Cheney voted against having an MLK day

[Grimmlok]

Tell me again why the speakers should have sat quietly by while Bush and Cheney attended Coretta Scott King's funeral? Oh yes, Cheney was there. The same Dick Cheney who voted AGAINST creating a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King.

So, tell me again about the great respect Dick Cheney and George Bush have for African-Americans. Speaking of which, how is that New Orleans reconstruction doing?

From USNews & World Report:

President Bush was only seconds into his State of the Union speech Tuesday night when we saw our first sign of blatant hypocrisy.

After Bush paid a lofty tribute to the late Coretta Scott King, Republicans and Democrats alike rose in applause. Behind the president, so did Vice President Cheney. He should have remained in his seat.

Perhaps Cheney would like everyone, including the TV viewers, to forget that as a congressman from Wyoming, his vote in 1979 against making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday helped block the legislation. Four years later, he voted for it when it was an easier choice....

Following King's assassination in Memphis, the nation needed to honor his memory. It was a fitting and proper thing to do for members of Congress of both parties and both races, and from both South and North.

But Dick Cheney took a pass.

It was not a profile in courage for the same man who with his party ripped into Democrat John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, given that the vice president took five student deferments to sit out the conflict at home.