Subscribe to Breaking NewsWithers: Obama working on DADT?
In what seems to be a PR move to augment his speech on Saturday, the White House told The Advocate the Obama administration is in talks with Sen. Joseph Lieberman to come up with ways to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Lieberman, the Connecticut independent, is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“On ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ this administration is talking directly to the Hill — we are in direct discussions with Senator Lieberman,” said John Berry, the director of the Office of Personnel Management.
When President Obama spoke to the HRC this past Saturday (I’m still confused why the crowd lost its mind), he was pretty explicit about putting DADT in the dustbin of history. That’s been said many a time before, so my doubt meter is still high. However, you have to give the White House props for turning to Lieberman. He is no Obama fan and would have been happier if his friend, Sen. John McCain, was Commander-in-Chief. Republicans are madly in love with the Nutmeg State senator (every time Fox’s Sean Hannity mentions the guy’s name his eyes go wide with flaming love), and the chance of bipartisan support increases with Lieberman as the point person. Also, as reported by the senator’s spokesperson, Lieberman opposes the policy.
“Senator Lieberman has had discussions with representatives of the Administration and others on the best way to reverse this policy, which he has opposed since it was first proposed in 1993,” said Marshall Wittmann, Lieberman’s press secretary.
This glimmer of news is important but until DADT is no more, let there be no rest. So send a letter or two to your representatives.
PS: If you are of the praying kind, please send them to Jack Price and his family. Another victim of anti-gay violence.
Obama has a great PR machine on DADT. Keep the gays happy by making it appear that Obama is working for the repeal. But I am not happy. When Obama wants any bill on his desk, he gets it. Trillion for the Banks? Right away. Complex re-organization of the health care economy? On your desk. But what is the problem with a simple repeal of this policy? All it means is the the discharge proceeding stop. Some military officer gets a memo: Hey, Officer John, stop that discharge paperwork. Where is the work? There is no work. The democrats have ABC 123 priorities, and gays just the lowest on the list because of fear of loss in the midterms and Obama’s re-election. How did gays get so low on the priority list for a commander in chief needing vets to fight two wars? Let’s throw Prince Obama another feast, with standing ovations and toasts, and ask him why he is complicit in dumping loyal gay soldiers on the curb every month.
Gee, Brian O’Reilly, it seems to me like getting healthcare reform on his desk has been a real problem. Perhaps another example of the instant gratification you allege he has received in the less than nine months he has been in office would be helpful.
Health care should take a long time. It is new legislation changing a big chunk of the economy. But what effort is required to take a couple of discredited, senseless laws off the books? Where is the work in that? And he has been in office for a year, and a year for now, if the republican party takes over the senate, all hope of repealing DADT and DOMA will be gone. At that time, we will be asking why the Democratic Party could not deliver two simple repeals in the two years they has a supermajority. How did we get so low on the to do list? I’ll tell you how. Extreme approval by groups like the HRC, and silence from the gay elites in Washington and New York.
What I don’t get is the office of President is Commander in Chief of the military. Why won’t he just write an order to end this. Congress’ only involvement in the military is it controls the money.
bob – yes, he could issue a “stop loss” order that might hold up…during his term. And his successor could countermand it in 2013 or 2017. DADT is a law passed by Congress and signed by Clinton. To repeal it requires a law being passed. While I, too, would like to see it ended yesterday I suspect that if he issued the stop-loss order it would take any pressure off of congress to do anything. A sad fact of life is that it is always harder to undo a bad law than it was to pass it in the first place.
Agreed. Doesn’t his Oath and the traditions of the Office of President require:
1. Protect the United States from all ememies, foreign or domestic.
— Don’t we need the gay vets to do that? Many of these soldiers have developed skills during their tenure. You dump them? Does that not hurt security?
2. Uphold the Constitution.
— Doesn’t the constitution require equal protection of the law? Doesn’t permitting discharges under is watch violate his Oath of Office?
3. Isn’t the President supposed to honor veterans and soldiers, living and dead?
— Even though the previous presidents have done it too, isn’t Obama disgracing veterans and soldiers, and all they have died for, by dumping them for an irrelevant personal characteristic?
Of all the gay issues, THIS one seems to me to be exactly smack dab in the middle of Obama’s full plate. We’re still entrenched in two wars, where our military is outnumbered by the mercenary troops like Black Water we are spending hundreds of millions on because our troops are spread so thin.
Keeping our troops in is not only a national security issue, but a financial one in these hard economic times. How can this NOT be a top priority issue?