Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Wild end to the weekend thanks to Wikileaks.

Members of Congress return to work after the 11-day Thanksgiving vacation. There's not much time in the lame duck to accomplish a lot. But, they really needed that vacation. The question is how long the Senate will stay in session to finish its work on the tax cut, the continuing resolution to fund the government, the START Treaty, the DREAM Act and the Defense Authorization, which includes the DADT language. Not all of it will get done, no doubt.

On DADT, the Pentagon will release its report tomorrow and there will be hearings on the report in the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday and Friday. Senators McCain and Graham were on the Sunday shows making the case to keep that law in place. There's no rational reason for keeping DADT any more. Now, opposition to repeal is based on pure homophobia. And, there's a lot of homophobia, both blatant and internalized, on Capitol Hill. One would think Lindsey, who serves in the reserves, would want to see it go. Lindsey also claimed the GOP caucus will "be united in the lame duck." Yesterday we learned from SLDN, that gay servicemembers are still being discharged.

The President has no public events. Later in the week, he's going to meet with the Congressional leaders from both parties. Well, that is, if the GOPers will deign to meet with him this time.

It's going to be an intense week.