Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal Caps Memorable "Lame Duck" Session

Today marked a historic day in American history, as another redoubt of prejudice and discrimination was breached. President Obama's signing of the repeal of the 17-year-old "Don't Ask Don't Tell" military policy on gay service members, wherein some 13,000 serving personnel have been expelled after their gay or lesbian sexual orientation was found out, is a further step along the path that has led the nation through the abolition of slavery, the extension of voting rights to women and blacks and the outlawing of racial segregation. As the President said at the signing ceremony, "We are not a nation of don't ask don't tell. We are a nation of e pluribus unum; out of many we are one."

Once the new policy is phased in over the next year America's forces will see the same changes that have happened with the British, Canadian and Australian forces. That is, essentially nothing of any note will happen at all. Years from now people will wonder what all the commotion was about. Either that or they will look at it in the same way they do now when they think of such controversies as thirty years ago over whether women could serve as police officers or sixty years ago about whether blacks could play major league baseball.

In an interesting side note, there was a pronounced regional cast to the 65-31 Senate vote. In the former slave states the vote in favor was 12 out of 30, forty percent. Senators representing the rest of the country voted in favor 53 to 13, eighty-one percent. Those areas that historically denied people their rights continue to have a residual predilection for doing so. In terms of party, all 55 Democrats and the 2 Independents who caucus with them voted yes. 8 Republicans voted yes and 31 voted no, or twenty-one percent. Republicans as a group were thus twice as opposed to gay rights as Southerners as a whole. That is remarkable.


The rest of the "lame duck" congressional session saw stunning action on a number of Obama initiatives that had been given up for dead after the "shellacking" Democrats took in the November election. They passed by such wide margins it is apparent Republican delays were primarily political rather than over any real substantive issue. Once they had the tax bill compromise they wanted in hand they went ahead and let their members vote as they wished. These included approval of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia. It had been held up 13 times and then passed 71-26.

Another was the First Responders Health Bill that provides $4.2 billion for the police, firefighters, and others who worked ground zero after 9/11 and have developed all manner of cancers and lung diseases. That passed unanimously in the Senate and better than three to one in the House.


A much tougher regimen of inspection, essentially tripling the frequency and giving the FDA authority to order rather than request recalls, was approved in the Food Safety Act. It passed the Senate 73-25.


The lone defeat was over the DREAM Act. It would have provided a path to citizenship for an estimated 1.2 million children whose parents brought them to America illegally if they maintained a clean record and spent two years in college or the armed forces. It narrowly passed the House 216-198 but did better in the Senate, garnering a 55-41 yes vote. Unfortunately, since the GOP filibusters everything in the Senate, it did not get the 60% vote it needed for passage.

Politically, the break in the logjam shows the Republican strategy of obstinately opposing everything Obama and the Democrats have proposed for two years was a smart strategy for them. After yesterday's DADT signing and passage of the other measures, the President's approval rating improved from 41% to 56% in the overnight Opinion Research/CNN poll. Congressional Democrats got 44% approval; congressional Republicans 42%.