California Crisis

Teetering at the edge of bankruptcy with Arnold Schwarzenegger facing a reprise as the Terminator, this time of public employees, the big political issue in the Golden State is whether or not Ellen DeGeneres' marriage is legal.

Sponsors of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage last month, now want to nullify thousands of unions between gay and lesbian couples performed after the state Supreme Court ruled them constitutional last May.

Fittingly enough for California, the legal battle is shaping up with an all-star cast of yesteryear, like a remake of "Sunset Boulevard," with Kenneth Starr and Jerry Brown in the leading geriatric roles.

Starr, the Inspector Javier of Bill Clinton's impeachment, will be defending the ban, presumably with all the zeal he brought to saving America from the threat of Monica Lewinsky's semen-stained dress over a decade ago.

Opposing him will be the State's Attorney General, Jerry Brown, who stirs nostalgia for his time in the 1970s as the quirky populist California governor who refused to move into the executive mansion and, as a bachelor, became famous for dating Linda Ronstadt.

In a surprise move, Brown, who is charged with enforcing the new law, yesterday asked the Court to invalidate Proposition 8 on the grounds that it "deprives people of the right to marry, an aspect of liberty that the Supreme Court has concluded is guaranteed by the California Constitution."

Amid the economic chaos that the outgoing Bush administration has brought America, its backers are determined to stay on the job wreaking cultural havoc. Millions of homes may be foreclosed in California over the coming months, but until then, they will be spending the state's time and money to make sure that those bedrooms aren't being legally occupied by the wrong people.

Triumph of the Turncoat Houdini

Today's escape from losing his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee caps Joe Lieberman's career of having it both ways in two decades of sanctimonious posturing and backroom politicking.

With a novelist's eye for the absurd, Joan Didion nailed him in her reporting of the 2000 election campaign:

"Senator Lieberman, who had come to the nation's attention as the hedge player who had previously seized center stage by managing both to denounce the president [Bill Clinton] for "disgraceful" and "immoral" behavior and to vote against his conviction (similarly, he had in 1991 both voiced support for and voted against the confirmation of Clarence Thomas) was not, except to the press, an immediately engaging personality...

"His speech patterns, grounded in the burdens he bore for the rest of us and the personal rewards he had received from God for bearing it, tended to self-congratulation."

Lieberman called today's verdict “fair and forward-looking” and one of “reconciliation and not retribution,” but others, like this constituent, will see it as another slithering out of responsibility for his actions by the weasel who was voted out by his party in the 2006 primaries but kept his seat when Republicans named a non-entity to throw the three-way race his way.

The President-Elect and Senate Democrats may congratulate themselves on today's act of anonymous generosity, but Connecticut residents who are enraged by and stuck with Lieberman's smug, self-righteous, self-serving wrong-headedness won't join in the celebration.

Do the Clintons Really Want Obama to Win?

Amid all this year's psychodramas about gender, race and age, consider the conflict in the heart and soul of the 42nd President of the United States as he looks back at his past and ahead to his place in history.

This week Bill Clinton gave Barack Obama lunch in his Harlem office, a promise to do "whatever I'm asked" in the campaign and a prediction that Obama "will win and win handily" in November.

But nothing is simple in Clintonland. The day before, the former President had another visitor, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, head of the "vast right wing conspiracy" that had financed his impeachment. They talked cozily about doing good in the world, just as Hillary had met with the editorial board of Scaife's Pittsburgh newspaper and won their endorsement in this year's primary.

Since there are no permanent friends or enemies in the Clintons' lives (ask Bill Richardson), their support of Obama requires close parsing.

Without his own marital melodrama, there would be little reason to doubt Clinton's sincerity about seeing Obama as a logical heir to his and JFK's Democratic legacies. But the bruising primary season and Hillary Clinton's future hopes can't be left out of the equation.

At times this year, Bill Clinton seemed to be subverting his wife's campaign out of pique in what Maureen Dowd called "a self-pitying meltdown about not being Elvis anymore" and, even worse, out of some twisted need to undermine the woman who stood by him. After the contest was over, he reportedly told friends that Obama would "have to kiss my ass" to get his support.

Now, to make matters even stickier, there is the complication of Sarah Palin. If John McCain, with a woman as his running mate, wins in November, the Democratic door is open for Hillary Clinton in 2012.

This means that both Clintons have to be careful in campaigning for Obama not to alienate diehard supporters who saw sexism in this year's defeat and would be a core part of her support the next time around. Those who refuse to back Obama would take it amiss if either Clinton went after Palin.

So for both Clintons, there is personal risk in going all out to get Obama elected.

The "Profiles in Courage" question is: Will they put their country and their party first? Or is it silly to ask?

What Hillary Should Say Tonight

Fellow Democrats, I had hoped to be standing here under different circumstance, but I am proud to be with you and thank those who worked with me to change the face of American politics. That we have done and, although the face this time is not mine, there is still much more for us to do.

A decade ago, I saw first-hand the politics of personal destruction and the lengths to which those who practice it will go in their lust for power. The bitter irony now is that they are invoking my name in an attempt to destroy the opponent with whom I engaged in an intense but honorable contest for the nomination we will be bestowing on him here.

Back then, before the evidence of the past eight years, I described it a vast right-wing conspiracy. Now we know what it is really is--a radical attempt to undermine American values with needless wars, infringement of traditional rights and usurping all the fruits of the American economy for themselves at the expense of hard-working families.

I repudiate them now as I did then and urge everyone who has honored me with support to do the same. They are the true enemies of everything we believe in, and we must not let them practice their divide-and-conquer tactics on us.

If you support Barack Obama with all your heart, as I do, we can rid ourselves of their toxic effects on American life for a long time to come. Yes we can.