The political Quote of the Day comes from Dick Polman, writing on the scandal swirling around John Ensign:
Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign, the erstwhile rising GOP star who…copped to an affair with an aide’s wife, wants to ban gay marriage via a federal constitutional amendment. In 2004, he declared that it was important “to defend the institution of marriage….The effort to pass a constitutional amendment reaffirming marriage as being between a man and a woman only is being undertaken strictly as a defense of marriage against the attempt to redefine it and, in the process, weaken it. Marriage is an extremely important institution in this country, and protecting it is, in my mind, worth the extraordinary step of amending our constitution.”
In light of his announcement yesterday, I think that I understand his position:
Under the terms of a constitutional amendment that safeguards the institution of marriage, an extramarital affair shall be solely between a man and a woman.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.