MILITARY
How To Repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell

While campaigning for the White House, President Obama pledged to repeal the military's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT) policy, which bars openly gay men and women from serving in the military. The administration is seeking "Congressional action" to resolve the issue. As a consequence, the military has discharged more than 265 service members on the basis of the discriminatory and counterproductive policy since Obama took office. Despite the losses, when asked about DADT in March, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that repealing DADT would have to be pushed "down the road a little bit." Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that the Senate was waiting for "a legislative proposal from the White House on repeal so as to provide clear guidance on what the President would like to see and when." Seventy-seven members of the House recently sent Obama a letter urging him to "suspend" DADT. As part of an effort to build momentum from this call for action, the Center for American Progress published a report yesterday by Lawrence J. Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley that provides a practical outline for repealing DADT and opening the armed forces to men and women who are currently excluded. 

HOW TO MOVE FORWARD: Korb, Duggan, and Conley have laid out a five-step solution to repealing DADT that starts with the Obama administration setting the agenda: 1) Sign an Executive Order banning further military separations based on DADT and send a legislative proposal on DADT repeal to Congress; 2) Form a presidential panel on how to implement the repeal; 3) Repeal DADT in Congress and change the Uniformed Code of Military Justice; 4) Change other necessary military guidelines to conform to the new policy; and 5) Follow-up to ensure that the armed forces implement the policy changes. The CAP report says that "careful examination of the laws outlining the president's powers as commander in chief show that the executive branch has the authority to suspend homosexual conduct discharges without legislative action." This provision, commonly known as a "stop loss" order, grants the president authority to suspend the release of military members during any period of national emergency in which members of a reserve unit are serving on active duty. But because Congress originally passed the ban, an executive suspension will have to be followed up with legislative action that reverses DADT. CAP also recommends forming a DADT advisory panel modeled after the Gates Commission, which was established by President Nixon in 1969 and outlined a plan for transitioning the military to an all-volunteer structure. The commission's charge should be to consider "how" to end DADT, not "whether" to make the change.

LESSONS LEARNED: A crucial hurdle, the CAP report says, is the military's "strong aversion to change." President Truman's effort to integrate the Army bares this out. In 1948, after Truman issued an executive order ending racial segregation in the armed services, Gen. Omar Bradley, then the Army chief of staff, flatly refused, saying desegregation would ruin the Army. Because of the military's reluctance and bureaucratic hedging, Truman's 1948 order wasn't implemented until 1954. The CAP report notes that it's common for members of Congress, especially those on the Armed Services Committee, to aid the military's aversion to change. Robert Taft, the Senate Majority Leader at the time, called Truman's executive order a "cheap political ploy." On the question of gays serving openly in the military, perhaps the biggest obstacle has been public opinion -- until recently. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, nearly two-thirds disagreed with the argument that "allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military would be divisive for the troops and hurt their ability to fight effectively." And a 2006 Zogby International poll of returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans found that 73 percent were personally "comfortable with gays and lesbians." The most recent example of a military seamlessly integrating its Army can be found in Britain. The British, who have a military structure and deployment patterns most similar to ours, were forced to allow gays into the military by the European Court of Human Rights in 2000. Before integrating, surveys in Britain indicated that there would be a backlash from current service members, with "two-thirds of male troops" saying that they would not work with gay men if gay bans were lifted. Once the ban was lifted, however, only a handful of troops resigned.

DADT STILL CLAIMING CASUALTIES: During a conference call with reporters yesterday, Korb underscored that repealing DADT was "not a gay rights issue" but an "issue of military readiness" at a time when the U.S. is engaged in two wars. Since its enactment more than 16 years ago, DADT has resulted in the discharge of more than 13,000 highly qualified men and women. At least 1,000 of these service members have held "critical occupations," such as interpreters and engineers. In addition, roughly 4,000 service members have left the military voluntarily every year because of DADT. The recent cases of Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach and Army Lt. Daniel Choi are illuminating. Fehrenbach, a highly decorated F-15 fighter pilot and an 18-year veteran of the Air Force with 88 combat missions, was informed last September that he would be discharged because someone notified his commanding officer that Fehrenbach had a male partner. It's estimated the military spent roughly $25 million training Fehrenbach. Choi was a National Guard infantry officer, whose expertise as an Arab linguist was vital to the war in Iraq. But he was also discharged because of the bigoted policy. The result of losing talented and crucial service members, said Korb, is that "lives could be lost."

Under the Radar

ECONOMY -- CHAMBER OF COMMERCE DECLARES ITS OPPOSITION TO 'SAY ON PAY': Last week, the Chamber of Commerce announced that it will "vigorously oppose" a new consumer protection agency that President Obama proposed as part of his financial regulatory reform package. On Tuesday, the Chamber came out against another aspect of the administration's reform agenda which would allow shareholders to vote on their company's executive compensation practices, known as "say on pay." David Hirchsmann, president of the Chamber's Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness, claimed that "say on pay" was simply a give away to "big labor." "Big labor unions are trying to achieve at the board table what they cannot achieve at the negotiating table, under the guise of shareholder protection," he said. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner explained the need for "say on pay," noting that the practice has "already become the norm for several of our major trading partners." In two of those countries -- Great Britain and Australia -- CEO pay "grew 2.4 percent and 25.3 percent, respectively, from 2002 through 2006, while pay in the United States soared 59.9 percent in the same period." At the same time, middle class incomes have stagnated. Some companies in the U.S., including Aflac Co., voluntarily undertake such votes already. Notably, "say on pay" votes are non-binding, leading some to say that they don't go far enough toward reining in Wall Street excess. As Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research Dean Baker explained, "The current rules allow management insiders to make out like bandits at the expense of shareholders and other stakeholders. This is why clowns get paid tens of millions to run their companies into the ground in the US."

Think Fast

President Obama is set to meet with congressional leaders in both parties today "to begin laying the political groundwork for sweeping immigration legislation." While lawmakers are looking for Obama to use his political capital to push the issue, White House aides say that Obama "does not intend to get out in front of any proposal until there is a strong bipartisan commitment to pass it."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assailed President Obama today, claiming that "Obama made a mistake" in condemning the crackdown in Iran. "We were not expecting Mr. Obama" to "fall into the same trap and continue the same path that Bush did," said Ahmadinejad. At the same time, opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi said he would "not back down."

The White House announced yesterday "that it had withdrawn invitations to Iranian diplomats to attend Fourth of July festivities at U.S. embassies around the world." "July 4th allows us to celebrate the freedom and the liberty we enjoy," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. "Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom to assemble peacefully. Freedom of the press. So I don't think it's surprising that nobody's signed up to come."

Venezuela and the United States yesterday said that "they will restore their ambassadors more than nine months after President Hugo Chavez expelled the U.S. envoy in his final diplomatic bout with the Bush administration."

The U.N. high commissioner on human rights, Navanethem Pillay, yesterday "appealed to the Obama administration to release Guantanamo Bay inmates or try them in a court of law, and said officials who authorized the use of 'torture' must be held accountable." "People who order or inflict torture cannot be exonerated, and the roles of certain lawyers, as well as doctors who have attended torture sessions, should also be scrutinized," Pillay said.

"Health insurers have forced consumers to pay billions of dollars in medical bills that the insurers themselves should have paid," a Senate Commerce Committee report found. At a hearing yesterday, "three health-care specialists testified that insurers go to great lengths to avoid responsibility for sick people, use deliberately incomprehensible documents to mislead consumers about their benefits, and sell 'junk' policies that do not cover needed care."

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that "[t]hree-quarters of Americans think the federal government should regulate the release into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases from power plants, cars and factories to reduce global warming" and that 52 percent of Americans support "a cap-and-trade approach" to doing so.

"Six days before U.S. combat forces are due to withdraw from major Iraqi cities, a bomb hidden under vegetables on a three-wheeled motorcycle killed at least 60 people and wounded 135 more in Sadr City." The bombing followed other attacks earlier in the week that killed 109 Iraqis.

And finally: President Obama's head of Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, may have some romantic competition. Indeed, actress Kristen Bell -- who was in Washington yesterday lobbying with the advocacy group Invisible Children -- seems to be a bit taken with Sunstein's wife, Samantha Power, who serves on the National Security Council. "Last time I was here, I met Samantha Power. She's my idol. I can't even explain how my heart was beating, I was so badly trying to absorb every bit of her," Bell said of Power.

Blog Watch

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) wants to establish a federal "Office of Unborn Children's Health."

Will Gov. Mark Sanford "circle the wagons" or follow his own advice and resign?

Sen. Max Baucus's (D-MT) regrets about the health care process.

Right-wing radio host tells African-American "ingrates" to "get on your knees" and "kiss the American dirt" because slavery brought them to U.S.

Health care reporting unable to get the simple facts right about a public plan.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) opposed the stimulus package but now says it will create jobs in his district.  

Can Republicans scare the public away from the public health care option?

Top White House environmental adviser says coal is here to stay and the Obama administration can't promise an end to mountaintop-removal mining.

Daily Grill

"[Paul Krugman is one of] at least a dozen of the same economic bean heads who missed the industry's $8 trillion housing bubble...[and are] now calling for a third stimulus."
-- Fox News's Glenn Beck, 6/23/09

VERSUS

"I'm getting worried [about the real estate bubble]. ... More and more people are using the B-word about the housing market. ... House prices have run well ahead of rents, suggesting that people are now buying houses for speculation rather than merely for shelter."
-- New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, 9/16/02