In the final presidential debate, John Kerry responded to a gay-rights question with a reference to Vice President Dick Cheney's gay daughter. The vice president's wife, Lynne Cheney, immediately went ballistic, condemning Kerry in her most moralistic tones as "not a good man" for the "cheap and tawdry political trick." By Thursday morning, it was all over the news networks, with the vice president also impugning Kerry's character and describing himself as "a pretty angry father." CNN's Wolf Blitzer gravely speculated that the controversy could dominate the entire post-debate landscape. Well, yeah, if the Cheneys -- supposedly outraged by the violation of their daughter's privacy -- get their way and keep the issue burning brightly in the public eye.

How incredibly sad for Mary Cheney, the lesbian in question. And not for the reasons that her parents and the pundits have been screaming about.

First, let's dispense with the comic aspects of the parental indignation:

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The blueprint for the operation, called the Agenda for Change, takes on half a century of entrenched military tradition, and toppled two key symbols of the old regime right away. In a surprise move, the Pentagon sacked the senior leadership of the academy -- both generals and two top colonels -- and then removed the enormous sign that commanded "BRING ME MEN ..." from the center of campus, leaving a naked granite wall in its place.

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Victims' families and their attorneys cheered the release as a major victory. "I am expecting to gain a lot of information from this report," says Brian Rohrbough, whose son Dan was killed in the attack. "Part of what I'm expecting to learn ... is what's missing from this report."

The material released Tuesday filled four large storage boxes. County spokesman John Masson says it amounts to a "substantial" portion of the data available. But it omits a great deal of crucial evidence -- including autopsy reports, thousands of photos and medical reports of the victims -- that could be useful in lawsuits that have been brought on by families of Columbine victims.

Among the most compelling documents are 16 pages of testimony from Patty Nielson -- the teacher famous for making 911 calls from the library as the killers rampaged through the building -- that effectively refute the most misleading myth of all: that the entire tragedy was intended as a horrible attack on jocks, blacks and Christians.

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But last weekend Columbine officials held a press event showing off the new school atrium, phase one of a $3.1 million project to raze the old library -- where most of the students were killed April 20, 1999 -- and add on a new one, adjoined to the school by a hallway.

A year ago, the school had unveiled its post-massacre renovation project to reporters, on the eve of its "Take Back the School" reopening event, and the half-baked solution to the library problem was its most disturbing feature. The goal was laudable: to keep the structure of the school intact -- so students didn't feel they'd lost it -- while making superficial changes to provoke subtle differences in perception that would be hard for students to put their finger on. There were softer colors, a different pattern on the ceiling, new texture on the floor, different clatter in the hallway.

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Television cameras captured Mary Cheney, her sister, Elizabeth, and brother-in-law, Phil Perry, laughing and applauding during Cheney's acceptance speech. But the tight camera angle shut out others in their box. For a while, an unidentified woman in a red dress playing with the Cheney grandchildren, sitting to the left of Perry, raised hopes that Cheney's girlfriend had attended the convention, as rumored.

"You see the woman holding the baby?" Human Rights Campaign spokesman David Smith asked. Phone calls were buzzing in from around the country wondering if that could possibly be her. Activists had one photo of the couple to work from, and the woman's hair seemed way too light, but it was hard to rule her out categorically.

So Smith borrowed a seating chart from a reporter, to make sure. And everyone in the box was accounted for; the woman was clearly identified as another member of the family delegation.

Smith was sorely disappointed at the absence of Cheney's life partner from the event.

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Cheney's life partner is also said to be on her way to Philadelphia or already there. "She is going to become part of the media frenzy," says one friend. It is unclear whether the girlfriend will join Mary Cheney on the platform when her father formally accepts the Republican nomination Wednesday night, or when he joins George W. Bush for final convention photo opportunities on Thursday.

A colleague confirmed that Mary Cheney has formally postponed graduate school and will take a leading role in her father's campaign. "She is going to work as his personal aide -- be the body man, so to speak -- the person who stays with the candidate all the time," the source said.

The Bush campaign has mostly ducked questions about the role of Cheney and her girlfriend at the convention, deferring to the Cheney family's desire for "privacy." Although the Drudge Report has repeatedly quoted unnamed Bush sources as saying Cheney would be "embraced," and welcomed at the convention with her partner, no Bush source has yet confirmed that on the record.

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On Sunday, when ABC's Cokie Roberts started to ask the GOP vice presidential nominee's wife about having a daughter who has "declared she's openly gay," an irate Lynne Cheney shot back: "Mary has never declared such a thing." Cheney then blasted the media for its interest in the story, and chided Roberts: "I'm surprised, Cokie, that even you would want to bring it up on this program."

"I have two wonderful daughters. I love them very much. They are bright; they are hard-working; they are decent. And I simply am not going to talk about their personal lives," Cheney told Roberts.

Nationally, many gay leaders were alarmed by Lynne Cheney's remarks. The distaste implied by her use of the term "such a thing" to describe her daughter Mary's sexuality didn't come across as ringing acceptance. And some see it as an attempt to force Mary Cheney -- who has in fact publicly "declared" herself a lesbian, and has worked as the gay and lesbian corporate relations manager for Coors Brewing Co. -- back into the closet, at least on the campaign trail.

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Mary Cheney, 31, is not just any lesbian. Until May, she was the lesbian/gay corporate relations manager for the once-notoriously anti-gay Coors Brewing Co. In that role she became a key player in the pivotal "movement vs. market" debate raging inside the gay activist community, representing the point of view that corporate America is a better friend than government in advancing the cause of gay rights.

Gay leaders don't know what to expect from the surprise addition of a candidate with an openly gay daughter to the Republican ticket. While both Cheney and George W. Bush have been opposed to many gay rights measures, some advocates think the presence of Mary Cheney can't help but advance the cause of social acceptance for gays in both parties.

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Army captain Brett grumbles through the show along with his pack, a mix of military officers and civilians. He enjoys a good drag show, but nobody on this stage is ever going to challenge RuPaul. For a man born in Manila, the Philippines, raised in Seattle and stationed on three continents since joining the Army, Colorado Springs can feel a bit like Mayberry sometimes. But it isn't the unintentional comedy that bothers them -- Ginger's miniature-football breasts popping out of her lime-green Saran Wrap tube top actually is the highlight of the show -- it's the constant repetition of the same tired routines from the same dozen drag queens, nearly every Friday and Saturday night in the only gay bar in town.

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The small, conservative city at the base of Pikes Peak supports 80 evangelical Christian ministries and more than 20,000 GIs. It has emerged as a national center for Christian evangelism, particularly since Focus on the Family moved its massive operations into town. The sleepy city of 320,000 is surrounded by military installations: the Air Force Academy, the Army's 7th Infantry at Fort Carson, two Air Force bases, the U.S. Space Command and NORAD, a small underground city inside hollowed-out Cheyenne Mountain, which monitors North American skies for the start of World War III.

The Denver Post recently dubbed it the "Vatican of Evangelical Christianity." After Colorado's infamous anti-gay Amendment 2 campaign was mobilized from here in 1992, gay activists labeled the area Ground Zero.

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"It's missing a great deal," said Brian Rohrbough, whose son Dan was killed in the attack. By late Tuesday he had only read 20 percent of the report thoroughly, but had skipped around enough to observe an appalling "imbalance." Rohrbough has filed a lawsuit charging that authorities could have prevented the attack, and that his son was killed inadvertently by a law enforcement officer, not Harris or Klebold.

The bulk of the report is built around a detailed timeline beginning at 11:10 a.m., nine minutes before the first shot was fired. The introduction states: "This report explains how the crime was planned and committed." However, the planning is largely relegated to portions of a seven-page section titled "Glimpses of Klebold and Harris." Some related material appears in "Trench Coat Mafia and Associates," another six pages out of the several hundred in the report.

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The central focus of the package is a
minute-by-minute timeline describing the
events of April 20, 1999, in great
detail. It dramatically collapses the
amount of time the massacre took to
unfold, claiming gunmen Eric Harris and
Dylan Klebold only spent seven and a
half minutes in the library, killing 10
and wounding 12. "They carried more than
enough ammunition to kill all 56 people
in the library," it says, adding that
the 34 victims were killed or injured in
the first 16 minutes of the attack.
After the killing rampage, there were 33
minutes in which nobody was shot until
the gunmen killed themselves.

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Victims' families, outraged, accused the county of gross insensitivity and possibly even retaliation for the nine lawsuits filed last week on behalf of 15 families against Sheriff John Stone, the department and the county.

"I'd say that they're doing it as a spiteful slap in the face of the families," said attorney Barry Arrington. Last week he filed one of the most explosive lawsuits on behalf of five families who lost children in the attack. It charged that a friend of Eric Harris' father in the sheriff's department squelched a search warrant that could have averted the massacre; that students were needlessly trapped in the library for slaughter; and that Dan Rohrbough was killed by a sheriff's deputy rather than by Harris or Dylan Klebold.

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He returned to Colorado just a week before the anniversary to support a local gun-control initiative spawned in the wake of the tragedy -- to close the loophole on background checks for weapons purchased at gun shows -- and vocally supported by Tom Mauser, father of one of the 14 students killed.

The rally was attended by most prominent local Democrats, including Denver Mayor Wellington Webb. U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt also spoke briefly at the town meeting. But Colorado Republican leaders snubbed Clinton, publicly rebuking his visit and refusing to appear with him.

Republican Gov. Bill Owens, who supports the specific measure Clinton came to endorse, refused even to participate with him in a town-hall meeting staged later in the afternoon by MSNBC, and hosted by Tom Brokaw. He later agreed to join a second hour of the program, to be conducted in the evening, once Clinton had left town.

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The report, titled "Conduct Unbecoming," cited 968 incidents of harassment in the past year, ranging from taunts and physical assaults to the murder of Pfc. Barry Winchell at Fort Campbell, Ky., July 5. The figure represented a 142 percent increase over 1998, and stood five times the rate just two years ago.

The Pentagon responded cautiously, but on the same day the report was released, announced it was considering a policy change on one key issue -- whether gay service members can be guaranteed confidentiality when they confide their sexual orientation to a therapist. SLDN Executive Director Michelle Benecke hailed that as a tremendous first step.

"I'm concerned about the report," Clinton told reporters at a White House press conference. He had just learned of its existence and promised "appropriate action" after he and Defense Secretary William Cohen read it. He expressed hope that the branches' newly started training programs would improve that atmosphere. "If this report is accurate, I would expect to see a substantial improvement this year. Substantial."

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The bodies of Nicholas Kunselman, 15, and his girlfriend Stephanie Hart, 16, were discovered behind the counter of the Subway shop about 12:45 a.m. Kunselman worked at the shop, and Hart apparently arrived sometime after closing. Investigators said the two suffered "apparent gunshot wounds," but would not confirm the cause of death. They ruled out murder-suicide, and a recent employee of the store said robbery was an unlikely motive. The store is well known among students as a hangout for skateboarders, or "skate rats."

The Subway shop is about two blocks from Columbine High School, where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives April 20. It is also just a few hundred yards from Trinity Christian Center, the evangelical church where several of the nationally televised funerals were held.

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"Very optimistically, I'd say it's six to eight weeks away," said Jefferson County Sheriff's spokesman Steve Davis Wednesday. "Very optimistically," he added. "I'm thinking more."

For five solid months now, the sheriff's department has remained a "month or two" away from releasing its report on the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo., a shooting spree that left 15 dead, including the two teenage attackers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The report is intended to finally clear up the perpetual misconceptions about the April 20 massacre. Since mid-September, Davis has said that the investigation is virtually complete, with the top brass focused on how to present the 200 to 300 pages of material.

Officials at other local agencies are loath to go on the record criticizing the department, as they're counting on early warning from the department to prepare for both the community turmoil and the fresh media onslaught the report is expected to trigger.

But privately, grumbling over the perpetual delays has been mounting, and the sheriff's department has grown increasingly isolated, facing attack from all directions.

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The real surprise among the gratuitous fawning in Newsweek, on NPR, on the nightly newscasts and even in Salon was the claim from several of Schulz's peers that he revolutionized the comic form. While that may be true -- some of the earliest strips about gross hypocrisy and the cruelty of children are still striking -- he clearly ran out of material and never found the dignity to let it go.

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