Civil Rights

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said some of his colleagues in Congress are "just as bad" in their lack of support for gay rights as vandals of a gay and lesbian center in his district.

Israel called for a national hate crimes hotline Thursday after the center was vandalized.

"I believe that the federal government woefully minimizes the number of hate crimes that occur in the United States. I want you to know that the U.S. Congress is with you," Israel said, according to Newsday. But then Israel added: "Some of my colleagues are just as bad as the people who did this."

Israel was not comparing his collegues "to vandals but to people who express sentiments that are strongly against the gay and lesbian community," spokeswoman Lindsay Hamilton later told Newsday.

Israel and Reps. Jos

President Obama is taking a page from President Bush on faith-based initiatives, keeping many of his predecessor's controversial programs and creating a a council of religious leaders to offer input.

Obama will maintain much of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, introduced during the Bush administration, intact. There will remain a White House office and a Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships based in the executive agencies, whose primary mission will be to connect with local, neighborhood faith-based groups to deliver social services.

Obama will privately huddle with some -- though not all -- of the members of a new, bipartisan advisory committee after tomorrow's National Prayer Breakfast, but the initiative itself will not be detailed at the breakfast tomorrow, despite contrary reports.

Obama will eventually introduce the "President's Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships," which will consist of a broad variety of figures from the political, religious, and service group communities. There will be 25 members of the committee, each appointed to one-year terms.

The council will advise the White House office on the initiatives, and provide input on policy issues.

There was no immediate indication from the White House on Wednesday when the president would lay out his vision for the office, just that it would not come during the National Prayer Breakfast.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said President-elect Obama's inauguration is "vindication" and validation" for those who believed in Martin Luther King Jr.

"I have been blessed to live to see the fulfillment of that dream," Clyburn said on MSNBC on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. "So his dream is being validated tomorrow. And so this is a real V-Day."

Clyburn, who participated in civil rights protest in the South as a student, said that he never thought that he would live to see a black man take the presidential oath of office.

"This is just almost unreal for me," he said.

He said he was first overcome with emotion on Election Night, which he spent with his family.

"My children were just overcome. And watching them have this kind of feeling, it was so fulfilling to me because I felt vindicated -- I told people the one word that I could use, is that those of us who decided that we were going to stick with this system and do whatever we can to help make it a better place -- we were vindicated by the election," he said.

A star-studded lineup of political heavyweights from both parties will appear Thursday to support Eric Holder's nomination as Attorney General.

The updated witness list for the 9:30 hearing on President-elect Obama's nominee to head the Justice Department shows a witness list from a variety of political backgrounds, though only a few have been summoned by the minority Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.

Former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Bush administration Homeland Security advisor Frances Townsend, and former FBI Director Louis Freeh will all appear Thursday, some before Holder speaks, and some after.

Some Republicans have trained their focus on Holder as the one appointment of Obama at which they will intend to take aim.

Minority spokesman Chris Gindlesperger said that the minority called only three witnesses: former FBI agent Richard Hahn, 2nd Amendment scholar Christopher Halbrook, and the son of a victim of a group Holder represented.

Vice President Dick Cheney said that the prizes won by the New York Times for uncovering the Bush administration were "aggravating" to him, and cautioned the incoming administration on the lessons he's learned in office.

Cheney said the domestic spying program "really worked" and provided valuable intelligence. "But then it became public," Cheney said during an interview on conservative radio host Bill Bennett's show. "The New York Times broke the story I think in December of '05, won the Pulitzer for it, which always aggravated me."

Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won the Pulitzer Prize for their revelation of the program, which was published over the objections of the Bush administration.

Cheney added that "there is no question" President-elect Obama had begun to get a sense for the difference between campaign rhetoric way the world actually works since beginning to receive the same intelligence briefings he and President Bush receive daily.

Cheney cautioned that former Clinton administration officials, who he called "honorable," who would rejoin the White House during the Obama administration should not assume they can pick up where they left off eight years ago.

"The fact is the world has changed in major ways since January of '01 when we took over," Cheney said. "And that break in service of some eight years I think they will find has been a period of time when the threat to the nation has changed in fairly dramatic ways."

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) thinks that President-elect Obama picked same-sex marriage opponent Rick Warren to give the inauguration invocation because Obama "overestimates" his ability to unify people.

"Oh, I believe that he overestimates his ability to get people to put aside fundamental differences," said Frank, the first House member to come out of the closet voluntarily.

Frank, on MSNBC on Monday, said that he's delighted Obama was elected and that the country is headed into the "best time" for public policy since the New Deal.

"But my one question is, I think he overestimates his ability to take people, particularly our colleagues on the right, and, sort of, charm them into being nice," Frank said. "I know he talks about being post-partisan. But I've worked, frankly, with Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, the current Republican leadership. The current Republican leadership in the House repudiated George Bush. I don't know why Mr. Obama thinks he's going to have them better than George Bush.

"And so, to be honest, when he talks about being post-partisan, having seen these people and knowing what they would do in that situation, I suffer from post-partisan depression," Frank said jokingly.

Frank and same-sex rights advocates have fiercely criticized Obama for picking Warren, an evangelical pastor who supported a same-sex marriage ban in California.
Frank said that Warren's attempts to reach across to the gay and lesbian community and other groups such as Muslims doesn't allay his objection to Warren's featured inaugural role.

"I think Rick Warren's comments, comparing same-sex relationships to incest, is deeply offensive, wildly inaccurate, and very socially disruptive," Frank said. "And I'm glad he is talking to the Muslims. I'm glad everybody's talking to everybody. We're not here talking about not having conversations. We're talking about singling somebody out for a great honor. And I think the president-elect made a serious mistake in doing that."

Same-sex marriage supporters are protesting the selection of Rick Warren to give the inauguration invocation by sending him money for donuts.

ZeroH8.tv, an online group formed to protest California's same-sex marriage ban, has started a campaign urging its followers to buy Dunkin' Donuts gift cards for Warren, an evangelical pastor who supported the ban. The prohibition was approved in a ballot initiative last month.

Warren has since been selected by President-elect Obama to appear during the inaugural ceremonies in January, disappointing Obama's liberal supporters.

The group is making their stand with donuts because Warren said last week that he had given donuts to gay rights supporters when they protested outside his church in Southern California.

"I have always treated them with respect," Warren said on NBC last week. "When the protesters came we served them water and donuts"The group says it aims to return the favor. "It is the least we can do. Let's send him donuts. Lots of 'em," ZeroH8.tv says on its website.

The group has designed a gift card to send to Warren that features two men kissing. See it below.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the one of only a few openly gay member of Congress, strongly criticized President-elect Obama's choice to invite pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation during the presidential nomination.

"I am very disappointed by President-elect Barack Obama's decision to honor Reverend Rick Warren with a prominent role in his inauguration," Frank said, adding that it was irrelevant that Warren had invited Obama to a forum earlier this year at his Saddleback Church, since Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had also been invited.

"Religious leaders obviously have every right to speak out in opposition to anti-discrimination measures, even in the degrading terms that Rev. Warren has used with regard to same-sex marriage," Frank continued. "But that does not confer upon them the right to a place of honor in the inauguration ceremony of a president whose stated commitment to LGBT rights won him the strong support of the great majority of those who support that cause."

Obama's selection has come under fire from liberal groups and gay and lesbian rights groups, who have argued that Warren's evangelical values clash with the Democratic president-elect's. In particular, they have pointed to the California pastor's support of a constitutional amendment passed by ballot initiative outlawing gay marriage.

San Francisco Gavin Newsom (D), a strong backer of gay marriage rights, said that President-elect Obama's inclusion of gay marriage opponent Rick Warren at the inauguration can serve as a chance to bridge differences.

Newsom, taking a more conciliatory tone toward Warren than gay and liberal activists, told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday that Obama could use the inauguration to bridge differences with social conservatives. Warren, in addition to backing an anti-gay marriage ballot initiative in California last month, is also pro-choice and has opposed lifting restrictions on stem-cell research.

"The politics of this are lousy for President-elect Barack Obama," Newsom said. "But again, he is someone that said he was going to reach across the divide and try to bring us together. And if he can do that in a way that sparks a dialogue and a substantive one at that, where we can begin to understand one another and begin to address our differences in a meaningful way, then maybe it's an opportunity."

Newsom noted that Warren, the pastor of the Saddleback Church, has also preached about the need to address climate change, the spread of HIV and AIDS, the use of torture and poverty.

"But make no mistake -- I don't think it was a good idea under the circumstances," Newsom said. "And the folks out here in California, that just had their rights taken away, to now have a person that was one of the leaders in that constitutional amendment to strip people's rights up there front and center to kick this inaugural, obviously, makes it more difficult to, as you say, enjoy the festivities."

Newsom allowed same-sex couples to get marriage licenses from the city of San Francisco in 2004, when many states passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

When asked how Obama could reach out to the gay community, Newsom said he could support a repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" military policy and federal hate crime legislation.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) slammed a new Bush administration rule that allows health care workers to refuse to perform an abortion for religious reasons.

The rule, seen as a measure to expand the ability of workers to object to certain reproductive treatments, was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday.

"Under this rule, patients may be denied not only vital medical services, but also critical information, referrals, prescriptions and counseling related to their reproductive health," ADL Civil Rights Director Deborah M. Lauter said in a statement. "The new rule chips away at a woman's constitutionally protected, fundamental right to choose."

Lauter added that while the organization, a longtime stalwart against anti-Semitism and other religious intolerance, called on President-elect Obama to reverse what the ADL termed a "discriminatory" rule.