Did President Obama drop a Prop. 8 hint on ABC 7 News in San Fran (VIDEO)

Via Greg Sargent (heck his whole piece comes from Greg Sargent):

In an interview with an ABC News affiliate in San Francisco, President Obama made his most extensive comments yet on the question of whether his administration will weigh in with a friend-of-the-court brief on the Proposition 8 case set to be heard by the Supreme Court. He said:

“The Solicitor General is still looking at this. I have to make sure that I’m not interjecting myself too much into this process, particularly when we’re not a party to the case. I can tell you, though, obviously, my personal view, which is that I think that same-sex couples should have the same rights and be treated like everybody else. And that’s something I feel very strongly about and my administration is acting on wherever we can.”

This is more encouraging than not. It shows that the administration is very actively considering taking this step. What’s more, Obama reiterated the view, spelled out in his Inaugural Address, that full equality before the law is the ultimate goal of his administration, stressed that he feels “very strongly” about it, and underscored that his administration is acting to bring this about “wherever we can.” Obviously, filing a brief in the Prop 8 case — one that forcefully articulates the view that Prop 8 is unconstitutional — falls into that category. It is something his administration can, in fact, do. And since the Court gives weight to the views of Solicitors General, doing it could help bring about a broad Supreme Court ruling that would put state laws banning gay marriage on the road to extinction — bringing us closer to the full equality that Obama himself articulated as a paramount moral goal.

At the same time, by saying that this is something his Solicitor General is examining, even as he noted the need to avoid interjecting himself into the case, Obama was also signaling that this process is unfolding as it’s supposed to: With the Solicitor General making this determination independently, on the merits. An optimistic reading of this is that it could give the Solicitor General the breathing room he needs to expound on the administration’s views of Prop 8 even if gay marriage opponents will inevitably cast such a move as political.

Stronger Together: Don't Ask Don't Tell - 2012 Democratic National Convention Video

Stronger Together: Gay Marriage - 2012 Democratic National Convention Video

ICYMI: @MichaelEDyson ripping the skin off Anti-Gay Black Preachers (VIDEO)

Metaphorically speaking, of course. But if anyone's deserved a rhetorical thrashing, it's been black preachers.

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So basically, Mitt Romney was pretty much a dick in prep school. (VIDEO)

So is this is who you want for your President?

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.

Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

Or this?

What Ric Grenell's departure from the Romney campaign tells us about Romney as a leader...

It tells us that he isn't much of one, and that his first instinct is always to make the problem go away, not to solve it.

From Andrew Sullivan:

Some actual reporting from yours truly. It seems clear from sources close to Grenell and reporters on the foreign policy beat that his turning point came last week. He'd been part of organizing a conference call to respond to Vice President Biden's foreign policy speech, now known best for the "big stick" remark. So some reporters were puzzled as to why Grenell, a week into his job as Romney's national security spokesman, was not introduced by name as part of the Romney team at the beginning of the call, and his voice completely absent from the conversation. Some even called and questioned him afterwards as to why he was absent. He wasn't absent. He was simply muzzled. For a job where you are supposed to maintain good relations with reporters, being silenced on a key conference call on your area of expertise is pretty damaging. Especially when you helped set it up.

Sources close to Grenell say that he was specifically told by those high up in the Romney campaign to stay silent on the call, even while he was on it. And this was not the only time he had been instructed to shut up. Their response to the far right fooferaw was simply to go silent, to keep Grenell off-stage and mute, and to wait till the storm passed. But the storm was not likely to pass if no one in the Romney camp was prepared to back Grenell up. Hence his dilemma. The obvious solution was simply to get Grenell out there doling out the neocon red meat - which would have immediately changed the subject and helped dispel base skepticism. Instead the terrified Romneyites shut him up without any actual plan for when he might subsequently be able to do his job. To my mind, it's a mark of his integrity that he decided to quit rather than be put in this absurd situation. And it's a mark of Romney's fundamental weakness within his own party that he could not back his spokesman against the Bryan Fischers and Matthew Francks.

If you want to watch the star-studded Prop. 8 play, you can watch it here (VIDEO)

All two hours of it.

Wow. Apparently, Mittens believes in "Pray Away the Gay"... (VIDEO)

Uhhh, this is gonna be a problem for Mittens...

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"Governor, good luck...you're gonna need it..." (VIDEO)

First caught by Andrew Sullivan. As he said: "You see a man meet a machine"



Study this well, fellow Democrats. This is why Romney is going to lose the 2012 Election.

It's not even this particular position. It's his total inability to listen, to engage in a...well, human way with this man, or anyone.

All he had to say was: "Listen, my own moral/religious convictions preclude me from supporting the idea of anything but a man and a woman getting married, but...you're right, the spouses of Gay Soldiers deserve all the familial and visitation and health care rights provided to straight couples, and I think Federal Law can fix that."

It would still be bullshit, because if Mittens hasn't noticed, the rest of the country has moved on. The guy still might not vote for him in the fall, but at least Mitt would keep the guy in the undecided column.

That's one thing Mitt is ultimately good at...you can't stay "undecided" around him for long, particularly when you look him in the eye.

The President's Remarks before the HRC's Annual National Dinner (VIDEO)

Man, someone's really running for President in 2016

A two-fer from Martin O'Malley:

The ratings agency Moody's is threatening to reduce the rating of five states with AAA credit (along with the rating of the federal government) if Congress fails to raise the debt limit in early August. Now the governor of one of those states -- Maryland's Martin O'Malley -- is publicly singling out the Republicans in Congress who are preventing swift action on the debt limit.

"All of this brinksmanship and these threats of the dinosaur wing of the Republican party led by Eric Cantor to drive us needlessly into a default have impacted confidence I think throughout the country," O'Malley told me in a Tuesday interview. "It's impacted consumer confidence, it's impacted investor confidence, it's impacted the confidence of small businesses who are the backbone of this economy and who need to hire again. In that respect it's already had an effect. The closer we get to this deadline, and the more immediate ramifications that has for those of us that are going out into the bond market."

Remember, he also took a big step out of Andrew Cuomo's shadow for 2016.

Someone's running for President in 2016...

At some point I'm going to make a blogpost featuring names of people to know, what their current job is, and where they've got their eye.

One of my entries as going to be: Martin O'Malley, currently Governor of Maryland, and possible 2016 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.

Today's announcement kinda sealed that deal.  After all, another entry would have to be Andrew Cuomo, currently Governor of New York, and possible 2016 Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.

For those of you who miss Al Franken's former Radio Show...

Great catch by Ryan J. Reilly over at Talking Points Memo. Al used to do this stuff on the air, and he was going against a tape of someone saying something.

This, is on the record, with the joker sitting right there in front of him.



Release. Rotation. Splash. Nothin' but net.

Jerry Seinfeld's Comedy Repression Therapy... (VIDEO)

By the way, was Jerry getting any Medicaid dollars for this appearance? Just wondering, because isn't that the real problem with Marcus Bachmann's clinic?  Federal money for what's essentially a religious exercise in doing nothing?

The Daily Show - Field of Dongs
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And...

The Daily Show - Comedy Repression Therapy
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

TPM: Dan Choi gets his West Point ring back from Harry Reid (VIDEO)

Still pumping my fist, and doing a victory lap.

President Obama signs Don't Ask-Don't Tell repeal (VIDEO)

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One day, this will be normal. One day there will be a GLBT President, and no one will know the difference.

I was in the air headed to (shudder) Texas for the Christmas Holiday when the first cloture vote was cast, and I had just gotten in a hearty Goode Barbecue Company lunch when I got the word, via the CNN iPad App, that DADT was dead once and for all.  All day, all I managed was a Tweet paraphrasing my standard phrase of joy: "DADT Repealed...and let the church say Amen."

And yes, that is my hand held up in praise of the almighty as I type/say that.

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I'm a straight man, so I don't think I'm ever going to fully comprehend the joy (at least, I hope its joy) that our friends in the GLBT Community are feeling today, but I am Black, so I think I have an idea.

In 1948, a Democratic President (Truman) signed an Executive Order desegregating the Military.

(Side note: Unfortunately, it was a complete and utter misreading of this bit of history that gave rise to the bull@#$ notion that President Obama could simply wipe away DADT with the stroke of a pen...isn't that right Jane Hamsher?)

Anyway, what happened after that wasn't just a bunch of black Soldiers fighting and dying alongside whites (it was Korea, after all).  What really happened was African-Americans finally had a feeling of true citizenship, a feeling that finally, finally, there was a place for us in America.  Finally, we counted...or at least we started to in a major way.

I remember typing something along those lines when President Obama was first elected in 2008, the absolute lift and joy I felt as a black man, and the pride as a similar feeling came over me.  It was just as the First Lady (may or may not have) said, for the first time I felt proud to be an American, and I hoped that one day my fellow Latino Americans feel the same way when President Martinez or Solares takes the Oath of Office, or my fellow Asian Americans when President Cho or Leung is sworn in.

Now is the GLBT's moment.  No, this isn't an openly Gay President...but it could be the start to one.

Don't tell me that a Gay man or woman, straight-laced, and suited up, bearing none of the stereotypical bull@#$% characteristics best left to Sitcoms, openly in love with the partner of their choosing, and carrying with them a resume of medals won, and valor attained, can't one day, and one day within my lifetime, stand before the Chief Justice of the United States (who doesn't screw up the ceremony), and become our next President.

The miracle won't be that magic moment happening...

...the miracle, is that magic moment happening, and no one noticing the difference.

I know there is still a long way to go between that day, and today.  But my fellow Americans, you will one day be able to look back on this day, and do something that maybe you haven't been able to do in a while...

You will look back on DADT repeal...and know hope.



Note: Special hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for that last line which is almost his signature nowadays, and to The Only Adult in the Room for hitting that Rachel footage first.

TOUCHDOWN!! United States of America!!

DADT is dead.  GLBT Community, feel free to spike the ball.

Of course, the rest of the world is wondering what the hell took us so long.

How should the Senate Vote?

First caught by Andrew Sullivan. If I had a frame, I'd hang it on my wall.

Steve Benen: "For those inclined to blame President Obama for Senate Republicans defeating repeal today, spare me."

Ouch.

For those inclined to blame President Obama for Senate Republicans defeating repeal today, spare me. The White House clearly pushed for repeal, and did everything possible to use the Pentagon's report last week to apply the necessary pressure to deliver. By most counts, there really are 60 votes to make repeal a reality, and that's the case because President Obama has helped take the lead on the issue. If you're looking to blame someone, I'd start with 40 senators who filibustered today.