During a joint appearance with fellow former President George W. Bush at a Toronto forum this weekend, Clinton was asked about gay marriage and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. About the latter, he said that he assumes it will be overturned. About the former, Clinton said that as he gets to know more gay people, his opinion is “evolving” and he thinks relationships should be “up to them [gay people.]“

I’m so glad that such a paragon of marital virtue is coming around on equal rights.

Once I felt sorry for George W. Bush (yes. I’m a punk). It was during one of the 2000 election debates. Opponent Al Gore noted how he supported hate crime legislation and pointed to the 1998 James Byrd, Jr. lynching, a black Texan whose ankles were tied to the back of a pick-up truck by three white Texans; Byrd was then dragged to his death.

In 1999, then Governor Bush was lobbied by Renee Mullins, Byrd’s daughter, to support hate crime legislation that was named after her father. Bush punted and the legislation never had a chance. When this was brought up in the debate, Bush had a look of someone who didn’t understand what was being asked. And for a quick moment he flashed angry confusion.

”The three men who — who murdered James Byrd. Guess what’s going to happen to them? They’re going to be put to death,” Bush responded. “A jury found them guilty and — it’s going to be hard to punish them any worse after they get put to death.”

Yes then candidate Bush was a bit off on the details (only two of the defendants were given death sentences; the third was sentenced to life imprisonment), but his overall point was fair. In Texas, death is the ultimate penalty for murder. Would a hate crime law had made much of a difference in the punishment of Byrd’s murderers?

This question I keep coming to when it comes to hate crime laws. I understand why they exist. Crimes based on difference—be it race, gender, sexuality, or national origin—are so out of bounds, that as a community we need to let people know they will not be tolerated. But aren’t all crimes by definition an affront to a municipality? Clearly there are going to be differences in legal responses (there will always be a distinction between those who kill police officers as opposed to those who murder citizens). Was the killing of Sakia Gunn any more wretched than the other sons and daughters whose blood was spilled on the streets of Newark, New Jersey?

Lots of questions this morning And maybe the trouble started by trying to make Bush into a sympathetic figure, but if crimes against gays and lesbians were sentenced to the fullest extent of the law would we want hate crime laws? Maybe it’s time to focus on that.

Barely a month into the job and there’s chatter among the political blogs that President Barack Obama differs little from the former president now living in Dallas. The Daily Show host Jon Stewart got the ball rolling on Obama’s first day by noting both men used the same rhetoric in their speeches.

That conversation will only get louder after what happened yesterday.  The lawsuit Mohamed et al v. Jeppsen Dataplan, Inc. involves 5 men who claim they were flown by the San Jose Boeing subsidiary to CIA secret camps and tortured. The case was thrown out last year because the Bush Administration claimed national security concerns. Yesterday when the suit was brought on appeal, by the ACLU, to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the Obama Administration  made the same exact argument.

“A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.”

This dearth of hope and change has the ACLU miffed.

“Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.”

I really can’t take the ACLU seriously about this. From the famous 2002 speech when Obama came out against the Iraq War to multiple positions he has taken, it’s always been clear Obama is not your standard ACLU liberal. Only “brain-iacs” like Sean Hannity have thought otherwise.

Like countless Africans, Mzolisa looks forward to Barack Obama becoming America’s first black president Jan 20. But – like countless Africans – Mzolisa says she will always be grateful to Bush for his war on AIDS, which has helped to treat more than 2 million Africans, support 10 million more, and revitalize the global fight against the disease.

“It has done a lot for the people of South Africa, for the whole of the African continent,” says Mzolisa, a feisty mother of seven. “It has changed so many people’s lives, saved so many people’s lives.”

Mzolisa, 44, was diagnosed with the AIDS virus in 1999 and formed a women’s support group to “share the pain.” In 2004 she received a U.S. grant to set up office in a shipping container and start a soup kitchen from the group’s vegetable garden. She stretches her $10,000 in annual funding to train staff to look after bedridden AIDS victims, feed and clothe orphans, and do stigma-busting work at schools and taxi ranks.

Hundreds of similar small grass-roots projects are being funded by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, alongside higher-profile charities and big state clinics.

Bush launched the $15 billion plan in 2003 to expand prevention, treatment and support programs in 15 hard-hit countries, 12 of them African, which account for more than half the world’s estimated 33 million AIDS infections. The initiative tied in with a World Health Organization campaign to put 3 million people on AIDS drugs by 2005 – a goal it says was reached in 2007.

Congress last year passed legislation more than tripling the budget to $48 billion over the next five years, with Republicans and Democrats alike hailing the program as a remarkable success.

But the task remains enormous. More than 1.5 million Africans died in 2007 (the U.S. death toll is under 15,000), fewer than one-third had access to treatment, and new infections continued to outstrip those receiving life-prolonging drugs.

In most African countries, life expectancy has dropped dramatically, and only a few, like Botswana, have started to turn the corner again.

And with no end in sight to the global financial crisis, there are fears about whether all the funding approved by Congress will be delivered.

There continue to be detractors who say the U.S. administration should have channeled the money through the U.N.; that it has placed too much emphasis on faith-based groups and abstinence; that it has trampled on women’s health by shunning anything associated with abortions; that it has concentrated on AIDS treatment at the expense of prevention; and that it has diverted attention away from bigger killers like pneumonia and diarrhea.

Helen Epstein, an AIDS expert who has consulted for the U.N. and the World Bank, says both the U.N. and PEPFAR have failed disastrously on prevention by preaching abstinence until marriage and failing to recognize that in some African cultures it is the norm to have several simultaneous long-term relationships.

She says the money would be better spent on strengthening African health care systems rather than focusing on a single disease.

Johanna Hanefeld at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says her research in Zambia indicated that the U.N. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria was more effective in using HIV programs as a lever to improve health care and staff training, rather than scattering cash among many non-governmental groups, faith-based or other.

PEPFAR ambassador Mark Dybul dismisses criticism that the funding is too narrowly focused.

“In Africa you can’t tackle development goals unless you tackle HIV/AIDS,” he says, citing the devastation wreaked on professions like nursing and teaching.

Besides PEPFAR, Bush has launched a five-year, $1.2 billion initiative to cut malaria deaths in 15 African nations by half.

Dybul also says it is unfair to accuse the U.S. of overemphasizing abstinence because PEPFAR is a major supplier of condoms to the targeted African countries. For instance, PEPFAR figures show 60 million condoms going to Zambia, 40 million to Rwanda, 145 million to Ethiopia in the past five years.

Some critics, like rockers-turned-advocates Bono and Bob Geldof, have become admirers.

“The Bush regime has been divisive … created bitterness – but not here in Africa. Here, his administration has saved millions of lives,” Geldof wrote in Time Magazine as he accompanied Bush on an Africa trip last February.

“The administration and Bush himself deserve a lot more credit than they received for getting this job done,” says Josh Ruxin, assistant professor of public health at Columbia University.

Desperately poor Rwanda, where Ruxin runs a health care project, now has more than 100 centers where people can receive AIDS testing, counseling and treatment, up from just two in 2002.

“I am heartbroken overall by the Bush administration,” Ruxin said in a telephone interview. “But from my perch here in Rwanda, it is impossible to deny the results and achievements of PEPFAR. Many Rwandans were made Republicans because this was the first administration that has taken an interest and done something here.”

Ruxin hopes Obama will learn lessons from PEPFAR’s first five years – in particular to end the emphasis on abstinence and start funding groups who work with prostitutes and carry out abortions.

PEPFAR’s biggest single success story is the fortyfold increase in the number of Africans receiving life-prolonging medication in the past five years.

Populous countries like Nigeria and Ethiopia are still struggling to increase access to medication. But in Rwanda, 71 percent of those in need of AIDS drugs received them in 2007, up from 1 percent in 2003, and in Namibia the rate shot up to 88 percent, from 1 percent.

AIDS is no longer a death sentence for people like Ndaxu Mungunda, a Namibian diagnosed as HIV positive after the birth of her child. She, her husband and child were given AIDS drugs provided at all major Namibian hospitals, thanks in part to PEPFAR funding which has increased tenfold in the past five years to $109 million.

Four years later, at age 40, she and her husband look forward to something that is by no means a certainty in Africa’s AIDS era – a ripe old age.

Jones Mubita, a Zambian policeman, had given up hope for his young daughter, a “mere skeleton” covered in boils when she was hospitalized. With the help of AIDS drugs provided by the U.S. government the child is now back at school, he says, beaming.

At a 22-bed clinic run by Living Hope, a church-based charity near Cape Town, 85 percent of patients now survive and only 15 percent die. A few years ago, it was the opposite, says Pat Ball, a retired teacher from North Carolina, and a volunteer at Living Hope.

The acclaimed mothers2mothers organization has expanded from about 40 locations around Cape Town to nearly 500 in seven African countries thanks to PEPFAR cash. Its network of more than 1,000 HIV positive women are trained as “mentor mothers” and paid to counsel the newly infected and ensure they and their babies stay healthy. Thanks to the growing provision of AIDS drugs to pregnant women, few babies in the m2m network are now born with AIDS, says co-founder Gene Falk.

In big South African government clinics, there is palpable optimism that AIDS infected newborns could become history.

Children are especially vulnerable as they are harder to diagnose and quickly pass the point beyond which medication can help.

In a sunny room furnished with toys and a play kitchen at the Soweto Hospice in Johannesburg, dying children are given a chance to enjoy what remains of their life.

“We want to give them their childhood back,” said Louisa Ferreira, director of the nine-bed pediatrics unit funded by PEPFAR. “The hospice is not about death. It’s about life.”

PEPFAR says its programs have helped care for nearly 4 million orphans and vulnerable children.

One of them is Frans Dobola, who at age 13 lost his parents to AIDS. Heartbeat, an organization helping AIDS orphans with $750,000 in PEPFAR grants, trained a neighbor to act as his foster mother, provided a daily meal, and an after-school program.

Dobola, 20, now works at Heartbeat, in a township near the South African capital, Pretoria, and dreams of a job in computers. Meanwhile, he grows beets and tomatoes at the after-school center’s garden and gives poetry and dance lessons.

“I am giving back to the community what they gave me,” he says, smiling.

South Africa is also the biggest single recipient of PEPFAR money – $590 million last year, more than it received during the entire eight-year Clinton administration, according to U.S. ambassador Eric Bost.

After years of denial about the AIDS crisis by former President Thabo Mbeki, the new government is finally serious about tackling the epidemic.

Francois Venter, an outspoken doctor who heads a PEPFAR-funded program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, says because of its emphasis on measurable targets, “PEPFAR is different.”

“A lot of previous donor projects were touchy-feely, fuzzy,” says Venter, adding that U.S. funding helped boost the number of South Africans on medication to 700,000.

But with 2.5 South Africans becoming newly infected for every one put on treatment, Venter says that prevention remains a “black hole.”

Supporters and critics alike agree that prevention is the weakest link in global AIDS initiatives. When he launched PEPFAR, Bush said he wanted to prevent 7 million new infections but it is hard to tell whether that goal has been met.

PEPFAR says its funds have provided drugs to 250,000 pregnant women to prevent them passing on the AIDS virus in the womb. In countries like Uganda, babies born with the AIDS virus still account for 15-25 percent of new infections and so the increase in therapy to stop mother-to-child transmission offers one of the few rays of hope in an otherwise bleak prevention outlook.

Another promising option would be male circumcision, which can cut transmission by up to 60 percent. But it has so far received little PEPFAR backing because any mass program is thought to be too complex for impoverished countries to undertake.

Most experts agree that prevention means a fundamental change of behavior – fewer sexual partners and mutually faithful relationships. “We are trying to change culture, tradition,” says Mandla Ndlovu, project officer for Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa.

“It is not going to be a one-round fight,” says Ndlovu, who runs a PEPFAR project to increase AIDS awareness among men in Carltonville, a gold mining town outside Johannesburg where men live in hostels away from their families and there are few pastimes besides alcohol and casual sex.

Bost brims with superlatives about the achievements of PEPFAR in South Africa, and believes Bush will be judged more kindly in history than on Jan. 21.

Dybul, a specialist in infectious diseases whose title is now U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, concurs.

“It’s the largest international health initiative in history for a single disease,” he says. “In any other circumstances, he (Bush) would be getting a Nobel prize.”

Sweetness Mzolisa, overflowing with energy and enthusiasm, puts it more simply.

“He’s got heart,” she declares. “He cares about people.”

After starting what he called “the ultimate exit interview” with a lengthy and personalized thank-you to the reporters in the room who have covered him over the eight years of his presidency, Bush showed anger at times when presented with some of the main criticisms of his time in office.

“I think it’s a good, strong record,” he said. “You know, presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That’s just not my nature.”

He particularly became indignant when asked about America’s bruised image overseas.

“I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light,” he said. “It may be damaged amongst some of the elite. But people still understand America stands for freedom.”

Bush said he realizes that some issues such as the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have created controversy at home and around the world. But he defended his actions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including approving tough interrogation methods for suspected terrorists and information-gathering efforts at home in the name of protecting the country.

With the Iraq war in its sixth year, he most aggressively defended his decisions on that issue, which will define his presidency like no other. There have been over 4,000 U.S. deaths since the invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

But it was in that area that he also acknowledged mistakes. He said that “not finding weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment.” The accusation that Saddam had and was pursuing weapons of mass destruction was Bush’s main initial justification for going to war.

He also cited the abuses found to have been committed by members of the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as “a huge disappointment.”

“I don’t know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were – things didn’t go according to plan, let’s put it that way,” Bush said.

And he admitted another miscalculation: Eager to report quick progress after U.S. troops ousted Saddam’s government, he declared less than two months after the war started that “in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed,” a claim made under a “Mission Accomplished” banner that turned out to be wildly optimistic. “Clearly, putting `Mission Accomplished’ on an aircraft carrier was a mistake,” he said Monday. “It sent the wrong message.”

He also defended his decision in 2007 to send an additional 30,000 American troops to Iraq to knock down violence levels and stabilize life there.

“The question is, in the long run, will this democracy survive, and that’s going to be a question for future presidents,” he said.

On another issue destined to figure prominently in his legacy, Bush said he has “thought long and hard about Katrina – you know could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge.” Bush was criticized for flying over the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and waiting until four days after it hit to visit the scene.

But he also said he disagrees with those who say the federal response to the storm was slow.

“Don’t tell me the federal response was slow when there were 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. … Could things been done better? Absolutely. But when I hear people say the federal response was slow, what are they going to say to those chopper drivers or the 30,000 who got pulled off the roof?” he said.

He also defended his record on Mideast peace.

A bruising offensive by Israel in the Gaza Strip has dashed any slight hopes for an accord soon that produces a Palestinian state. But Bush, asked why peace hasn’t been achieved, said his administration had made progress. He said he had laid out the vision for “what peace would look like” and got all sides to agree on a two-state solution to the long-running Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

“It’s been a long time since they’ve had peace in the Middle East,” he said. “The challenge, of course, has been to lay out the conditions so that a peaceful state can emerge. … Will this ever happen? I think it will. And I know we’ve advanced the process.”

He called President-elect Barack Obama “a very smart, engaging person” and said he wishes his successor all the best. He hinted at the enormous responsibility Obama is about to assume, describing what it might feel like on Jan. 20 when, after taking the oath of office, he enters the Oval Office for the first time as president.

“There’ll be a moment when the responsibility of the president lands squarely on his shoulders,” Bush said.

He gave his view of the most urgent threat facing the incoming president: an attack on the United States. He chose that risk over the dire economic problems now facing the nation.

“I wish that I could report that’s not the case, but there’s still an enemy out there that would like to inflict damage on America – on Americans.”

He said he would ask Congress to release the remaining $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money if Obama so desires. But, he said, Obama hadn’t made that request of him yet.

That soon changed. Shortly after the news conference, the White House said Obama had asked for the request and Bush had agreed to make it.

That will take at least one burden off Obama’s shoulders involving a program that is extraordinarily unpopular with many lawmakers and much of the public.

The last news conference of Bush’s presidency lasted 46 minutes, and he took questions from more than a dozen reporters.

The last previous time the president had taken questions in a public setting was Dec. 14 in Baghdad, a session that hurtled to the top of the news when Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi threw his shoes at Bush during a question-and-answer session with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Bush’s last previous full-blown news conference was July 15. He refused to hold another during the final months of last year’s presidential campaign, concerned that the questions would be mostly related to political events and determined to stay out of GOP nominee John McCain’s spotlight as much as possible. But even though aides had suggested that would change after the election, Bush still declined to participate in a wide-ranging question-and-answer session until now, just eight days before leaving office.

He has been granting a flurry of legacy-focused interviews as he seeks to shape the view of his presidency on his way out the door.

He gave advice to both his Republican Party and his Democratic successor.

To the GOP, he said it must be “compassionate and broad-minded” to come back from the drubbing it received in last year’s elections, in which Republicans lost the White House and sank deeper into the minority in Congress. He said the immigration debate of two years ago was harmful, because conservative opposition to broad reform made it appear that “Republicans don’t like immigrants.”

“This party will come back. But the party’s message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party,” he said.

Bush cautioned Obama not to listen to too much criticism – including from “your so-called friends” – and to focus on doing what he thinks is right. He also said to ignore talk of the isolation of the office.

“I have never felt isolated, and I don’t think he will,” Bush said. “One reason he won’t feel isolated is that he’s got a fabulous family and he cares a lot about his family.”

He went on to mock the way some describe the job.

“I believe the phrase ‘burdens of the office’ is overstated,” he said. “You know, it’s kind of like, `Why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch?’ It’s just pathetic, isn’t it, self-pity? And I don’t believe that President-elect Obama will be full of self-pity.”

Bush seemed to struggle to envision himself on Jan. 21, his first day back at home and without a job.

“I’m a Type A personality. I just can’t envision myself, you know, the big straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt sitting on some beach,” he said. But, he added, it would probably be a pretty low-key day with him and his wife, Laura, at his ranch in Texas. “I wake up in Crawford on Tuesday morning – I mean, Wednesday morning, and I suspect I’ll make Laura coffee and, you know, go get it for her.”

You’ve seen the video and if you haven’t a friend has sent it. In fact you probably want to give journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, the man who threw two shoes at President George Bush, a few bucks in appreciation.

When I saw the scene on Sunday, a few random thoughts came up:  where were the Secret Service? I can forgive one shoe but al-Zaidi was able to throw two of them before he got tackled. Call me a worry wart but that implies slack security.

President Bush, for all of his faults, is a rather nimble fellow. If it were me, I would have been clocked by one of those projectiles. The president even had his trademark smirk when the second shoe went by him, a look  I’m sure was used back in the day when he was the dodge ball champion of the playground.

The last thought is that for all of the problems with the Iraq War (torture, lousy intelligence, terrible planning, etc., etc.), al-Zaidi would have never thrown shoes at Saddam Hussein and lived to tell the tale. And the Iraqis now calling the journalist a folk hero would have been clamoring for his death.

During the campaign, Barack Obama noted he was against the Iraq War and pointed to a speech he made in 2002 at an anti-war rally.

It’s fair to point out though, he was just a state senator at the time and if he were operating on the national stage, like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards, his position might have been more muted (it was very hard to find any mainstream national pol  willing to go against President George Bush at the time).

However, being against the Iraq War did not make Obama a dove, and he made this clear in that speech.

“I don’t oppose all wars. I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war (emphasis added).”

Some in the liberal/dove wing of the Democratic Party forgot that line and now are scratching their heads as they watch Obama’s national security team take form. Their befuddlement, however, has much more to do with projection than anything else.

“A lot of people took his position on Iraq and projected our politics onto him,” said Maryiln Katz, one of the organizers of the 2002 rally. “And that was never him. It was never true.”

PS: Hope everyone  has a restful and safe Thanksgiving week-end.

Both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain positioned themselves as agents of change – that is, change from Bush.

The president’s approval ratings have hovered near historically low levels – it was just 26 percent in an AP-GfK poll conducted a couple of weeks before Election Day – and he was a factor in voters’ decision-making no matter how much he tried to keep out of the race.

Obama seized on Bush’s standing to make him a political liability for McCain, who in turn separated himself aggressively from the face of his own party as the campaign closed.

The president’s face has been such a fixture in anti-McCain ads that it was up to Laura Bush to add a touch of lightness to her husband’s woes.

“I’m really looking forward to Election Day,” she said at a Republican campaign event in Kentucky on Monday, “partly because it seems like George has been on the ticket this entire year.”

The quietest place in Washington on Tuesday may have been the White House itself.

The president voted absentee several days ago, so there was no video of him at his precinct, no statements to reporters, no public appearance whatsoever.

Bush planned to spend his evening in the White House residence, watching TV coverage of election results and hosting a small dinner with his wife, Laura.

There was sure to be at least some celebrating – Tuesday is the first lady’s birthday. Otherwise, it was a day when the White House purposely went dark.

“He realizes this election is not about him,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said heading into voting day.

Tuesday marked the first time in 14 years – a period when Bush twice won the Texas governorship and the presidency – that he was not on the ballot.

Many pundits had no doubt about Tuesday’s outcome. Among them: Karl Rove, once of Bush’s closest aides and the architect of his two successful presidential runs. On election eve, Rove distributed his last analysis of the electoral map. It predicted Obama winning easily, with 338 electoral votes. It takes 270 to win.

The title of Rove’s e-mail: “The End.” He was referring to the election, but there was also a feeling of finality at the White House.

Outside, the post-Bush transition was starting. Construction workers churned away on Inauguration Day grandstands along Pennsylvania Avenue.

You would think with an approval rating only a little better than my negative bank account that President George W. Bush would keep his public statements to a minimum. I thought Bush’s “to-do” list would be jammed packed with stuff on the economy, but the president has always been sensitive to the GOP base and that has not changed even in the waning days of his administration.

After the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled the state’s laws prohibiting same sex marriages were unconstitutional, Bush released a statement taking the judges to task.

“It’s unfortunate that activist judges continue to seek to redefine marriage by court order — without regard for the will of the people. Today’s decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court illustrates that a federal constitutional amendment may be needed if the people are to decide what marriage means.”

The words are pure Bush-speak. Bemoaning “activist judges”, pointing to the will of the people, and a call to transform the Constitution, the legal document that will speak well of the country when we all are just lost memories.

He ends it all by noting that he continues to be “firmly committed to protecting the sanctity of marriage.” If I were an anti-same-sex marriage partisan this line would make me laugh. Bush talked a great game, gave a whole lot of speeches and press releases  announcing how he was for the “sanctity of marriage.” Lots of talk, but where is the action?

He played anti-same sex marriage advocates for suckers, making them think that his words would translate into something concrete. He continues his game even now when it’s clear the topic has passed him by.