Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Alcee Hastings (D-FL) drawing heat from the White House
DailyBuzz
Member Posts: 2,306
Alcee Hastings added an amendment to a DoD appropriations bill that would stop funding the investigations and dismissal of openly gay military members in accordance with the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. It would appear that this amendment wasn't welcomed by the administration, and we should all be questioning why. Obama campaigned to repeal this policy and his administration should be on-board with that priority. This amendment would have curbed (if not eliminated) the investigations and discharges of openly gay service men and women. Perhaps a small step compared to total repeal, but any measure of progress is still progress.
I understand that Obama has a full plate, which only makes this action more perplexing. These issues that some in Congress are attempting to shoulder for him SHOULD NOT be undermined by his administration.
“I introduced an amendment to H.R. 3326, now withdrawn, prohibiting the use of funds in this bill to investigate or discharge our dedicated service men and women on the grounds of ‘telling’ their sexual orientation. The Policy Concerning Homosexuality in the Armed Forces – commonly called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ – provides that a service member can be separated from the Armed Forces for stating that he or she is a homosexual or bisexual. Due to pressure from some of my Congressional colleagues and from the White House, I have withdrawn my amendment. I would, however, like to note that it is most unfortunate that we are not addressing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at this time. We should not be appropriating funds to enable qualified service members to be booted out just because they are honest about whom they are.
Comments
The first question on Overtime tonight was "Why do we still have the DADT policy". The panel jabberjawed a bit, but nobody even brought up the Alcee Hastings incident, including Rachel Maddow (who I believe is gay, right?).
With the nation firmly backing the repeal of this policy, why does everyone treat it with kid gloves?
www.gallup.com/poll/120764/
I heard a theory that, because Obama wants so desperately to improve relations with Islamic nations (nations which are notorious for persecuting homosexuals), he doesn't want to appear to be too "pro-gay" on his domestic agenda. Because he wanted the support of gay-rights groups during the campaign, however, he promised them much. But now that he's president, he's not addressing their agenda.
I don't know if there's anything to that theory or not, but I think it's interesting.
Repeal of DOMA, DADT, these and other similar acts will happen on Obama's last day in office; if they happen during his presidency at all. I don't think it has anything to do with appealing to Muslim sensibilities either. It's something much simpler, he doesn't want to deal with the backlash from Christians and the Military. And personally, I don't think he really gives a shit about the issue.
I also doubt he's just playing nice with Muslims.
I think it's more likely that he's working on repeal but he doesn't want someone else stealing his thunder, in this case Alcee Hastings. I'm not too keen on the political implications that the Hastings amendment would have caused to the DoD appropriations bill. Perhaps it could have been a sticking point in some way. There is also HR1283 that is currently in committee, that , if passed, will repeal DADT altogether. I'm just not sure why the White House would pressure Hastings to pull his amendment in the meantime.
What backlash? The vast majority of the country (including active duty military) is in favor of repealing DADT.
The simple reason is that this is not the bill to wage this fight with. The last thing Obama is worried about is his Thunder. If tackling Don't Ask was this easy, it would have been done long long ago. All this does is put the Don't Ask fight on GOP turf(Defense Spending for Christ's sake?) and steals attention away from Healthcare.
What this guy did was make a boneheaded political play that endangered both the removal of Don't Ask and Healthcare. Maybe he had good intentions or possibly he was looking for a little Thunder of his own(I'm thinking a good mix of both) but he sure as hell doesn't know when and where to stage his battles. Obviously not a chess player.
Oh, and the Muslim thing is just plain stupid.
Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.
We just got the brief from reader Lavi Soloway. It's pretty despicable, and gratuitously homophobic. It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush's top political appointees. I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn't just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn't motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn't be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn't discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can't).
He actually argued that the courts shouldn't consider Loving v. Virginia, the miscegenation case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriages, when looking at gay civil rights cases. He told the court, in essence, that blacks deserve more civil rights than gays, that our civil rights are not on the same level.
And before Obama claims he didn't have a choice, he had a choice. Bush, Reagan and Clinton all filed briefs in court opposing current federal law as being unconstitutional (we'll be posting more about that later). Obama could have done the same. But instead he chose to defend DOMA, denigrate our civil rights, go back on his promises, and contradict his own statements that DOMA was "abhorrent." Folks, Obama's lawyers are even trying to diminish the impact of Roemer and Lawrence, our only two big Supreme Court victories. Obama is quite literally destroying our civil rights gains with this brief. He's taking us down for his own benefit
Trade in material assumptions for spiritual facts and make permanent progress.
Please don't hijack this thread with a gay marriage debate. We're talking about Don't Ask Don't Tell and the move toward repealing it. You only cloud the discussion by bringing in a completely different subject.
Why would a DoD appropriations bill not be the proper forum to address this issue? Millions have been spent by the military to investigate and process discharges. It has also cost the military on a functional basis, particularly where multilinguals are concerned. These are simply numbers arguments, not taking into account the lives of gay members that have been affected.
www.gao.gov/htext/d05299.html
According to a February 2005 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, American taxpayers spend more than $30 million each year to train replacements for gay troops discharged under the "don't ask, don't tell" law. The total cost reported since the statute was implemented is nearly $200 million dollars. The actual cost is significantly higher, as this figure does not include administrative and legal costs associated with investigations and hearings, security clearances, and military schooling of gay troops such as pilot and linguist training. Government Accountability Office, February 2005.
Well, DADT repeal didn't have the support long ago. It has only recently become a mainstream view since the military's readiness has been compromised by discharging gay service members. Also the growing acceptance of openly gay people, by communities at large, becomes more common. As usual, it's not an issue for middle America until they see how it impacts them (or proof that it doesn't impact them) personally.
Alcee Hastings is a 72 year old man, with 15+ years in Congress, by the way
Like one poster pointed out, Obama has way to much on his plate already, its only been 6 months and hes already had breakfast, lunch, dinner and extras. lets stop adding more.
Yeah my bad. I read a the article off yahoo or somewhere first and could of sworn they used a picture of a woman.
I also doubt he's just playing nice with Muslims.
I think it's more likely that he's working on repeal but he doesn't want someone else stealing his thunder, in this case Alcee Hastings. I'm not too keen on the political implications that the Hastings amendment would have caused to the DoD appropriations bill. Perhaps it could have been a sticking point in some way. There is also HR1283 that is currently in committee, that , if passed, will repeal DADT altogether. I'm just not sure why the White House would pressure Hastings to pull his amendment in the meantime.
What backlash? The vast majority of the country (including active duty military) is in favor of repealing DADT.
You don't know that. I could just as easily say that the vast majority of the country (including military) are not in favor of the repeal. Please don't come back with a "poll" where a couple thousand (probably less) voted on a website.
I live in Maine, where there is currently an effort to suspend the legalization of gay marriage. To do this, at least 55,087 verifiable signatures are needed in order to suspend the signing in of the law which is scheduled for September 12. I believe over 100,000 petition signatures were turned in today, double what is required. After the signatures are verified, the law will be suspended and will await a 2nd voting on the November public ballots.
When it was originally passed a few months ago, it wasn't due to a public vote, it was in-house. Which, in my opinion, is wrong regardless of where you stand on the marriage issue. It should have been placed on a ballot like everything else. I'm pretty sure it has in the past, and was voted against. So why they decided to overrule the citizen's vote is beyond me.. I'm not even sure if that is legal or not.. but who knows these days.
You don't know that. I could just as easily say that the vast majority of the country (including military) are not in favor of the repeal. Please don't come back with a "poll" where a couple thousand (probably less) voted on a website.
Irrelevant story wuz heer!
Okay, how about several polls? None of these were online polls.
abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1066a5GaysinMilitary.pdf
www.gallup.com/poll/120764/conservatives-shift-favor-openly-gay-service-members.aspx
www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml