Go, Cougars!

The invitation extended to Vice President Dick Cheney to be the commencement speaker at Brigham Young University has set off a rare, continuing protest at the Mormon university, one of the nation’s most conservative.

Some of the faculty and the 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, who are overwhelmingly Republican, have expressed concern about the Bush administration’s support for the war in Iraq and other policies, but most of the current protest has focused on Mr. Cheney’s integrity, character and behavior. Several students said, for example, that they were appalled at Mr. Cheney’s use of an expletive on the Senate floor in a June 2004 exchange with Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. ~The New York Times

As were many of us.  This is moderately encouraging news.  It shows that there are still some things this crowd will do that conservative people in this country will not abide.  It might even be enough to convince Damon Linker and Jacob Weisberg to rethink their anti-Mormonism.  (Not likely.)  In fact, that might become a sort of slogan for the protesters: “Conservatives cannot abide Dick Cheney.”  It could catch on.

Or, as Prof. Woodworth at BYU put it:

We espouse honesty, chastity, integrity, ethics, virtue and morality, and he does not epitomize those values.

Update: Unfortunately, the protest appears to be made up mostly of Democrats, which makes it far less remarkable and less interesting.