Good morning.
This is the a very, very big week in the effort to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The House of Representatives should vote on repeal language as an amendment to the 2011 Defense authorization bill. Rep. Patrick Murphy is leading the effort in the House. The Senate Armed Services Committee will be marking up its version of that authorization bill and will vote to include the repeal language. Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of Armed Services, and Senator Lieberman, are the key players on the Committee.
The White House has been silent and on the sidelines about on what's going on -- despite Obama's promise in the State of the Union to finally end DADT this year. But, Secretary Gates sent a letter to the Hill on April 30th stating that he doesn't want a repeal this year. That's the stated position of the administration. Yet, Congress is moving ahead anyway. The President is meeting with Secretary Gates today at 4:30 PM.
If you want DADT repealed, call your members of Congress today. Servicembers United has a launched a "Give 'em hell" campaign to get calls to the Hill. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) also launched an action alert last week. Hill offices really need to hear from our side. Too many members of Congress can be spineless, so help give them a spine. Call your Senators and House member. The main switchboard for the Capitol is 202-224-3121. As SLDN's Aubrey Sarvis told Kerry Eleveld:
“This is our ‘all hands on deck’ moment.”Make the calls. At this point, it matters.
Apparently, the big news isn't that oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico and there seems to be no real plan to stop it. It's an unprecedented ecological disaster, yet the response isn't meeting the magnitude of the crisis. No, the big news is that a member of the British royal family has done something scandalous. The TODAY Show is agog about it and I suspect we'll see this story all over cable news today. Who cares? Really.
Okay, busy week ahead. Make your calls (yes, even if you're members are on our side, call them. The other side is burning up the phone lines.)
