
The point is that ID is by design intended to hopefully provide insight from multiple perspectives on the major naval policy topics discussed, and those perspectives will often passionately be different. I hope so - I may not be very political but i love a good debate.
But on one topic discussed here - Don't Ask, Don't Tell - it is interesting to me that both Robert and Bryan agree it is time to repeal. I think it is time for the law to go as well, but for different reasons. It is a subject that has huge attention in the Navy, as represented by the large number of comments discussions about DADT can produce on blogs. People get very passionate about political discussions like DADT - and like all hot political debates the passion often leads to better ideas and discussion, although those same debates sometimes also bring out the very worst in people.
My only question as the summer rolled into voting season on Capitol Hill has been what would the Democrats do to screw up the DADT repeal before the defense bill vote. Well, Harry Reid, line one:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday he will add the DREAM Act, a controversial immigration measure, to a defense policy bill the Senate will take up next week.DADT may be controversial, but the repeal was going to pass within the bill - indeed there is Republican and DoD support to repeal DADT which means the repeal was going to be a bipartisan effort in a military ready to engage the issue head on.
The decision means the defense bill, which often passes with bipartisan support, will be home to two major, thorny political issues - the other being the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
The DREAM Act on the other hand is going to be a huge political dumpster fire. Look, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Green Card working visa legal immigrants working in the US today who have been following the rules trying to become citizens for much longer than 6 years - and Congress wants to pass a law giving non-working illegals under age 18 a six year path to citizenship? It frustrates me to no end that legal immigrant working adults are stuck in a terribly broken government system trying to attain citizenship, and all the Washington elites do is focus efforts towards illegal immigration - often sacrificing everyone else (in this case the homosexual community, not to mention a DoD ready to establish a new policy that actually fits the complexity of the DoD) to the alter of illegal immigrants.
It does not even matter that the DREAM Act has several good ideas that make up its core. It does not matter at all that there is actually a lot of good in the bill - because it is nothing more than a band aid to a bullet wound - and I won't even go into the legal side of the various family law issues surrounding custody of minors the bill introduces on a mass scale.
The political problem is ultimately that the DREAM Act is a complicated, profile driven, and ultimately very unknown immigration concept that is part of a highly politically charged issue like immigration just a few weeks before an election, and thus the DREAM Act is able to be anything and everything a critic with money wants it to be. Immigration is a political lightning rod discussion that is important to a lot of people - hell I am very interested in immigration reform because of the enormous impact the failed legal immigration policies have today on the IT community. For example, I can tell stories all day of people in the IT industry who are essentially legal US slaves because of the broken green card work visa system. I am not abusing the word slave either - and even worse several state governments actively and knowingly exploit that slave work system with their broken low bid contractor policies.
I have a very hard time believing the 2010 defense bill will pass if Harry Reid attaches the DREAM Act to the defense bill - meaning the defense bill may not pass until after the election. If the Defense bill does fail, will the defense bill that emerges from the smoke include the repeal of DADT? Nobody knows, because it is an election year.
This move doesn't make any sense to me, which is why I am left with the opinion Harry Reid is willing to sacrifice DADT to some greater cause. Maybe folks who have followed DADT in Nevada and others who are more politically astute than I can explain why Harry Reid just took DADT off the serenity of the library shelf and tossed it into the bonfire?
Does Harry Reid hate gay people? Naa, he simply understands that no matter what - they will vote for him and other Democrats. Democrats in 2010 are just reminding us they really aren't any different than Republicans in 2006 - and will gladly screw their own entrenched constituencies when doing so offers the possibility of advancing their own pursuits for political power. That dysfunctional selfish attitude towards power in Washington today is why at some level I admire what the grass roots level tea party movement is trying to do - organize people who are tired of having their values dismissed at the whim by power thirsty elites like Harry Reid.