Paper retracts 150-year-old insult

In what might be one of the oldest corrections in the history of journalism, the editorial board of a Pennsylvania newspaper has retracted its predecessor's famous panning of President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as "silly remarks." "Seven score and ten years ago, the forefathers of this media institution brought forth to its audience a judgment so flawed, so tainted by hubris, so lacking in the perspective history would bring, that it cannot remain unaddressed in our archives," the editors of The Patriot-News wrote last Thursday, evoking the opening words and style of Lincoln's most famous speech. Back then, the editors of the Patriot & Union newspaper - an ancestor of today's Harrisburg paper - thought so little of Lincoln's "silly remarks" that they hoped "the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them, and that they shall be no more reposted or thought of." Fair enough. The problem is, history didn't cooperate. And neither is Senate candidate Liz Cheney on the issue of gay marriage. She has touched off a family feud by speaking out against gay marriage — even though her sister Mary is married to a woman. Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, believes marriage should be reserved for heterosexual couples only, despite the fact that her sister Mary married a Heather Poe in 2012. Gays are people too, and if they want to get married, we shouldn't deny them that right simply because the couple both have the same genitalia. I'm sure her remarks, or anybody's remarks for that matter, against gay marriage would've been much better received in Texas.