Amazon.com Widgets

As featured on p. 218 of "Bloggers on the Bus," under the name "a MyDD blogger."

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

The Long Slow March Of Progress

The Obama Administration is going slowly but making progress on its efforts to get rid of "Don't Ask Don't Tell." It's insulting that you have to step this lively, but that's the political environment in which we live.

WASHINGTON — The White House says President Barack Obama has begun consulting his top defense advisers on how to lift a ban on gays serving openly in the military.

But the administration won't say how soon that might happen or whether a group of experts will be commissioned to study the issue in-depth, as some Democrats have suggested.

The move enables Obama to say he's making good on his campaign promise to reverse the law, but doesn't lock him into doing so anytime soon. The carefully calculated statement, released this week by White House spokesman Tommy Vietor, leaves enough wiggle room to prevent the hot-button issue from consuming Obama's foreign policy agenda, which is dominated by ending the Iraq war and salvaging operations in Afghanistan.


Somehow, they were able to initiate all kinds of small-bore stuff, like allowing photos of coffins back from overseas at Dover AFB, for example. This deliberation is about politics, not a question of capacity.

But it may be out of their hands. Ellen Tauscher took time out of demanding that there be more homeless people in America to introduce a bill repealing DADT. Last year she got 148 co-sponsors, including many Republicans. I could envision a legislative solution here faster than an executive one.

Labels: , , ,

|