BUSH & GAY MARRIAGE

A snippet from the advance word on the SOTU address:

Aides said he will lay out his presidential legislative priorities and his international priorities. And the president will also tackle the controversial issue of gay marriage, declaring -- as he has before -- that marriage should be between one man and one woman.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said Bush will say that "if necessary, he'd be glad to support a constitutional change" to support that idea.

An interesting thing to say, especially considering that amending the Constitution is pretty damn hard, and an issue this divisive may be impossible to ratify around the country. I'm sure his handlers have the usual storyline in mind, as they did with the Moon/Mars plan and the guest-worker immigration proposal: If you grab the headlines, it wont matter whether you ultimately succeed or fail, because you will look "bold".

In other SOTU news, Bush will be proposing a job-training and retraining program for the unemployed. Take it, tbogg:

Aren't you all excited over those job-training grants that will get out-of-work people prepared for jobs that don't exist?

With any luck, Noonan will be on with Chris Matthews.

Heh. And oh god. Really, none of the cable networks are safe to watch for reaction to this sort of thing. On CNN you'll get Woodruff, Wolf, Bill Schneider and Jeff Greenfield. Ugh. On MSNBC, Matthews and those two world-class Bush-fellaters Fineman and Noonan. At least with Fox I'd be getting what I came for. (Brit Barnes Mort and Kristol, I assume)