UPDATE: The full transcript of Lane Hudson’s questions to Bill Clinton and the former President’s response is below, courtesy of Rex Wockner.

How’s that for a juxtaposition, lol. I’m about to hit the sack, but I wanted to give you an update on Netroots Nation tidbits…

Former President Bill Clinton spoke tonight (Autumn, Kate and I skipped it to grab a bite to eat with Joe Sudbay of Americablog and Jed Lewison of Daily Kos) and there was some news made and a bit of chaos. We went to the Warhol Museum; it is a must-see if you come to Pittsburgh. There were a ton of people there. Mike Rogers helped organize the event. I managed to touch base with fellow North Carolinian, friend of the Netroots and recent town hall teabagger “victim” Rep. Brad Miller to see how well he faired the crazies who made it hard for people who really care about health care without being distracted by these concerned plants citizens.

But the real news occurred back at the convention center; Autumn, Kate and I were dog tired after a long day with little sleep, so we were leaving the Warhol just as Mike Signorile, Lane Hudson and Donald Hitchcock were arriving. Apparently Lane caused a scene at the Clinton speech by standing up and asking him whether he supported repeal of DADT and DOMA. Surprisingly he was frank and said he did, only after he mistakenly thought Lane was a rabble rousing teabagger type (WTF — they aren’t on our side, lol).  Ah, Lane just sent me the link, so you can take a look (he’s still waiting to see if the part about DOMA will turn up on video):

Transcript:

Lane Hudson (screaming from the audience): Mr. President, will you call for a repeal of DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell right now? Please.

Bill Clinton: … You want to talk about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I’ll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn’t deliver me any support in the Congress and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military, and the media supported them. They raised all kinds of devilment. And all most of you did was to attack me instead of getting me some support in the Congress. Now that’s the truth.

Secondly — it’s true! You know, you may have noticed that presidents aren’t dictators. They voted — they were about to vote for the old policy by margins exceeding 80 percent in the House and exceeding 70 percent in the Senate. The gave test votes out there to send me a message that they were going to reverse any attempt I made by executive order to force them to accept gays in the military. And let me remind you that the public opinion now is more strongly in our favor than it was 16 years ago, and I have continued supporting it. That John Shalikashvili, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under me, was against Don’t Ask — was against letting gays serve — is now in favor of it. This is a different world. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

Let me also say something that never got sufficient publicity at the time: When General Colin Powell came up with this Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, it was defined while he was chairman much differently than it was implemented. He said: ‘If you will accept this, here’s what we’ll do. We will not pursue anyone. Any military members out of uniform will be free to march in gay rights parades, go to gay bars, go to political meetings. Whatever mailings they get, whatever they do in their private lives, none of this will be a basis for dismissal.’ It all turned out to be a fraud because of the enormous reaction against it among the middle-level officers and down after it was promulgated and Colin was gone. So nobody regrets how this was implemented any more than I do. But the Congress also put that into law by a veto-proof majority, and many of your friends voted for that, believing the explanation about how it would be eliminated. So, I hated what happened. I regret it. But I didn’t have, I didn’t think at the time, any choice if I wanted any progress to be made at all. Look, I think it’s ridiculous. Can you believe they spent — whatever they spent — $150,000 to get rid of a valued Arabic speaker recently?

And, you know, the thing that changed me forever on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was when I learned that 130 gay service people were allowed to serve and risk their lives in the first Gulf War, and all their commanders knew they were gay; they let them go out there and risk their lives because they needed them, and then as soon as the first Gulf War was over, they kicked them out. That’s all I needed to know, that’s all anybody needs to know, to know that this policy should be changed.

Now, while we’re at it, let me just say one thing about DOMA, since you — the reason I signed DOMA was — and I said when I signed it — that I thought the question of whether gays should marry should be left up to states and to religious organizations, and if any church or other religious body wanted to recognize gay marriage, they ought to. We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress, to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states. And if you look at the 11 referenda much later — in 2004, in the election — which the Republicans put on the ballot to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I think it’s obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the Republican Congress from presenting that. The President doesn’t even get to veto that. The Congress can refer constitutional amendments to the states. I didn’t like signing DOMA and I certainly didn’t like the constraints that were put on benefits, and I’ve done everything I could — and I am proud to say that the State Department was the first federal department to restore benefits to gay partners in the Obama administration, and I think we are going forward in the right direction now for federal employees. …

But, actually, all these things illustrate the point I’m trying to make. America has rapidly moved to a different place on a lot of these issues, and so what we have to decide is what we are going to do about it. Right now, the Republicans are sitting around rooting for the president to fail, as nearly as I can see.

Here’s how the NYT saw it:

At times fiery with his familiar finger-pointing repeatedly jabbing the air, former President Bill Clinton implored an audience of bloggers and activists tonight not to lose out on a moment that he said he had worked all his life for.

It was as though this was his time, too, not just that of President Obama. The former president revisited several pieces of his legacy, drawing comparisons between his battle for health care overhaul to the fight occurring now and even angrily defending the compromise that became “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” for the military when a protester in the audience shouted at him. He even drew on Americorps and student loans to bridge the time between his administration and that of Mr. Obama.

***

But backing up a bit, before Clinton spoke there was a cocktail party in the convention center in what can only be described as a noise-intensive “radio row.” That’s where Ron Reagan was broadcasting his Air America show. Megan Carpentier, one of the behind-the-scenes people at Air America came up to me during an earlier panel and asked if I do a segment with Ron Reagan about LGBT issues later in the day. Of course I was surprised that I was a first pick for this, considering the many great peeps in attendance. Anyway, I said sure, and showed up early since it was hard to find the radio row.

So I’m standing around chatting and all of a sudden his producer comes up and says that I was going to go on right now because the slotted guest was late. YIPES. So before I knew it, I was in the hot seat with the headphones on and doing the interview with Ron, who is a really nice guy who works well in this challenging environment with a wide variety of guests who are here at Netroots Nation.

It was a fun interview (radio is infinitely easier than doing TV) we talked about Prop 8 repeal, the Maine ballot initiative, allly support, and minority outreach.

We fit a lot into about 10 minutes. His folks said they’d get me the audio soon, so I’ll be able to share it with you.