Breaking news from the hallowed halls of Congress –
The vote on DADT elimination moves forward as the more enlightened of the GOP (Murkowski, Brown, Snowe, Voinovich and Collins) voted against the “party of no” and their archaic leader Mitch McConnell and grumpy old man McCain to side with the Democratic majority to allow the vote to move forward denying the standalone DADT bill a death by threatened filibuster. The vote of 63 – 33, all but promises that the President will be accomplishing his goal and that of the majority of the American people in signing a bill that eliminates DADT before the end of this fiscal year.
The Service Members Legal Defense Network applauded the bill, while calling on Secretary Gates to:
“use his authority to suspend all ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ investigations during this interim period. Until the President signs the bill, until there is certification, and until the 60-day Congressional period is over, no one should be investigated or discharged under this discriminatory law.”
Interesting to see that alleged closeted gay Senator Kirk remained scared and in the closet while failing his constituents in Illinois.
Update: I was on Twitter and noticed trending for Mark Kirk so was curious to see what that was all about and found that my earlier statement about his DADT vote was incorrect in that Mark Kirk did break with his party’s neanderthal wing and voted to proceed with eliminating DADT. My apologies for not correctly reporting his vote.
Update 2: The Senate has now passed the bill on a vote of 65 to 31, Senator’s Ensign (NV) and Burr (NC) bucked their party and Geezer McCain to vote for the repeal of DADT.
About time. If the Dems had sacked up and pushed for this vote before the elections, there probably wouldn’t be so many of them leaving town in 2 weeks.
As a conservative (for the most part) who actually supports the elimination of DADT, I agree. Though I’m happy with the outcome, I don’t support the way it was done – it should not have come about in a lame duck session by a bunch of guys who just go fired by voters. The ends almost never justify the means for me. I don’t know if they would have actually had the guts to pass this before the election that it would have made a difference in the outcome. I’d guess not – that there were too many other factors going on. But it would have been the right thing to do, and would have displayed more character than doing it now.
50 marines surveyed in thialand today,not a single one is for DADT and none of them know of any other marines that are. The polls used are from officers in the navy,says one marine
What’s your source for this statement? Even if it’s true the law has changed. Given that these marines are supposedly stationed in Thalland I wonder how many of them are breaking the law with dalliances in the very visible Thai sex trade.
When their commanders tell them to follow the law they’ll get into shape pretty quickly or face the consequences.
So it’s just a given that anyone in Thailand – or maybe just any marine – is doing that?
I agree with the rest of your reply – it’s their job to follow orders & they’ll comply with the law change whether they like it or not. But I don’t think it was either necessary or accurate to make that comment.
Locke, wake up. Happens every day. Just ask anyone that’s been there. Thailand’s sex trade is no secret.
Rich – where did I ever say anything to imply I was denying it’s existence. That it’s there – and obviously quite widespread – still does not make it a good idea to assume everyone there is a participant.
You are correct that I shouldn’t have made that comment.
But having been to Thailand, I agree with Rich about the sex trade – it’s fairly visible and pervasive, so even if those 50 marines aren’t partaking of the wares, they certainly are faced with it quite openly.
The biggest argument I see for DADT is that somehow it being repealed will cause rape. Because it’s not like rape hasn’t been in the military forever historically.
(Not bashing our service men and women, it’s just historically this as happened a lot and everyone knows that who has studied history. To say DADT is going to cause it is seriously silly. Really, what most of the people who support DADT usually are not going to in rainbows or anything but they’re going to just going to be comfortable talking to their loved ones online or something where as before someone could look into their computer, say they’re gay, and kick them out of the military.)