Who knew Vice President Dick Cheney had a soft side?

Apparently, the whole trash-anyone-who-disagrees-with-us strategy isn’t working, especially after the White House trashed U.S. Rep. John Murtha, who served three tours in Vietnam (while Cheney was getting five deferments from Vietnam).

The administration’s new line seems to be that it’s perfectly OK to criticize the decision to go to war, the conduct of the war or the timetable for getting out of the war. That’s part of a healthy society. (Now, that’s mighty white of them, isn’t it?)

But lest you think they’re going too soft, Cheney added that it’s “dishonest and irresponsible” to say President George W. Bush exaggerated, lied or otherwise misled the nation into war.

“The flaws in the intelligence are plain enough in hindsight but any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false,” Cheney said.

Now that’s an interesting choice of phrase, as it leaves wide open the possibility that prewar information might have been distorted, hyped or fabricated by somebody other than the leader of the nation. Say, the deputy leader of the nation, Cheney himself!

Don’t call us traitors until you’ve considered the following:

• Cheney insisted before the invasion that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program. (That claim was based, in part, on Iraq’s use of aluminum tubes that the administration knew, or should have known, could not possibly have been used in a nuclear program, according to the New York Times.)

• Cheney has claimed that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with an al Qaida operative in Prague, Czech Republic, a meeting that never occurred. When asked about his statement — made on NBC’s Meet the Press — Cheney lied, insisting he’d never said any such thing.

• Cheney opined that American forces would be “greeted as liberators” when they occupied Iraq.

• Cheney opined this summer that the Iraqi insurgency is “in its last throes.” Insurgent activity continues.

• Cheney paid numerous, personal visits to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., to “review” the agency’s intelligence on Iraq. (The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report maintains, however, that Cheney put no pressure on analysts to come up with damning intelligence.)

• Cheney is tangentially connected to a Pentagon inspector general investigation into whether former Defense Department Undersecretary for Planning Douglas Feith’s secret intelligence operation provided Cheney and others with information that alleged a connection between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaida. (The Sept. 11 Commission concluded definitively that no such connection ever existed.)

So, you’ll excuse us if we decide that we don’t think Cheney should be the guy who gets to set the terms of the debate. There’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest Bush and Cheney did exaggerate, use information they knew to be bad and, yes, lie about Iraq before the U.S. invasion. And in our healthy society, we are not only free to say such things, we are obligated as citizens to pursue them. No legitimate government lies to its citizens, and when one of the chief agents of that government tells us we can’t talk about its lies, forgive us if we want a second opinion.

So the university system’s Board of Regents will shortly consider whether or not to offer domestic partner benefits to the unmarried significant others of both gay and straight couples. No big deal, right? After all, it’s done in corporate America all the time.

Oh, that’s right, this is Nevada. And we do things differently here.

Richard Ziser, the man who successfully championed Question 2, the initiative that amended the state constitution to make gay marriage illegal in Nevada, is opposed. (Ziser is now head of the group Nevada Concerned Citizens.)

Ziser, speaking in the Review-Journal, says the state has an interest in giving benefits to straight couples, as it protects the family unit. And since we all know those gay people can’t have families, screw ‘em! (Metaphorically speaking, of course! Don’t actually screw them. That would be a sin.)

Of course, Ziser’s historical knowledge is a bit off. Let’s see if we can correct the record: Benefits originated during an era of wage controls during the New Deal. Companies couldn’t pay employees more, but they could offer other incentives, like paying for health care. Since then, benefits have become part of most company’s standard package, except at Wal-Mart.

So, offering benefits is a way to induce employees to work at a given place, especially in days of rising health care costs. And offering domestic partner benefits is a way to induce gay or unmarried straight employees to work at, say, Disney, rather than a company that doesn’t offer such benefits, like Focus on the Family.

And, to use Ziser’s own reasoning for a moment, if a gay couple have health benefits, is there not an overall benefit to society, in terms of productivity and savings on publicly financed health care? We tend to think so, but then again, we don’t believe the Book of Leviticus and the United States Code should read the same, either.

So, to summarize:

• Ziser doesn’t think domestic partners — gay or straight — should be able to get benefits at the state’s universities.

• Ziser doesn’t think gay domestic partners should be able to marry, and thus qualify for the health benefits that the university system ordinarily offers to spouses.

It’s it a Catch-22? Or is it just that Ziser wishes there were no gay people in the first place?