In Right Wing Land--second star to the right and straight on til morning--little boys never grow up and logic is for sissies. This morning's Washington Times is running an editorial claiming that support for the Matthew Shepard Act is proof that Democrats have nothing but contempt for the United States military. Good luck in following that logic.

Ted Kennedy says the hate crimes measure is included in the new Defense Department spending bill because the bill deals with terrorism--and hate crimes are domestic terrorism and should fall under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department and Homeland Security. Kennedy believes that Homeland Security has a clear obligation to the American people to pay as much attention to domestic terrorism as it does to foreign terrorism. Furthermore, there is nothing odd about this since the Justice Department is already charged with investigating and prosecuting domestic terrorism--or hate crimes--based on religion and race. But according to Right Wing Land logic, mutilating or murdering someone because they are black or Jewish is terrorism, but doing the same to a gay American is fulfilling one of God's commandments.

I suspect that Matthew Shepard and the hundreds of gay men and women who have been murdered or mutilated by domestic terrorists for no other reason than their sexual orientation would agree with Ted Kennedy. After all, if you are brutally killed for being gay by a Christian Fundamentalist with an American passport or you are brutally killed for being American by an Islamic fundamentalist with a green card or a student visa, you likely don't see much of a difference as your body is planted six feet under.

Of course, there is a difference. The Islamic fundamentalists are waging war against a foreign power, while the domestic terrorists are committing acts of treason, betraying the principles of freedom and the Constitution that our troops in Iraq die for daily.

In fact, contrary to the logic spilled on to the editorial page of The Washington Times, one could argue that a bill designed to fund the war on terrorism should be more focused on the greater danger of domestic Christian fundamentalism which has achieved much more success than the Islamic fundamentalists when it comes to assaulting our civil rights, the Constitution and the free society that the President of the United States is bound by his of office to protect. If George W. Bush vetoes the Defense spending bill because of the Matthew Shephard Act he will not only have shown his homophobia, he will have betrayed his oath of office; he will have stomped on the Bill Of Rights in ways that Osama bin Laden can only dream about..