Congressional negotiators and White House officials are moving forward with plans to add the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to the upcoming defense authorization bill, Democratic sources tell the Huffington Post.
In Congress, members are being whipped to ensure that the votes will be there for passage, should the legislation be placed in the bill. At this juncture, aides say, the prospects look good. Meanwhile, a source close to the White House says the president has instructed the Defense Department that he believes the repeal of DADT should be placed in the authorization bill.
Personally, I blame Obama for not writing the legislation earlier. It could have easily been included in other more minor legislation, like the stimulus or HCR.
Mike P
“But, but but…”
Wouldn’t it be great if Boies/Olsen win their case against Prop 8 and DADT goes by the wayside this year?
Comrade Luke, Taking A Break
John Cole, Taking A Break
Zam
Sweet, can’t wait to hear why the republicans feel that letting gays be open in the military is worse than not funding defense.
cleek
i smell the approach of the “line item veto” monster!
also, take yr fecking break!
Zifnab
Hey, you know what? All that whining about Obama not caring about gay people is going to go out like dust in the wind if this passes. He’ll be hailed as a hero to the gay community for a generation. People will look back at the indignant anger and laugh, because of course he was going to get it passed.
He’s the Magical Unity Pony, you silly heads.
JMY
Clearly, Kucinich, or HRC would have done this already.
demkat620
You don’t understand John, this never would have happened without the Done Ask, Don’t Give campaign.
John Aravosis made Obama cry.
General Winfield Stuck
Victory will not end this war.
slag
Oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please make this happen! Just get this goddamn monkey off our backs Congress! We’ll pay you extra in sweet nothings.
robertdsc
Tunch needs to take your keyboard away.
Good on progress. Here’s hoping for passage.
wiley
DADT allowed gays to serve with the caveat that they could not reveal that they were gay. Wouldn’t simply repealing DADT make it completely unlawful for gays to serve in the military?
Alex S.
Hmm, I suggest you start watching the first 5 seasons of “Lost” and try to figure out how it will end. That should take about a week.
Ailuridae
I still can’t decide if he’s Bush-with-a-tan or Bush-Lite?
Someone in the left blogosphere suggested this was by far the smartest course to do this under last year around inauguration but I honestly can’t remember who it was? Regardless, its good news.
JenJen
God, I love this place.
demkat620
@cleek: Yeah really where the hell is DougJ to take this situation in hand? Did he freeze to death in Rochester?
Intervention! Intervention!
AnotherBruce
John’s been consistently wrong since January 12th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
SiubhanDuinne
What’s this, like the fourth or fifth thread you’ve put up since announcing your Galtitude? Wish I had taken the over-under on that $20 bet that was posted a few threads back.
robertdsc
He said he was going to San Francisco this week, I believe.
AhabTRuler
Jesus Fucking Christ on a DDX, Cole, you are the worst fucking quitter I have ever known. Take some lessons form Palin, FFS.
SiubhanDuinne
@AnotherBruce:
Win!
John O
John, let it go.
I’m one of those Z-list bloggers who cannot for the life of me understand how you pros wade into the sh*t as often as you do and not lose your mind.
Just reading blogs from smart people makes me depressed, and I’ve taken several days off myself from doing it, not to mention successfully disassociating from gasbag talk shows completely since mid ’09.
Go. Cuddle the dog. Protect yourself from Tunch. Have some fun.
As many have said, it will all be here when you get back.
Bless you for hanging in there as long as you have.
Colette
I will never (never, I tells ya!) be satisfied until I see Obama’s presidency shipwrecked on the shoals of controversy while attempting to address our least life-threatening crises first. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a Democratic president who learns from the mistakes of his predecessors. Also.
Roger Moore
I smell a new tag.
Shade Tail
OK, now I understand. Mr. Cole has some weird relativistic power to squeeze five days of break-time into a couple hours. Impressive!
Anyway, we all know how the GOP and Faux “News” will try to spin this one. Democrats are playing games with the troops by tying their vital funding to “teh gey”.
Zifnab
@AhabTRuler: Lulz
JMY
So what’s it gonna be for Republicans?
Let the gays serve openly or don’t fund the troops?
If they don’t fund the troops then obviously they hate America.
demkat620
@robertdsc: Oh no, he’s on his own?
We’ll never survive!!!!
JenJen
@Roger Moore: Terrific suggestion.
Lev
But John, the left never hated the stuff Obama was actually supporting. They just didn’t like that he didn’t go Grayson all over Lieberman’s ass. And it’s a damn good thing he didn’t, since it looks like Lieberman really shit in his own bed this time. Nelson too, probably.
Yeah, all in all, things have gotten profoundly silly. Obama’s PR shop could use a kick in the pants, but I don’t think anyone has really figured out that we actually have a president that cares about substance and mostly ignores style.
Jim
@JenJen:
Thirded. Absolutely.
soonergrunt
@JMY: It isn’t just “don’t fund the troops, it’s allow the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines to cease to exist as legal entities.
arguingwithsignposts
@AhabTRuler:
The first step is to admit you have a problem …
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Zifnab:
Will Obama be remembered as the first gay President?
AhabTRuler
No, silly, that was Nixon. Why d’ya think he and Kissinger were so close.
Zifnab
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Only if the next Democratic President is Perez Hilton, just to put the exclamation point on how stupid comments like that are.
AhabTRuler
Yeah, ’cause there’s no gay, y’know, politicians, now are there?
Napolitano would be a twofer, or so I am led to believe.
geg6
This? Will convince me to forgive a lot of the shit our Dem Congress has been pulling on HCR. Seriously, this would signal one of those great, historical civil rights moments, not at all unlike Truman de-segregating the military. This makes me very, very happy.
Gwangung
Idon’t think it would hurt to contact your Congress critter to urge passage. Keep the eye on the ball and don’t take success for granted.
James K. Polk, Esq.
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: Well, if Jeff Gannon had anything to say, GW Jr. would be the first gay president.
If he is allowed to talk with his mouth full, that is.
maus
@Zam:
They are absolutely against funding defense when politically expedient. They’ve argued with Obama’s defense-related decisions before, it wouldn’t be a huge break for them to throw tantrums over DADT at the expense of this legislation.
mcc
I’m glad to see this going forward. I hope the DADT push gets some real time in the SOTU speech next month.
Personally what is a big deal to me is ENDA. This was supposed to go into committee markup in the House at the end of November but was delayed until “February”. If the House is taking that long that seems to make the hypothetical Senate schedule look scary. I wish there was some way to convince Congress to pass ENDA as part of the jobs bill once that reaches the Senate.
meh
nice to see JC reads my emails to him – I staggered the DADT in with the goat-fucking coulterporn I normally send him – me FTW
chopper
cole, as a parent of a 1-year-old, let me tell you that what you’re doing is quite similar to what i do when i ‘take a break’.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Added bonus: Watching the fReichtards explain why GLBs openly serving is a bigger threat than terrists.
Who’s got the popcorn?
@Gwangung: This! Also!
Splitting Image
Just words.
John really has become an O-bot.
tammanycall
@AhabTRuler:
.
MY EYES!!!
Ranger 3
Oh Noes! I no can haz gay abortion freakouts?
Cat
Kudos for the Administration and Congress for repealing DADT.
It would be nice if some of you guys could be less of asses about it though.
SenyorDave
Have they consulted with President McCain on this?
Michael D.
@Cat: No kidding. Especially our less than gracious host…
You can be a really petty person sometimes. Someone disagrees with John Cole on tactics and John Cole has to keep it up by spewing this childish dreck. But I guess you’ve only recently come around to even giving a crap about this issue in the grand scheme of things, and are only just getting used to the fact that there are people affected by this who’ve had to deal with it all their fucking lives and have never been able to serve openly in the military, let alone live open lives.
But go ahead and take your little jabs. It makes you look real mature. After all, DADT and other anti-gay laws and the mean-spiritedness behind them are a new thing right. As a gay person, I’ve only had to deal with this crap for 2-3 years right? And me expecting Obama (or Democrats in general) to do anything about is awful fucking demanding, because Democrats have only ever held office and ran the place this one time ever.
I mean, Democrats have only been promising us shit for the past year or two, right? It’s not like we can expect them to deliver on promises this quickly when they’ve only been making them to us for a couple years. And really, gay people have only been voting en masse for Democrats for a year or two. And they’ve only been coming to HRC dinners promising us everything in return for multiple millions of our dollars since, I think, 2008.
BTW, this will fail. And it will fail because it’ll never get the votes in the Senate (I believe it has to go through the Senate, correct?)
And why do things fail in the Senate that pass in the House? Because people like YOU (and by “you” I mean all of you) sit on blogs all day and bitch and moan about how crappy these gutless, spineless politicians are and then go out and vote for the exact same fucking ones every time.
And then you come back to the blogs and bitch and moan at people who expect anything out of them when they make very explicit promises.
It’s a good thing I have a person like John Cole to read the gay news and tell me how unreasonable I am on occasion.
Folderol and Ephemera
@Michael D.: You are insufferable, and hardly (hardly!) the only LGBT person who frequents this joint.
Michael D.
@Folderol and Ephemera: Ooooooohhh… good comeback. Never once said I was.
General Winfield Stuck
@Michael D.: Someone sounds a lot homesick.
Michael D.
@General Winfield Stuck: Nah, I like the weather here. Well, not now, but usually.
And give me DADT and DOMA any day over my mother.
Joey Maloney
Personally, I blame Michael D. for not recognizing sarcasm when he reads it.
joe from Lowell
I found the headline confusing.
It should have said, “House Including DATA Repeal in Defense Authorization.”
But that’s awesome.
Cassidy
@Michael D.: Stop being such a queen. Jeebus.
Cassidy
Shorter Micheal D: WE’RE THE ONLY IMPORTANT ONES! GAY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN AROUND LONGER THAN POOR PEOPLE AND PEOPLE WITH NO HEALTHCARE! WE’RE MORE IMPORTANT! HOW DARE YOU NOT TREAT US AS SPECIAL!
Chuck Butcher
@Cassidy:
That’s a pretty bad example to use in this case, since if they do with DADT what they’ve managed to do with poverty and health care reform…
Right now this is speculation about the inclusion in the bill. speculation isn’t quite the same thing as doing or done. It is something more than nothing which – well shit, is something more than nothing.
Nicole
Michael D, I’m sorry you’re so frustrated. But, to borrow from a civil rights leader who didn’t live to see many of the things he started come to fruition, “the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.”
It sucks that things that should be so obvious take time, but they do. When was Seneca Falls, and when did the 19th Amendment pass? That was what, 70 years of active campaigning. Seventy years of suffrage being some women’s life work. And a lot of them, after spending their entire lives working for it, still didn’t make it to 1920 to see it passed. (Susan B, I’m looking at you)
Forty years ago being gay was still considered a psychological disorder by the APA. So much progress has been made since then. But a lot of progress depends on some very prejudiced old people dying off, and there’s really no way to speed that up. Not legally. Well, other than continuing to not reform health care.
asiangrrlMN
@Chuck Butcher: Agreed. And, I gotta agree with the gist of Michael D.’s comments if not the tenor. I understand these things take time, but can those who are not affected by these issues please not be so goddamn patronizing about it? Can one of them (besides Nicole and Chuck Butcher) say, “It goddamn sucks that these things take so long. It really does.” I am more disturbed by the vitriol from those who purportedly support the repeal of DADT, the passage of ENDA and (sigh) gay marriage equality towards those of us who are frustrated at how often these issues get shafted than at the slow slow slow workings of Congress to get it done.
@Gwangung: Agreed. Will do.
Neil H
No doubt the intentions are good. I can see the bill passing the House with the provision in it.
If it passes through the Senate as well I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but I fully expect it to get stripped out as the Senate Democrats cravenly cave, in a futile effort not to get painted by Republicans as in thrall to the Gay Agenda[tm].
It would be really nice to be proven wrong about this.
slightly_peeved
Didn’t you accuse a commenter of faking depression to get attention in one of the last big discussions of this issue?
It does goddamn suck. Most of the arguments about it here, like healthcare, are about the best strategy for speeding up change as opposed to whether change should occur. People stand in different spots, but they face in a pretty similar direction.
SeanH
Absolutely. I mean, sure at any point since being inaugurated he could have simply used his authority as CIC to cite national security needs in an executive order and halt the separation of any service members under DADT. And there was nothing forcing his administration to peddle recycled, Bush-admin, homophobic talking points in court to defend DOMA last summer. And no reason the Obama admin just a few weeks ago had to to defy a 9th circuit court order to provide federal benefits to same-sex couples either.
But anyway, point is it’s totally unreasonable for the LGBT community to expect Obama to have done anything already. I mean, it’s not like he’s some kind of chief executive with a great deal of control over how the executive branch executes laws or anything, right? Queers just need to quit throwing hissy fits and wait their turn. Oh, and donate big for 2010 and 2012, too because Obama and congressional Dems will get around to caring about their rights if they just be patient, honest.
moja31
@Zifnab:
if it passes, it will obviously have happened in spite of the white house. if something good doesn’t pass it’s his fault, if it does pass he had nothing to do with it, and vice versa for bad legislation. isn’t that how it works?
Dayv
“In Congress, members are being whipped…”
Dammit, I love our political process.