of the ball rolling. we have a lot of speeches coming up. as you mentioned, arnie duncan speaking at howard university tomorrow. mitt romney is speaking at liberty university in virginia. michelle obama, the first lady, is speaking in greensboro. condi rice is speaking at southern methodist university and of course, president obama will be giving the commencement address at barnard college alongside the person for freedom to marry. and they had a different speaker but it was after the whole gender issue arose that the white house asked him if he could come and speak on women s issues at that women s college. that is a very politically timed and important and at the university of pennsylvania where our speaker is jeffrey, we re giving an honorary director to cia director david petraeus and to congressman john lewis among
bullying, and in the current context i learned a lot as a father, a grandfather, and i hope this is a teachable moment. was there some other way to frame this? i do think it is incredible he doesn t believe it. there is too much testimony for other people who have vivid memories of it. he didn t contest the facts. he could say yes, our culture changed greatly in the past 50 years. what was seen as rough stuff high jinks. would not be acceptable today. there is evidence if it happened today the person would be expelled, there would be a huge hazing investigation, harassment panel. boarding schools have these things now. there are many state laws that apply in these situations. of course it comes on the heels of president obama s statement of gay marriage. mitt romney has undermined his
gay marriage is not an issue that the obama re-election campaign wants to be talking about this week. but here we are. here we are indeed. thank you, mark leibovich. great reporting. thanks for being with us. last night s hot ticket in hollywood was the fund-raiser at george clooney s house where he hosted the president and a-list of stars. the event raised a record $15 million. chad griffin is incoming president of the advocacy group for gay rights. you brought together ted olson and david boies to challenge prop 8. we know that is the big case that everybody has been watching. what is your take away? this has been a stunning week in gay rights and also in politics. andrea, it is, i think, a turning point in american politics. what president the obama did
it is commencement time, the time of year when graduates are going to get advice, encouragement and in this election year, of course, political campaigning, too. first lady michelle obama is at virginia tech today. president obama will speak at barnard college monday. tomorrow mitt romney heads to liberty university in virginia. conservative christian school founded by the late jerry falwell. liberty university is the place to go when you re looking to go after the movement conservatives, social conservatives. that s the tactic. what do we know about romney s upcoming commencement address? i was struck by the focus that the romney folks want to put on his lack of overpandering to christian conservatives. these excerpts could be delivered at any university. romney is extolling the virtue of family and placing family as
do in order to achieve full equality in this country, but what the president did this week puts us a long ways towards that goal. i ve been an active fund-raiser in the past for the president. i saw within an hour of that announcement i saw an e-mail, fund-raising e-mail that went out on behalf of the obama campaign to top contributors trying to get them to contribute more money based on this move. is this going to be a big factor? was that also part of the white house thinking that eventually they would have to make this move because there was distress among, according to the washington post, 1-6 bundlers are gay. there is a lot of money that was on the table here. i think there is no question. we ve seen all the analysis there, potential upsides and potential down sides. what is clear is that the president did not do what he did this week for any political gain. he spoke from the heart and he said what he believed.