(which some say he could feasibly do with the stroke of a pen.) or will he fire dan choi – west point graduate, officer in the army national guard, fluent in arabic, and recently returned from iraq – because choi came out of the closet as a gay man on the rachel maddow show?
at this point, it looks like dismissal. a major campaign promise broken.
tuesday is a joke / played on those not quite prepared / the same game again
I don't think it's fair to say the campaign promise has been broken. Obama has been in office barely over 100 days, and he had more on his plate on Day 1 than any president in the last hundred years. Gibbs has said plainly that the president will push to have DADT overturned but that it is not among his top priorities. And, as terrible a policy as it is, it shouldn't be among his top priorities right now.
ReplyDeleteEffectively overturning DADT by Executive Order is a bad, bad, bad idea. Obama has too much respect for the lawmaking process to go about it that way. Our last president circumvented the law all the time with Executive Orders, and it's (in many cases) contrary to the way our policy-making is supposed to be done in our form of government.
DADT sucks, but it is law until there's a new law passed to overturn it.
well said, laurin.
ReplyDeletei don't think the idea is that obama actually overturn dadt by executive order, but (as i understand it) suspend it's continued implementation until the law can be overturned by congress, thus saving jobs like choi's.
i think the slowness of going at this issue, combined with the recent changes of the civil rights page of whitehouse.gov (lgbt issues from half a page to two sentences, dadt from repeal to...adjust?...then back to repeal) are all worrisome.
i agree, he's got lots on his plate. but these issues are one the main reasons i voted for him. i'm gonna get my undies in a bit of a bundle when it seems like they're not only being put on the back burner, but changed or ignored.