Sen. Susan Collins lays out what she needs to allow DADT repeal to come to a vote. On its face, her demands can probably be met by Harry Reid without too much sweat. That’s probably why Reid has now put off tonight’s vote.
Now, you could argue that Reid just caved by putting off the vote, but I think that’s the wrong read on this.
Collins has finally made her demands concrete and public. And they are not outrageous. At one point she wanted or was said to want two weeks of debate. Now she’s asking for a manageable 4 days. Would we have gotten here anyway? Maybe. Did Reid’s forcing the issue make the difference? Hard to say for sure, but probably.
This much is clear: the day started with DADT repeal looking completely dead and ends with a very plausible way forward to 60 votes in the Senate in this lame duck session. Not a done deal yet, but prospects for repeal are a whole lot better than they were 12 hours ago.
Helen Thomas’ alma mater terminates its diversity award given in her honor.
Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) — the guy who killed a bill for math and science education funding by attaching an anti-pornography poison pill to it — is your new chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee.
You might find this especially interesting. We’ve taken Gallup’s presidential approval ratings from Ike to Barack and lined them up against each other over the first 22 months of their respective presidencies. It allows you to see how Obama stacks up against each of his post-war predecessors at the comparable point in time in their presidencies. Here, for example, is Obama versus Reagan (click for larger version):
(Special thanks to TPM poll fellow Jon Terbush).
Friends of the accused Pepsi can bomber in Arkansas insist he’s not a “paranoid sociopath with right-wing affiliations,” as one friend put it. Another friend of Mark Krause, who is apparently well known in the artist community in Northwest Arkansas centered on Fayetteville, told us that he’s “a freedom loving artist liberal who had a taste for tinkering with machines. And of course he likes to blow things up.” Ryan Reilly has our report.
Rep. Ralph Hall (R) of Texas has been in the news this week because the octogenarian anti-environment crusader is taking over as chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee. But here at TPM we remember him for another proud moment: the day thirteen years ago when he slandered a teenaged sex slave into the House record on behalf of then-lobbyist Jack Abramoff. “[S]he wanted to do nude dancing,” said Hall of the fifteen-year-old girl who was taken from her parents in the Phillippines and forced to perform sex acts on stage and before video cameras at a Northern Marianas sex club.
TPM Reader JZ checks in on what proponents of gay marriage in New Jersey learned there and how it informs the legislative battle over DADT repeal:
DADT debate reminds me in many ways of our efforts in the waning days of the Corzine administration to get a marriage equality law through the legislature and onto the governor’s desk (he wanted to sign the bill before leaving office).
A handful of Republican and Democratic state senators jerked the pro-equality movement around for weeks, professing strong support for the bill, but always hemming and hawing about procedure and complaining that the slightest pressure or agitation on the part of grassroots activists was making it impossible for them to support the bill.
The House Democratic caucus has let its dissatisfaction with President Obama’s tax cut deal be known by passing a non-binding resolution opposing bringing the package to the floor in its current form.
TPM Reader BP says the House Dems should be looking in the mirror. Whether that’s true or not, everything that’s happening right now makes the point that it was no less than insane to pass on cracking this nut in September and opt to wait until after a hammering election somehow hoping against hope, thinking against thought that somehow it would be easier after the election. Really? Let’s face it: that was crazy.
With re: to the House Dems not going to vote on the tax deal, several are from my state of Oregon.
I think Congress should have addressed this issue before the election. I think the arm-twisting…….the Gallup poll and trotting out Larry Summers to convince members to vote in favor is behavior by the president that I find demeaning….call me naive.
Former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA), who led the fight to block President Clinton’s efforts to allow gays to serve openly in 1993, now says Congress should overturn DADT and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly.