The DADT repeal? Don't ask.
It
looks like the Senate Armed Services Committee is going to drop the
proposed repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy from the bill
to authorize defense spending. With the DADT repeal language, the bill was
blocked by a John McCain-led filibuster in September.
Two-thirds
of Americans think DADT is discriminatory. The commander in chief, defense
secretary and chair of the Joint Chiefs all
support repealing it. So does Sen. Carl Levin, who chairs the Armed Services
Committee. Yet Levin--whose party still controls both chambers of Congress and
the White House--is working with McCain, the committee's ranking Republican, to
strip the DADT language from the bill.
Adam Serwer offers a helpful,
if not exactly encouraging, historical point of contrast:
