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I think the answer is pretty clear, based on what we’ve seen over the last few days. This administration is running down the clock. Here is a report from Mark Matthews of ABC-KGO in San Francisco.
President Obama has promised to end the policy that forbids gays and lesbians from openly serving in the military, but his justice department is defending it.
Tony West is head of the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice. West is a former San Francisco lawyer — Kamala Harris’ brother in law — and it’s his office that is now defending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and using outdated language to do it.
…On Wednesday, the Justice Department said it is obligated to defend existing law. DOJ spokesperson Tracy Schmaler told ABC7, “The Department does not pick and choose which federal laws it will defend based on any one Administration’s policy preferences.”
…ABC7 asked Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-California, if she felt the Justice Department was obligated to vigorously defend “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“Well, we want to just change the policy. Let’s just leap frog over that and change the policy. It’s a policy that has no place in our society, if we are truly against discrimination,” said Pelosi.
There is legislation in the House to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” but when it will be called for a vote, no one knows.
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DADTIf the politicos are trying to gain time/waste time, they are doing a good job of it. This push me-pull you/get away closer craziness is so borderline personality disorder. If nothing else, I never thought I would be agreeing with the Log Cabin Repubs on anything. I must say I had a little throw up in my mouth while listening to the LCR rep. Talk about a schizophrenic group!
Another day, Another “Which Obama to believe story?”
Is it the fierce advocate for gay rights, or the fierce advocate for discriminatory policies?
Is the one who stumps at our fundraisers? Or the one who keeps hiring homophobic preachers?
If Pelosi wants to change itWhy isn’t she a co-sponsor of the House bill that does just that?
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…
Rememberhe told us we’re going to be so PLEASED with what he does for the gay community after he leaves office! Aren’t you all just shaking with excitement? Can’t you just feel change in the air?
Fuck off, Obama and shut the hell up until you are signing the fucking repeal papers.
I noticed this in the Health Care debate too…and it’s very jarring.
And he did it in the runup to his decision on Afghanistan, too.
Say what you will about Bush, you very rarely heard many different viewpoints. Bush and the Republicans pretty much stayed on message (until the post-2006 era)
Obama has this very, very unnerving tendency to allow all sorts of voices say all sorts of things in the public sphere; even within his own Party.
It’s very different from the message control of the Obama campaign. I can’t think of the last President that really did something like this.
This approach (if it’s an approach and a deliberate strategy) has it’s virtues and drawbacks.
My problem with the way the Obama Administration does this is that he lets the voices air out for waaaaaaaaaay too long.
This is OLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDD news….
…It should have been everyone’s headline at least as far back as the general election campaign when Obama started backtracking, when he began to put more and more emphasis on “doing what’s right for the military.”
Seriously, how many times is this moral equivalent of a compulsive wife beater going to have to beat us up, then tell us he really loves us, before we all get that LGBT rights are merely a political chess piece for him?
Until he’s convinced he won’t lose a single vote by fighting for us, NOTHING will change.
A Republican is a rightwing scoundrel with a christer theocrat attached at the hip. A Democrat is a Republican in drag. Could it be that Obama and his War Department changed their collective mind about needing LGBT cannon fodder? Did it dawn on them that working class GLBT folks aren’t particularly suicidal and won’t be enlisting in waves to die for Texaco in Obama’s wars and occupations? Did they see the light of the jebuz jumpers and figure out, from their bigoted perspective, that adding a few dozen careerist officer types isn’t worth pissing off the christer officer corps.
In their remarks Obama’s DoJ raised the same sort hateful, bigoted remarks as it did on several occasions defending the other half of Clintons legacy of bigoted laws, DOMA. Will Obots and Democratic shills like ish and scifi geek try to blame that on mormon lawyers instead of bad leaders in the WH?
The Obama Administration seems not to understand that there’s been a sea change in thinking by voters. It’s no longer possible for Democrats to betray constituencies and at the next election tell we have to support them because the Republicans are worse. They’re not even sort of worse, in spite of the rabid histrionics of shills come election time. They’re the same.
Will DADT stay on the books? Will ENDA pass? Will we ever be able to get married? Will we even get invited to the WH Easter Egg hunt? Stay tuned for the next episode of “As the Stomach Turns”.
With Democrats like the Clintons and Obama who needs Republicans.
Heck yes he is backtracking along with the Military & the DNChttp://www.reuters.com/article…
Secretary of the Army John McHugh, the Army’s top civilian, is already backstroking like an Olympian only a day after his assertion that the three soldiers he specifically “asked” to “tell” about their experience in the Army under dadt, where considered under a moratorium from discharge as far as he was concerned. While many people were asking the normal question about who the soldiers might be and/or whether the Secretary of the Army has an obligation to discipline them, some of the less obvious questions seemed to go missing from the interview or any subsequent articles. For example, if those opposing dadt repeal are so positive that it is fair and necessary to maintain unit cohesion and good order and discipline in the military, why are there no repercussion for officers and enlisted men who do inquire, investigate, or otherwise ”ask” even when no one has told? After all, there have been a great deal of third party outings or investigations launched based on suspicions, yet not one reprimand or disciplinary action in the past eighteen years seems to reflect any overzealous homophobic activity that may have cost gay military personnel discharged under dadt their careers.
Like many other bigoted policies dadt reflects a one-sided and heavy handed attempt to canonize discrimination and crucify equality as well as deny real LGBT Americans an opportunity that Heterosexual Americans can fully take for granted. Now the Military, while pretending to support the policy of the Commander and Chief and the current Whitehouse Administration, even after 18 years of witch hunts under the dadt policy, wants to eschew following orders in the face of dismantling the law while bidding time taking opinion polls as if the repeal of dadt was nothing more than a popularity contest. In fact, what organization takes 18 years before even starting a survey on the effectiveness of a personnel policy that consumes the careers of hundreds of soldiers and millions of dollars each year.
Nevertheless, has the window of opportunity closes for the best chance to repeal dadt this year slips away, Congressmen and Senators who support repeal seem to continue to find obstacles placed in their way from a Democratic leadership that is supportive in word only from Capitol Hill all the way to the back offices of the Whitehouse. The cover up to table dadt repeal is more evident in the inaction of the President and Congress than it is in any real action they have talked about. President Obama’s declaration of dadt repeal by the end of the year, during his first State of the Union speech not with standing, The chances of dadt repeal seems to be closer to never going to happen rather than happening in the year 2010.