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Vice President Mike Pence discussing healthcare and jobs in Louisiana today KLFY While in the bayou state, he will discuss healthcare and jobs with local business leaders. The Vice President plans to make his remarks at Cajun Industries, L.L.C. in Port Allen later this afternoon. Pence will be joined by Centers for Medicare and ...

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Vice President Mike Pence discussing healthcare and jobs in Louisiana today - KLFY

Pence was delivering the commencement speech after receiving an honorary degree from the Catholic university, located in his home state of Indiana.

Videos showed some students standing as Pence took the podium, then walking out of the ceremony and gathering outside Notre Dame Stadium, where they held a short alternative "graduation ceremony."

Introducing Pence, University President Rev. John I. Jenkins said "political leaders are necessary for society, and we must strive with them to serve the common good."

Referring to "a fractured nation, with deep divisions and raw political feelings," Jenkins said injustice must be challenged; "But we must also listen to those who disagree, care for the bonds that join us together and find ways to build a society where all can flourish -- even the people who don't look like us, think like us, or vote with us."

Pence told the assembled graduates that Notre Dame was a "vanguard of freedom of expression and the free exchange of ideas."

"While this institution has maintained an atmosphere of civility and open debate, far too many campuses across America have become characterized by speech codes, safe spaces, tone policing, administration-sanctioned political correctness -- all of which amounts to the suppression of free speech," Pence said. "These practices are destructive of learning and the pursuit of knowledge."

He tweeted that he had been honored to speak at the ceremony.

Speaking on Sunday ahead of his graduation, Bryan Ricketts told CNN he would be walking out after learning solidarity during his time at Notre Dame.

Fellow protester Jenn Cha said it there needed to be space for dialogue between people of different beliefs. "However, it is an egregious insult to invite Pence to speak at the celebration of the accomplishments of university graduates, many of whom are LGBTQ, first-generation, low-income, and people of color he has actively supported legislation against," she said.

Liz Hynes said that Pence represented the kind of intolerance Notre Dame had sought to eliminate. "His anti-LGBT, anti-refugee, and anti-health care policies have harmed people in ways for which no religious justification can be made."

Pence is the first vice president to deliver a commencement speech at Notre Dame, according to the university.

Six presidents from both sides of the aisle have given commencement speeches at Notre Dame, including Barack Obama in 2009 and George W. Bush in 2001.

Pence received his bachelor's degree from Indiana's Hanover College and attended Indiana University School of Law.

Read more from the original source:
Some Notre Dame graduates walk out over VP Mike Pence speech - CNN

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Blood in the Water New York Times Did Vice President Mike Pence not know that Flynn was under investigation by the F.B.I. for lobbying on behalf of Turkey until March, upon first hearing the news? How can that be when, as The New York Times reported last week, Flynn told President ... and more »

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Blood in the Water - New York Times

Some Notre Dame students were disappointed when, after working hard for four years, they learned they were about to be gifted with Vice President Mike Pence as their commencement speaker. USA Today reported that When Notre Dame announced that Pence would be the 2017 graduation speaker in March, the student organization WeStaNDFor began brainstorming ways to take a stand. Weeks ago, these students announced that they would stage a walkout at graduation in protest.

At the ceremony on Sunday, Pence started his speech, which was heavy on thoughts about free expression:

Notre Dame is a campus where deliberation is welcomed, where opposing views are debated, and where every speaker, no matter how unpopular or unfashionable, is afforded the right to air their views in the open for all to hear.

Soon after Pence started speaking, about 100 students, in video that popped up on several outlets over the weekend, calmly walked straight out of the ceremony along with their parents. Since college graduation is one of those milestone moments of life, you have to hand it to these grads to give that up in favor of making a significant and well-publicized protest.

Some were not in favor of the protest at the predominantly Catholic university, however. One parent told USA Today, We think its disrespectful. Its so unnecessary. This is a good man who is coming here for graduation. I think better of Notre Dame students that theyd do this kind of thing. Former student body president Bryan Ricketts, on the other hand, told The Indianapolis Star that it was a wonderful show of solidarity.

These Notre Dame students may have felt even more impassioned about speaking up since Notre Dame is located in South Bend, Indiana, the state where Pence was governor for four years. Organizer April Lidinsky of Planned Parenthood and the Indiana Reproduction Justice Coalition told USA Today: We are not protesting their choice of a commencement speaker. We are unwelcoming Mike Pence back to Indiana with the idea that nobody knows Pences record as well as Hoosiers do.

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Notre Dame students walk out on Mike Pence's commencement speech - A.V. Club

As Democrats focus more and more on the possibility that President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses, many are also asking whether they should place the spotlight on Vice President Mike Pence. After all, Pence has so far joined the rest of the Trump administration in defending the president despite the numerous scandals that swirl around him and continue to get worse. Wouldnt that undermine his credibility if Trump was forced to resign in disgrace and Pence became the 46th president of the United States?

I am reminded of an anecdote by the only other vice president to find himself in this position, Gerald Ford.

Like Pence, Ford was heavily criticized for his public defenses of President Richard Nixon at a time when the walls of the Watergate scandal were starting to close in. Yet when Ford slipped up and told a reporter that he believed Nixon would have to resign but he didnt want anyone thinking he (Ford) had contributed to that resignation, he immediately panicked and realized that he had to keep a lid on his moment of unintentional candor.

This is as good a place as any to examine the similarities and differencesbetween Ford and Pence. Both men are Midwesterners (Ford from Michigan, Pence from Indiana) with extensive political experience and a reputation for being cool-headed and affable. Each one is definitely establishment in terms of their standing within the institutional Republican Party itself, and bothhave avoided developing too many deep personal enmities despite their extensive political careers.

On the other hand, Ford was an ideological moderate (arguably the last GOP president deserving of the term), while Pencewas the most right-wing vice presidential nominee in 40years when Trump picked him. Ford had a squeaky clean reputation, whilePence has a major corruption scandal in his own past and owes his very selection as Trumps vice president to the intervention of former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who has since been disgraced (Ford didnt even become Nixons vice president until Nixons initial vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned).

All of this means that, while Ford was well-poised to heal the nation upon inheriting power in 1974 (and his approval ratings were quite high until his controversial decision to pardon Nixon), Pence would likely face more of an uphill battle.

While I have no idea whether Pence, like Ford, believes that his bossis doomed, I suspect that he shares Fords trepidation about being perceived as adding fuel to the fire of the presidents scandals. The reason is obvious: Hed be the major beneficiary if Trump left the Oval Office.

Is Pence in the right for doing this? Maybe.

While its valuable to not be viewed as a Machiavellian schemer, Pence risks swinging too far in the other direction and being perceived as part of the same set of problems that are being created by Trump and Trumpism. If Trumpneeds to resign, Americans will have to turn to Pence to restore faith in the American government. That will not be possible if Pence is viewed as an extension of the corruption that took down Trump, rather than an antidote to it.

When it comes to avoiding that outcome, Pence may be running out of time. Although he has not been personally implicated in any of Trumps scandals, a point is being reached in which continuing to lie on behalf of this president will seem not only willfully obtuse, but downright complicit. One of the reasons Ford was such a great president (an opinion that many historians do not share) is that he was able to set a good example with his personal character. Trump, by contrast, is a president whose personal character is appalling, regardless of whether one believes he engaged in criminal activity you dont have to think he committed sexual assault to be disgusted by his willingness to brag about it, or to think he means what he tweets to think his incessant online sniping is beneath the dignity of his office.

The president is supposed to do more than craft policy. He or she is also supposed to be a role model, someone that we can say embodies the basic decency that we expect from every American citizen. Ford had that quality, even when he was trying to publicly avoid believing the worst about Nixon.

If Pence has that same characteristic, he needs to start showing it and soon.

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What Gerald Ford had that Mike Pence doesn't - Salon