I personally repealed DADT

Blogolicious line of the day:

If all you’ve learned from the repeal of DADT is to take hostages and to chain yourself to a fence, can I also recommend gags?

Read the whole thing.

And, yes, putting Lieberman in charge of the legislation was a brilliant stroke. By breaking up the three musketeers on this issue, he made McCain and Lindsey Graham look even more foolish.

Lessons from the 1940s

Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon's general counsel and the co-author of the report on the repeal of DADT, has a coincidental but striking personal relationship to the issue.

His uncle, Robert B. Johnson, was not only one of the Tuskegee Airmen, but was also a participant in what is known as the Freeman Field Mutiny in 1945, when a group of the airmen were arrested for entering an all-white officers’ club at Freeman Field in Indiana. The airmen were imprisoned for 10 days until the Army chief of staff, Gen. George C. Marshall, intervened. Three years later, President Harry S. Truman integrated the military by executive order.

Although Mr. Johnson says that discrimination based on race and sexual orientation are different — sexual orientation, he maintains, is “not a self-identifier” — he has found similarities in the way the armed forces reacted in both cases to the prospect of change. The study Mr. Johnson wrote with Gen. Carter F. Ham found that, over all, 70 percent of the troops surveyed said the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” would have little effect, but about 60 percent of Marines predicted a negative impact.

The opposition to integrating the armed forces in the 1940s, Mr. Johnson said, was as high as 80 percent. “The lesson to be drawn from that,” he said, “is that very often the predictions about what is going to happen overestimate the negative consequences and underestimate the military’s ability to adapt.”

These are not "social issues"

Steve Benen points out that when John McCain says that he opposes amendments to defense appropriations bills he is either lying or senile.

Fair enough, but before he gets there, Steve writes,

Noting, for example, that the bill includes a repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, and may ultimately include the Dream Act, McCain says the problem has nothing to do with his animosity towards gays and immigrants. Rather, McCain says it's "reprehensible" to "use the defense bill ... to pursue a social agenda."

At first blush, this might seem half-way reasonable. Putting aside the fact that troop eligibility has quite a bit to do with the Pentagon, it does seem awkward to add extraneous provisions to spending bills that deal with unrelated subjects. Last year, for example, Democrats added the Hate Crimes Prevention Act to the defense authorization bill, though hate crimes and military spending don't seem related.

No.

It isn't "half-way reasonable." As Steve himself points out both issues are very much about troop strength.

McCain has zigzagged so much the "Straight Talk Express" should be pulled over for DUI, but repeal of DADT and passing the Dream Act are "national security" issues. One punishes our fighting men and women while they serve, the other fails to reward them after they served.

Police state

Jesus Horatio Christ.

The Rapid City Police Department says Newsome, an aircraft armament system craftsman who spent nine years in the Air Force, was not cooperative when they showed up at her home in November with an arrest warrant for her partner, who was wanted on theft charges in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Newsome was at work at the base at the time and refused to immediately come home and assist the officers in finding her partner, whom she married in Iowa -- where gay marriage is legal -- in October.

Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome's home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said.

''It's an emotional issue and it's unfortunate that Newsome lost her job, but I disagree with the notion that our department might be expected to ignore the license, or not document the license, or withhold it from the Air Force once we did know about it,'' Allender said Saturday. ''It was a part of the case, part of the report and the Air Force was privileged to the information.''

He said his department does not seek to expose gay military personnel or investigate the sexuality of Rapid City residents.

Except when they piss them off.