone ahead and granted the M-word to New Jersey same-sex couples, their marriages could be recognized in Rhode Island, too. But it didn’t. So they can’t. It’s up in the air.
It could be argued that the New Jersey legislature didn’t follow the New Jersey Supreme Court’s order to create marriage equivalence for same-sex couples, because there will be no equivalence if those couples move to Rhode Island. This is an iffy argument, though, because it’s Rhode Island’s fault for not extending its recognition to other states’ civil unions as well as marriages. The right place to contest or try to expand the Rhode Island policy is Rhode Island. Also, this seems to come into effect only when a couple moves to Rhode Island, at which point the couple would, for the most part, be outside of New Jersey’s jurisdiction.
It’s possible, of course, that Rhode Island could extend its recognition to civil-unioned couples from other states. But the AG’s letter doesn’t say that.
So the point is driven home: there’s no status truly equivalent to marriage. There’s just marriage.