Do you love the kid or not?

It's time for Dick and Lynne to prove whether they love their new grandson or not.

Bush is now threatening to veto the DC Appropriations bill because it no longer includes gay-bashing language that the GOP has put in there for years. The language banned the DC government from using federal funds to in any way support domestic partner benefits, civil unions and the like (not that the DC government was using federal funds, but it was a nice chance for the GOP to gay bash anyway). Now that the Democrats have dropped the GOP gay-bashing language from the bill, George Bush is threatening a veto.

First off, has Bush learned nothing from the fact that his vice president has a daughter, Mary Cheney, who is a lesbian, and who just had a child - in DC - with her lesbian partner, Heather Poe? What Bush is saying is that should Heather end up in a hospital in DC, dying, Mary won't be allowed to see her because she's not "family." What Bush is saying is that if Mary and Heather's baby, Samuel David Cheney, ends up in a DC hospital with a serious illness (and forget him if he ends up in Virginia) only one parent (we're not sure which) will be allowed to visit because both clearly aren't the biological parent of their baby. (And it's interesting that Mary and Heather, who live in Virginia, chose to come to DC to have their baby - a city in which they have far more rights as a lesbian couple than they have in Virginia. Yet now those rights are in danger of being taken away by the man Mary helped get elected. Way to go, mom.)

Second, Bush supports civil unions for gay couples. He said so on ABC right before the 2004 elections. From the NYT:

In an interview on Sunday with Charles Gibson, an anchor of "Good Morning America" on ABC, Mr. Bush said, "I don't think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that's what a state chooses to do so."

So, why is he now going to veto legislation that supports his own policies? Answer: because Bush has nothing left to stand for. As he sinks lower in the polls he can only define himself by saying "no," and by falling back on tried and true Republican cliches: lowering taxes; scaring the public; and bashing gays (and their babies). And if Bush has to say no to Samuel David Cheney, Mary and Heather's baby, in order to appease the bigots at the Family Research Council, then the baby is toast. Hell, the baby is the easiest target (reminds me of an old ad from the Children's Defense Fund (at left)).

George Bush is willing to veto Mary Cheney's baby. And not a word from Dick Cheney or Lynne Cheney about the legislative child abuse Bush is about to inflict on their grandson. It's bad enough Dick and Lynne Cheney sat by for so many years as the GOP (and Dick's own boss) bashed their daughter, but you'd think that the Cheneys would finally come to the defense of their own innocent grandson, Samuel David. The Cheneys have a simple choice. They can side with their own flesh and blood, or they can side with the people who bashed Mary and Heather and their newborn child.

So the question remains, Dick and Lynne, do you love the kid or not?



UPDATE: Pam has more.