[Reply to A-man, more room here]

Somehow I think you missed my noting the places where being out is problematic - "an out gay hockey or basketball or football player? Gay cops? Construction workers? Or often high school in general? Or in often less accepting black & Hispanic culture? Small towns or rural areas?" Which would include Matthew Shepard, et al. (past problematic - brutal)

If a newshost on Fox comes out, then it's more a big deal - both in terms of being out in that right-wing political environment, and that it's beamed into living rooms and bedrooms that wouldn't watch them lib'rul stations - the "heartland" where much work on acceptance has to be done.

I was happy for Obama's "evolving" publicly on gay marriage, even if conveniently timed and still half-baked in states' rights, simply because I think it will have a greater catalyzing effect than the polls show yet. Anderson Cooper? Who knows - already past its 15 minutes fame.

As for Sullivan's "apologies" on Iraq, it reads like a 7-year-old's trying to figure out what he did wrong. He didn't realize war was mean and bad - "But what I failed to grasp is that war is also a monster", he thought left-wingers were being knee-jerk reliving Vietnam (he earlier likened them to a "Fifth Column"), he thought Iraq a cakewalk like Bosnia/Kosovo, he didn't realize ethnic divisions meant ethnic divisions, he thought Bush moral & Cheney/Rumsfeld competent, he believed he had WMD's.

And never addresses the vehemence with which he attacked those who didn't toe his line.

He wrote this piece of shit in 2008, having had 5 years to make himself look at least adult, or at least self-respectfully string a rope around the chandelier realizing he'd never be anything but a hack writer.  But Sully doesn't want to grow up - he moves from man-crush to man-crush: Hayek, Reagan/Thatcher, Bush, Obama - and his caricatured villains - communists, extreme liberals, terrorists, the Clintons. Hussein is still "evil" and Obama will still stun us with his long game (that stupid liberals are too impatient to appreciate, unlike Andrew). 

Here's the jackass once again eagerly rushing in:

Yes, Obama has waged a war based on a reading of executive power that many civil libertarians, including myself, oppose. And he has signed into law the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial (even as he pledged never to invoke this tyrannical power himself). But he has done the most important thing of all: excising the cancer of torture from military detention and military justice. If he is not reelected, that cancer may well return. Indeed, many on the right appear eager for it to return.

Burned 5 times, he can't wait to be burned again. Of course there's no transparency on what may be torture in Bagram,we're still doing renditions to sadistic governments and punitive expeditions in Afghanistan & Pakistan, overseeing "interrogations" in Yemen with no record, and keeping any and all info on Bush-era torture from coming out, while Obama puts a premium on prosecuting whistle-blowers unfavorable to the government line.

And curiously as Sully recognizes a host of faults in Obama, he invests his Catholic faith that Obama's the savior at the same time. (and kicks a few far-left hippies in the kidneys for being too impatient and not getting past illegal war and indefinite detention to recognize the long-term miracle: the reformed smoker is curing cancer). Instead of ever considering that his profligate faith just might be the problem, and that a bit of cynical eye towards politicians and his own political perception might be a useful trait. Okay, he's willing to consider that in retrospect, but never, it seems, in looking forward. "Fool me once, won't get fooled again."

As for the AUMF, that's a copout - it was given in Sept 2002, and it along with a massing army did pressure Hussein to allow inspectors back in, which allowed us to prove pretty definitively that Hussein had no WMDs. War 6 months later shouldn't have been a slam dunk, but it was these hyped up CIA-supported WMD lies - 45 minutes to attack, yellow cake in Africa, biological stations in the desert, Mr. Integrity Colin Powell - that allowed Bush to rush through without review. 

As an aside (or to the point?) Andy has been brutal on Hillary (and Pelosi et al) for her clever "nepotism" for marrying a younger law school classmate as guaranteed ascent to power as wife of defeated US Congressional candidate Arkansas DA, plus using him to get appointed elected to the Senate and running a presidential primary campaign where she got 50% of the vote - all obviously because of Bill.

So how is it Anderson Cooper gets reprieve from Sully's scorn of nepotism? Is it that Cooper doesn't have "cooties" as claimed of Hillary? That he doesn't claim to be a "feminist" which Hillary obviously isn't because she married a (later) successful man? He's not right-wing, which once upon a time was Sully's main concern about nepotism attacks . (to be fair, coming from England Sully doesn't always recognize difference from "elected" and "appointed") Or maybe it's just that Cooper's gay and Sully's gay, so that's alright, whereas should a vicious fringe left-winger object to punching a female candidate, that's extremist loony speech worthy the Moore Award.