Pam Spaulding's Blog, page 127
December 6, 2010
NCLR Analysis: Ninth Circuit Court Of Appeals Hearing On Perry v. Schwarzenegger
BLEND EXCLUSIVE: Trial analysis by the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) Attorney
By Shannon Minter, Esq.
National Center for Lesbian Rights Legal Director
Today was the long-awaited oral argument at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal court challenge to Proposition 8. Related:
* Visit the Blend for exclusive legal analysis of Federal Prop 8 trial by NCLR
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 1
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 2
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 3
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 4
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 5
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 6
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 7
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 8
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 9
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 10
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 11
* Shannon Minter: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Proceedings, Day 12
* Key commentary from the PHB Shannon Minter live blog on the fed Prop 8 trial
* NCLR Analysis: Closing Arguments For Perry v. Schwarzenegger
* NCLR Analysis: Perry v. Schwarzenegger Ruling
National DREAM Act vigils to be held Tuesday
All signs are that Congress will be voting on the DREAM Act as soon as Wednesday or Thursday this week. The DREAM Act would provide a path to legal status for undocumented youth brought into the United States by their parents.At least half a million LGBT youth are among the 12 million undocumented youth potentially impacted by the DREAM Act and LGBT youth have been at the forefront of the DREAM Act movement.
The DREAM Act is bipartisan legislation that addresses the tragedy of young people who grew up in the United States and have graduated from our high schools, but whose future is circumscribed by our current immigration laws. Under current law, these young people generally derive their immigration status solely from their parents, and if their parents are undocumented or in immigration limbo, most have no mechanism to obtain legal residency, even if they have lived most of their lives here in the U.S. The DREAM Act would provide such a mechanism for those who are able to meet certain conditions such as serving two year in the military or graduating from college.
Vigils will be held in support of the bill all around the country Tuesday or Wednesday at the locations listed below. Check out Reform Immigration for America's Facebook page for the most up-to-date list of times, dates, locations and other details.
Arizona: Phoenix, Phoenix
California: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco
District of Columbia: D.C. (*note* this is a 12/8 event)
Florida: Bradenton
Illinois: Chicago
Iowa: Marshalltown
Kansas: Wichita
Michigan: Detroit
New York: New York City, Queens
North Carolina: Charlotte, Greensboro
Oregon: Portland (*note* this is a 12/8 event)
Washington: Kennewick, Mount Vernon, Seattle, Vancouver, Walla Walla, Yakima (further WA details)
Elizabeth Edwards is gravely ill; further treatment for cancer 'unproductive'
My heart goes out to Elizabeth and her family. She's been through so much, and shown so much strength to those battling cancer. (WaPo):Elizabeth Edwards is gravely ill and doctors have told her she only has weeks to live, according to a family friend who is among those who have gathered with Edwards at her North Carolina home.The coffeehouse was graced with a visit by Elizabeth Edwards back in 2007 after I saw her with young ones Jack and Emma Claire (as well as her former husband and then-prez candidate) at the local Target one Sunday. Kate and I didn't approach them, figuring they were probably frequently mobbed. Elizabeth later dropped by to leave this note on the blog entry I wrote about it, titled "Presidential candidate in aisle 2 at Durham Target."The family issued a statement Monday that said doctors have told her that further treatment for her cancer would be unproductive, and the family friend further described Edwards' condition to The Associated Press.
The friend said Edwards was briefly hospitalized last week and received treatment, but doctors have now told her that she may only have up to a couple months of life left. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity because of the personal details divulged.
You should have spoken upMay the rest of her life's journey be filled with love and support.
Pam and Kate, you should have spoken up. Although it wasn't too crowded, we did get a lot of people -- all with smiles and words of support -- as we managed to go down nearly every aisle: the usual trip to Target. Followed by lunch at the Food Court at SouthPoint and lots more friendly hellos.
by: Elizabeth Edwards @ Sat Mar 17, 2007 at 17:30:14 PM EDT
Open thread: non-Prop 8 headlines I've been Tweeting/Facebooking today...
I'm definitely not up to speed yet on posting because of the surgery, but those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook know I'm regularly sharing links in spurts. Here are some choice ones you may want to click over to and comment on...* Right Wing Watch on LaBarbera: The Peter embraces AFTAH's hate group status: "if you are not on the @splcenter hate list, you are not doing enough" Now that is priceless.
* Marriage In Middle America Is In Trouble. I thought the homos were destroying marriage. "New data indicate that trends in nonmarital childbearing, divorce, and marital quality in Middle America increasingly resemble those of the poor, where marriage is fragile and weak. However, among the highly educated and affluent, marriage is stable and appears to be getting even stronger."
* Think Progress: Rep. Steve King Calls For The Return Of McCarthyism In Congress: It's A 'Good Process' That He Would 'Support' Nice to see the clock rolling back.
* Right Wing Watch: Christian Conservative Must Replace Jewish TX House Speaker Because Christians "Do The Best Jobs Over All" A real WTF from Cook: "My favorite person that's ever been on this earth is a Jew. How can they possibly think that if Jesus Christ is a Jew, and he's my favorite person that's ever been on this earth?"
* Kerry Eleveld's View from Washington: DADT Repeal Is Likely Dead, and if so, the White House owns this epic failure.
* The Wonk Room's Igor Volsky: Reid Should Hold Debate On DADT Past Christmas To Call GOP Bluff On Process Objections
* Talking Points Memo: Tea Party Nation Calls On Sarah Palin To Run For RNC Chair. Please god let it happen - a Michael Steele/Sarah Palin match up - that's full of win.
* Help tell these stories of diverse families with LGBT children. FAP Family Video Series
Irony alert - Family Research Council accuses SPLC of "cherry-picking" science
crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council is still smarting over the Southern Poverty Law Center designating his organization as an anti-gay hate group.
Perkins is of course not angry enough to address the charges head on but still angry enough to play the victim.
In an interview with a "friendlier" political journalism webpage, Tucker Carlson's Daily Caller, Perkins again complained about being unfairly attacked. But then he added a new charge against the SPLC:
Perkins told TheDC that the SPLC cherry-picked the scientific evidence it chose to cite against the Family Research Council and other similar groups in its related report, titled “10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked”, and ignored contrary evidence.
“We actually went through the studies they cited in their report and have seen the flaws in them, and we pointed to other peer-reviewed research,” Perkins said. “We’re not saying every homosexual has a proclivity to abuse children or that most of them do, but we are saying there is a link that is out there in the research.
Perkins did not say which studies were cherry-picked. But the comment he made to the Daily Caller does represent a retreat from a position he made during an interview on Hardball:
If you look at the American College of Pediatricians' research, they say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a risk to children.
Perkins did not address his citing the ACP, a sham group created to launder religious right distortions about the lgbt community.
And also in a serious irony, while he accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of cherry-picking science, Perkins never addressed the fact that he did the same thing during the Hardball interview when he cited a study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
In this study, according to Perkins, 86 percent of men who molest children identified as gay. He conveniently did not mention that in the study of 229 convicted child molesters, 63 victims were male, and 166 victims were female. Eighty-six percent of 63 isn't a drop in the bucket and it's certainly not enough to make a generalization in regards to the gay community.
Wendy Wright of the Concerned Women for America, another organization profiled by SPLC for it's anti-gay bias, was also interview in the Daily Caller article.
The Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America say the studies SPLC cites in its reports suffer from serious methodological errors and politically motivated biases.
“Liberal groups claim all of the science is on their side, and that’s simply not true,” Wright said. “They refer to studies that often were conducted by homosexual activists or people associated with the homosexual movement.
“Unbiased studies back up the fact that engaging in homosexual behavior carries detrimental consequences; oftentimes these studies were sponsored or paid for by homosexual advocacy groups.”
In its profiles and list of anti-gay myths, SPLC cited many sources including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, A. Nicholas Groth (who was ironically cited by the Family Research Council in one its past studies on homosexuality and pedophilia before he demanded that they remove his name and research from their work), The Child Molestation and Research Institute, the Child Welfare League of America, the National Organization of Male Sexual Victimization, Nicholas Eberstadt, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, The Palm Center, and Richard J. Wolitski, an expert on minority status and public health issues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Neither Perkins nor Wright pointed out just how these sources showed any bias or initiated studies "conducted by people associated in the homosexual movement," although Wright later claimed that lgbts have "taken over" leading mental-health research organizations.
Perkins also said the following:
The social conservative groups take particular aim at SPLC’s claim that the minority status of gays and lesbians accounts for the “higher rates of anxiety, depression and depression-related illnesses, and behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse than the general population.”
Perkins points to peer-reviewed studies done in the Netherlands and elsewhere, where homosexuality is tolerated to a greater degree than in the U.S., that show gays and lesbians still suffer from these same maladies, including elevated rates of suicide, even in the absence of widespread anti-gay prejudice.
As stated many times in past posts, this position about "studies in the Netherlands" is a distortion of a study by Dr. Theo Sandfort which looked at the mental health of gay men in the Netherlands.
This is what Sandfort told me in a Jan. 2009 email:
There is a difference between the U.S. and the Netherlands in terms of acceptance of homosexuality. That does not mean that there is no homophobia (and homophobic damage) in the Netherlands. It is not clear how difference in climate affects the prevalence of mental disorders. We don't know the final answers, but in the U.S. as well as the Netherlands, homophobia is related to mental health problems.
If Perkins and Wright sought to quell the discussion on whether or not their organizations can be considered as anti-gay hate groups, again they have failed.
Instead, they seemed to have unintentionally opened up a new avenue of questions by accusing SPLC of cherry-picking studies, but not naming these studies.
I, for one, is interested in seeing their evidence of cherry-picking on the part of SPLC, that is if they have any evidence.
Related posts:
The dangers of anti-gay propaganda - A personal story
Family Research Council's Tony Perkins pushes George Rekers flavored falsehoods on Hardball
Concerned Women for America plays the race card while Bryan Fischer makes a Freudian slip
The American Family Association must address Bryan Fischer's hateful comments
Concerned Women for America - endorsing hateful anti-gay comics and bad data
The Family Research Council should be apologizing to the gay community
December 5, 2010
VA official Eugene Delgaudio's latest: 'homos recruit our children into their filthy perversion'
"the next TSA official that gives you an 'enhanced pat down' could be a practicing homosexual secretly getting pleasure from your submission."Apparently he got his knickers in a twist about all the bad press he's received and has sent out this incredible pack of truth-challenged statements. Sometimes I think homobigoted clowns like Eugene Delgaudio are so far off the rails that they must be a plant by our side to make the anti-gays look bad. Then again, who on our side wants to claim authorship of this moronic e-blast:
Now it's no surprise that Delgaudio doesn't bother citing any reputable stats to back up his outlandish claims; that's the norm for these homo-obsessed fringe bigots. If you can believe it, the letter goes even further into proving this man is detached from reality. See below the fold.Dear _____,
I took a stand against the TSA and their "porno scanners" and blatant groping.
And I took a stand against their policy of "non-discrimination" which subjects you and me to humiliation and dehumanization at the hands of practicing homosexuals.
How it exposes those most precious to us -- our children -- to being photographed by naked scanners or explicit sexual touching by practicing homosexuals.
And the Homosexual Lobby's lackeys in the media hate me for it.
These TSA policies force terrified parents to choose between salivating radical homosexual employees viewing pornographic images of their child or a full-on molestation.
But that's not even the worst part of this radical agenda.
It confuses our children into thinking this sort of explicit sexual contact is somehow ok in certain situations -- and by strangers no less!
And this is their scheme to grow their ranks.
You see, Homosexuals do not reproduce. They must recruit our children into their filthy perversion to increase their numbers.
Nearly every single homosexual was once the prey of an older man corrupting them with sin.
If they teach our children that groping by strangers is a socially acceptable practice, their evil is that much easier.
If nothing else, the content of this letter proves Delgaudio's worldview is so polluted by epic fantasies about The Homosexual Agenda that it makes you wonder about his own personal issues about these matters -- or for that matter, their priority in, um, the business of Loudon County.
So I took a stand.Now that's an appeal that will make folks open their wallets, huh?But because I took that stand, I've fallen victim to the most insidious and vicious attacks I've ever seen in my 30 years fighting for the family.
You see, the Homosexual Lobby HATES it whenever anyone challenges their agenda.
They hate it when anyone even questions the problems that will arise in the brave new world they envision.
And they despise those of us who shine light upon their schemes.
I've seen their rage firsthand the last few days.
My office has been nearly shut down by angry phone calls and outrageous messages from Radical Homosexuals across this country.
And the media, left and right, is smearing my pro-family message as "hate speech" and "homophobia."
But I've also received hundreds of emails and phone calls from Public Advocate supporters thanking me for taking a stand.
And I want to make something clear right now:
I absolutely refuse to be silenced by the thought control that homosexuals are imposing upon our nation in the name of "political correctness."
The American people have a right to know that the new security measures by the TSA expose them to sexual assault by every manner of sexual deviants.
They have a right to know that TSA doesn't even care.
The TSA is even PROUD of hiring open homosexuals to carry out the violation of our rights.
I certainly don't think that all TSA employees are homosexual. I'm sure many of of them are as disgusted in having to do what they have been told to do -- treat all of as though we are terrorists.
But since all touching and feeling is done by TSA employees who are the same sex as the passenger -- it provides a dream job for some militant homosexuals.
And I won't take it anymore.
Will you stand with me?
You and I need to send a LOUD and CLEAR message to the Homosexual Lobby AND the TSA.
We will not submit!
Please call the congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121
Tell both your senators and congressman that this is wrong and that it must end.
But I hope you'll do more.
You see, the best way to stick it to the Homosexual Lobby is for Public Advocate to have the resources to combat their radical agenda.
That's why I hope you'll contribute today.
In fact, I'm counting on it.
The next time I get a call from the media I must be able to tell them: "America supports Public Advocate!"
So, will you make your most generous donation right now?
Thanks for your support as I face the vicious attacks from the drive-by media.
For the Family,
Eugene Delgaudio
President
Public Advocate of the U.S.P.S. In addition to calling your congressmen, I hope you will consider sending a generous contribution of $20, $50, $75, $100 or more. Thanks so much!
Resources for Prop 8 court case today. Join liveblog at 12:30 PM ET
NOTE FROM PAM: Bumping up Lurleen's prep post from yesterday. New Blend content is below. Photo: Keen News Service via Twitpic.At 12:30 PM ET The Blend will feature live discussion and analysis on the front page courtesy of Americablog, hosted by Joe Sudbay and featuring commentary by contributor and California lawyer/activist Liz Newcomb and USC Constitutional Law Professor David Cruz, who "is a constitutional law expert focusing on civil rights and equality issues, including equal marriage rights for same-sex couples." AB's prep docs are here.
Another good primer: Chris Geidner's Prop 8 Argument Day FAQ Top 10 questions at MetroWeekly.
Was Justice Vaughn Walker's ruling correct that Prop 8 is unconstitutional? Do the proponents of Prop 8, Yes on 8, have standing to appeal his decision? These are the two major questions before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, December 6th at 10 a.m. PST. The hearing is scheduled to last 2 hours.
The case is called Perry v. Schwarzenegger and will be heard at the James R. Browning Courthouse, 95 7TH Street in San Francisco, CA. Unlike the earlier trial, this hearing will be televised, tweeted and blogged. From American Foundation for Equal Rights:
Watch OnlineFor a list of federal courthouses in CA, OR, WA, NY & MA live streaming the hearing click here. And of course the Courage Campaign's Prop 8 Trial Tracker will be covering the proceedings.
AFER and Towleroad.com have teamed up for live coverage and commentary during and following the hearing. Check back here for details.
Featuring Richard Socarides, Attorney and White House adviser under President Bill Clinton and bloggers Andy Towle and Corey Johnson.
Watch on TV
C-SPAN and The California Channel and San Francisco outlets: KGO-TV, KRON-TV KTVU - Channel 2, ABC News
Listen/Stream Audio
ABC News, KCBS radio, KGO radio, KQED News
Significantly, California Attorney General-elect Kamala Harris said she will not seek to defend Prop 8. This means that if the 9th Circuit rules that the defendants have no standing to defend Prop 8, the case is over provided that Yes on 8 is unsuccessful in appealing the 9th Circuit's decision to the US Supreme Court. It may take the court several weeks to release their decision. You can read the documents submitted to the 9th Circuit Court appeal on the Court's special website here.
Update: San Diego Lesbian & Gay News has posted a fascinating exploration of the possible outcomes for this case, penned by legal expert Ari Ezra Waldman.
Prop 8 is back in court on Monday morning
The case is called Perry v. Schwarzenegger and will be heard at the James R. Browning Courthouse, 95 7TH Street in San Francisco, CA. Unlike the earlier trial, this hearing will be televised, tweeted and blogged. From American Foundation for Equal Rights:
Watch OnlineFor a list of federal courthouses in CA, OR, WA, NY & MA live streaming the hearing click here. And of course the Courage Campaign's Prop 8 Trial Tracker will be covering the proceedings.
AFER and Towleroad.com have teamed up for live coverage and commentary during and following the hearing. Check back here for details.
Featuring Richard Socarides, Attorney and White House adviser under President Bill Clinton and bloggers Andy Towle and Corey Johnson.
Watch on TV
C-SPAN and The California Channel and San Francisco outlets: KGO-TV, KRON-TV KTVU - Channel 2, ABC News
Listen/Stream Audio
ABC News, KCBS radio, KGO radio, KQED News
Significantly, California Attorney General-elect Kamala Harris said she will not seek to defend Prop 8. This means that if the 9th Circuit rules that the defendants have no standing to defend Prop 8, the case is over provided that Yes on 8 is unsuccessful in appealing the 9th Circuit's decision to the US Supreme Court. It may take the court several weeks to release their decision. You can read the documents submitted to the 9th Circuit Court appeal on the Court's special website here.
The Prep Work I'm Doing To Get A Passport Under New State Department Rules
Last June, the Obama Administration made changes to the rules for obtaining passports. These rules were made to change procedures for transgender people so that we trans folk could obtain two-year passports without genital reconstruction surgery.
The new rules are found in the State Department's document 7 FAM 1300 APPENDIX M GENDER CHANGE. It spells out a lot of hoops trans people have to jump through to get that two-year passport.
The first, and most difficult part, has been getting a letter I needed form one of the five types of physicians (psychiatrists, internists, endocrinologists, gynecologists, and urologists) written in a format the State Department accepts, spelling out my gender is female. Heck, the State Department has lots of requirements for this letter -- It must be a signed original statement, on office letterhead, from a patient's attending medical physician, that must include the following:
Physician's full name
Medical license or certificate number
Issuing state or other jurisdiction of medical license/certificate
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) registration number assigned to the physician
Address and telephone number of the physician
Language stating that he/she is the attending physician for the applicant and that he/she has a doctor/patient relationship with the applicant
Language stating the applicant has had appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition to the new gender (male or female)
Language stating "I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States that the forgoing is true and correct"
Annotate the application "gender transition" to record the reason for issuing the full validity passport in the new gender.
Late last July, I asked my psychiatrist for a letter that conformed with the State Department requirements. (I see about psychiatrist about every month-and-a-half for my bipolar condition, so I was asking for this letter from a doctor who has an ongoing doctor-patient relationship with.) It took until just last week to actually obtain a letter from her that completely conformed with the State Department requirements because, as I expected, the letter she wrote for me was the first one of these kinds of transgender-pasport letters she'd ever written.
As a next step, I then went to assemble the rest of my documentation to take to the Post Office for that two-year passport. However, when I went to pull out my birth certificate from my files, I found out my copy didn't conform to the State Department requirements. I only have a Xerox copy of an official copy of my birth certificate in my files, but I need an actual official copy of my birth certificate to take to the Post Office for that passport I want.
So, I need a new official copy of my birth certificate if I want that passport. To make a long story short, to get that new official birth ceritificate copy, I needed a notarized, filled-in form to send to the Los Angeles County Register-Recorder that confirmed my identity -- My identity needed to be verified to confirm I'm the actual registrant asking for a copy of my own birth certificate. Since I've changed my name as part of my transition, I had to bring a notary my driver's license, and a copy of my change of name document back from when I changed my name to Autumn in 2004, so he could confirm I was the registrant. You know, because my name doesn't now match the one on my birth certificate.
I got that done yesterday (Saturday, December 5, 2010). I mailed off the notarized copy of my form confirming I am a registrant asking for a copy of my own birth certificate off to the Los Angeles County Register-Recorder yesterday afternoon.
As you can see, I've taken my passport photo taken -- I look jaundiced in the photo, don't I? Oh well, it's not like the photos in photo identification cards ever look great, y'know?
As soon as my official copy of my birth certificate shows up in the mail, I'm off to the Post Office with my folder of documents to apply for my passport in my current name and gender identity. Before that passport expires, I hope to have my birth certificate changed to reflect my gender, and then I'll have to update my passport to reflect what my updated birth certificate will say.
This is a lot of work, but I want to feel free to travel again. Having a passport that had a gender marker that didn't reflect my gender identity would take away from feeling like I could travel internationally -- I don't want to carry an identity document at any time that has a male gender identifier on it.
~~~~~
Related:
* BREAKING Blend exclusive: State Department issues gender change policy for passport applications
* Foreign Affairs Manual Requirements For Passport Change Of Gender
New CBS poll: "Repeal DADT!" says a 3:1 majority.
On Saturday, CBS came out with its latest polling, showing that Americans by a 3:1 majority support repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, 69% in favor to 23% opposed, with 8% not sure.
In light of the upcoming vote (or failure to vote) on repeal, today I'll examine more polling on Don't Ask, Don't Tell. There are a lot of polls on this subject, each with its own slightly different wording, and there are multiple polls from the same organizations. (In my last diary I looked at some polling data and trends on marriage equality. Check it out).
For this analysis, I decided to take the most recent poll for each organization that has polled at least once on Don't Ask, Don't Tell over the last two years.
Below is a table of those results.
DateOrg.Pro Con UnsureRatioDec CBS 69 23 8 3:1Nov Marist 47 48 5 1:1Nov NBC 50 38 10 1.3:1Nov Quinnipaic 58 34 8 1.7:1Nov CNN 72 23 5 3.1:1Nov Pew 58 27 16 2.1:1Feb ABC 75 24 1 3.1:1Feb Fox 61 30 9 2:1May09 Gallup 69 26 6 2.7:1Dec08 Newsweek 66 29 5 2.3:1
Averages: Pro: 62.5%, Con: 30.2%, Unsure: 7.3%, Ratio: 2.1:1
One could use a different methodology; perhaps averaging all the polls, not just the latest one by each organization; perhaps throwing out the best and worst polls as outliers. It turns out that it really doesn't matter. Any reasonable polling aggregation and averaging strategy will show that Americans support repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell by approximately a 2:1 ratio.
In fact, according to a Pew poll taken earlier in the year ( not included above) which sampled more than 6000 Americans, there are only two demographic groupings that do not support DADT Repeal by a statistically significant margin:
White Evangelical Protestants: 43% - 47%
Conservative Republicans: 39% - 50%
For every other crosstab -- by age, by race, by sex, by education, by geographic region -- each subcategorization supports DADT repeal by a large margin.
But make no mistake: despite a favorability ratio rarely seen on any issue, the votes for repeal in the Senate are not there. The owners of the those critical votes, Collins, Brown, and Lugar, want to make it seem like they will vote for repeal, but in fact they have attached so many conditions to their affirmative vote to allow debate to begin on the National Defense Authorization Act (the bill that contains DADT repeal) that their recent statements advocating repeal are meaningless:
"Once the tax issue is resolved"
"Once the budget process is complete"
"Sufficient time allowed for debate and amendments"
"if Democrats permitted Republicans to introduce amendments"
Do not be fooled. Even if these conditions could be met (and what does 'having the tax issue resolved' really mean?) other conditions will likely suddenly appear out of nowhere. "Oh The moon is full?-- Sorry, there can be no vote today."
The Republican caucus is not about to give Democrats in Congress or this Democratic administration a victory of any kind as long as they are able to breathe. They know very well that failure to pass DADT repeal will rend the Democratic Party (as well it should, for being utterly spineless in the face of discrimination) into groups shouting recriminations at each other, and that such will carry through the 2012 elections.
Could I be wrong? I could. The Republicans could suddenly be struck by lightning on the road to Damascus and return from the weekend longing to be paragons of bipartisanship.
It could happen; after all, it did once 2000 years ago.
Or they could be swayed by their constituents, by Lady Gaga redux, and by impassioned pleas. It's not much of a hope -- it didn't work in September -- but it's pretty much all we can do at this point.
Here's the contact list, you know what to do:
BLANCHE LINCOLN
ARKANSAS
202-224-4843
email
501-375-2993 870-382-1023 870-910-6896 479-251-1224
912 West Fourth Street, Little Rock, AR 72201
SUSAN COLLINS
MAINE
202-224-2523
email
207-622-8414 207-945-0417 207-780-3575
One Canal Plazam, Suite 802, Portland, ME 04101
OLYMPIA SNOWE
MAINE
202-224-5344
email
207-786-2451 207-622-8292 207-945-0432
3 Canal Plaza, Suite 601, Portland, ME 04101
SCOTT BROWN
MASSACHUSETTS
202-224-4543
email
617-565-3170
2400 JFK Federal Building, 55 New Sudbury Street, Boston, MA 02203
GEORGE VOINOVICH
OHIO
202-224-3353
email
216-522-7095, 513-684-3265, 419-259-3895
1240 East 9th Street, Room 3061, Cleveland, OH 44199
LISA MURKOWSKI
ALASKA
202-224-6665
email
907-456-0233, 907-271-3735
101 12th Ave, Room 216, Fairbanks, AK 99701
DICK LUGAR
INDIANA
202-224-4814
email
812-465-6313 317-226-5555
180 Market Tower, 10 West Market St., Indianapolis, Indiana 46204
KIT BOND
MISSOURI
202-224-5721
email
816-471-7141 314-725-4484
7700 Bonhomme, #615 St. Louis, MO 63105
MARK KIRK
ILLINOIS
202-225-4835 (Congressional office)
email (Congressperson form)
847-940-0202 (local Congressional office)
707 Skokie Boulevard, Suite 350, Northbrook, IL 60062
JOE MANCHIN
WEST VIRGINIA
202-224-3954
email (governor's page)
304-205-5889 (senate campaign office phone)
Senate Majority Leader:
HARRY REID
NEVADA
202-224-3542
email
702-388-5020 775-882-7343 775-686-5750
Lloyd D. George Bldg., 333 Las Vegas Blvd S, Suite 8016 Las Vegas, NV 89101
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman:
CARL LEVIN
MICHIGAN
202-224-6221
email
517-377-1508 313-226-6020
124 West Allegan, Suite 1810, Lansing, MI
WHITE HOUSE
White House Comment Line: 202-456-1111
Email the White House: form
MORE SENATORS
Contact information for all Senators: US Senate
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