Morning News Roundup (05 June)

• The Gays are coming, the Gays are coming, the Gays are coming... Today's the day that President Bush and the Senate are pushing their constitutional amendment to nowhere with an effort to get the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would restrict marriage to one man and one woman. It has no hope of reaching the 60 vote threshold, but the Republicans are pushing it nonethless. I wonder why:

  Many Republicans support the measure because they say traditional marriage strengthens society; others don't but concede the reality of election-year politics.
  
  "Marriage between one man and one woman does a better job protecting children better than any other institution humankind has devised," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. "As such, marriage as an institution should be protected, not redefined."
  
  But Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he will vote against it on the floor but allowed it to survive his panel in part to give the GOP the debate party leaders believe will pay off on Election Day. Specter has chosen a different battle with the Bush administration this week -- a hearing Tuesday on the ways the FBI spies on journalists who publish classified information. [WaPo]

  Sounds like Specter's priorities are in the right place.
  
  
• Salon's War Room has more on the President's views:
  

  The president used his weekly radio address Saturday to throw his weight behind a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage, and he'll make another push for the amendment during a White House Rose Garden event today. So George W. Bush, "man of principle," really cares about this stuff? So much so that it's worth taking a couple of days away from Iraq and Iran and immigration and everything else to back a constitutional amendment that has absolutely no chance of passing?
  
  Not so much, it seems.
  
  An "old friend" tells Newsweek's Debra Rosenberg that Bush's interest in outlawing gay marriage is "purely political." "I don't think he gives a shit about it," the friend says. "He never talks about this stuff."

• But wait, there's more: Next, Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, wants votes on two perennial conservative causes: repealing the estate tax and giving Congress the constitutional authority to ban flag burning. None of the measures is expected to pass, although the estate tax debate could yield a compromise that applies the tax only to the largest inheritances.
  
  Despite the futility of the gay marriage and flag burning votes, some Republican strategists said they were just the jolt that conservative voters needed to overcome what polls suggest is their growing antipathy toward the party. [Boston Globe]
  
  
• “The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans ‘humiliating and degrading treatment,’ … a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.” The State Department “fiercely opposes” the decision “and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider.” [xxx">ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Gunmen have seized at least 50 people in coordinated raids on bus stations in central Baghdad today, Iraqi officials said. The attackers - dressed in police uniforms - stormed the stations, in the centre of the capital, abducting drivers and passengers preparing to travel out of Iraq. The abductions came a day after masked gunmen stopped two minivans carrying students north of Baghdad. They ordered the passengers to get out before segregating Sunni and Shia Muslims and killing 21 Shia "in the name of Islam". [Guardian]
  
  
• A federal judge yesterday rejected a bid by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to see a range of classified government documents that he asserted are needed to prepare his legal defense against charges of obstruction of justice and lying to government investigators. Libby cannot have other information about a CIA-sponsored trip Wilson had made to Niger in 2002 to determine whether Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons material there, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said. Nor is Libby entitled to know what other government officials may have known at the time or told others about the CIA employment of Wilson's wife, Walton wrote. [WaPo]
  
  
• Proving that it is more than just a blue-state hit, Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth expanded into major markets and hit the top ten grossing an estimated $1.3M from only 77 theaters. The Paramount Vantage release averaged a stunning $17,299 over the weekend and raised its cume to $1.9M after bowing last week in just four theaters in New York and Los Angeles. This Friday, Truth widens to the Top 25 markets with about 150 total theaters before going national on June 16 in 450-600 locations. [Box Office Guru]