Slate is providing a fantastic public service that should terrify the NRA: "an interactive, crowdsourced tally of the toll firearms have taken since Dec. 14".

Use it. Add to it. Be appalled by it.

How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

The answer to the simple question in that headline is surprisingly hard to come by. So Slate and the Twitter feed @GunDeaths are collecting data for our crowdsourced interactive. This data is necessarily incomplete. But the more people who are paying attention, the better the data will be. You can help us draw a more complete picture of gun violence in America. If you know about a gun death in your community that isn’t represented here, please tweet @GunDeaths with a citation. (If you’re not on Twitter, you can email slatedata@gmail.com.) And if you’d like to use this data yourself for your own projects, it’s open. You can download it here.

While I bemoaned the fact that Only 44% Support Stricter Gun Control Laws, A Record Low in a post on Oct 9 2009, the situation today is quite different:

More from Gallup.

At the end of the  mind blowingly counterintuitive post The More Dependent on the Government You Are, the More You Want to Cut It! I asked,

Anyone have any ideas as to what could be going on?

Though I doubt Paul Krugman reads A Blue View, he did try to answer my question in his column today, Moochers Against Welfare

But why do regions that rely on the safety net elect politicians who want to tear it down? I’ve seen three main explanations.

First, there is Thomas Frank’s thesis in his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”: working-class Americans are induced to vote against their own interests by the G.O.P.’s exploitation of social issues. And it’s true that, for example, Americans who regularly attend church are much more likely to vote Republican, at any given level of income, than those who don’t.

Still, as Columbia University’s Andrew Gelman points out, the really striking red-blue voting divide is among the affluent: High-income residents of red states are overwhelmingly Republican; high-income residents of blue states only mildly more Republican than their poorer neighbors. Like Mr. Frank, Mr. Gelman invokes social issues, but in the opposite direction. Affluent voters in the Northeast tend to be social liberals who would benefit from tax cuts but are repelled by things like the G.O.P.’s war on contraception.

Finally, Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler points out that many beneficiaries of government programs seem confused about their own place in the system. She tells us that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program.”

Presumably, then, voters imagine that pledges to slash government spending mean cutting programs for the idle poor, not things they themselves count on. And this is a confusion politicians deliberately encourage. For example, when Mr. Romney responded to the new Obama budget, he condemned Mr. Obama for not taking on entitlement spending — and, in the very next breath, attacked him for cutting Medicare.

What do you think?  Does he explain it? (And don't forget to check the comments on the original post.)

If you haven't read this excellent NY Times story, Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It, yet you should. One section of it, however, just blew me away:

One of the oldest criticisms of democracy is that the people will inevitably drain the treasury by demanding more spending than taxes. The theory is that citizens who get more than they pay for will vote for politicians who promise to increase spending.

But Dean P. Lacy, a professor of political science at Dartmouth College, has identified a twist on that theme in American politics over the last generation. Support for Republican candidates, who generally promise to cut government spending, has increased since 1980 in states where the federal government spends more than it collects. The greater the dependence, the greater the support for Republican candidates.

Conversely, states that pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits tend to support Democratic candidates. And Professor Lacy found that the pattern could not be explained by demographics or social issues.

This was so mind blowingly counterintuitive, I wrote to the reporter who provided the reference so I (and you) could delve deeper.

Anyone have any ideas as to what could be going on?

In today's NY Times, Bruce Bartlett, an economist who has held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul, defended  Republicans opposed to extending the payroll tax cut that helps working people.

Here's Bartlett's second argument against extending the payroll tax cut:

The payroll tax cut helps many workers who have no need for it and will only pocket the tax savings.

How many people who agree with this line of reasoning will still agree when it is applied to extending the Bush tax cuts do you think?

The Bush tax cuts help many wealthy people who have no need for it and will only pocket the tax savings.

Close to zero I bet.

Truly scary amounts: check out your town.

Dana Millbank summarizing the Tea Party:

A movement of the plutocrats, by the political professionals and for the powerful.

Here's the rest of his Wash Post column:

On the morning of Oct. 14, a cyber-insurgency caused servers to crash at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

The culprits, however, weren't attacking the chamber; they were well-meaning citizens who overwhelmed the big-business lobbying group with a sudden wave of online contributions. It was one of the more extraordinary events in the annals of American populism: the common man voluntarily giving money to make the rich richer.

These donors to the cause of the Fortune 500 were motivated by a radio appeal from the de facto leader of the Tea Party movement, Glenn Beck, who told them: "Put your money where your mouth is. If you have a dollar, please go to . . . the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and donate today." Chamber members, he said, "are our parents. They're our grandparents. They are us."

They are? Listed as members of the chamber's board are representatives from Pfizer, ConocoPhillips, Lockheed Martin, JPMorgan Chase, Dow Chemical, Ken Starr's old law and lobbying firm, and Rolls-Royce North America. Nothing says grass-roots insurgency quite like Rolls-Royce -- and nothing says populist revolt quite like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In describing the big-business group as "us," Beck (annual revenue: $32 million) provided an unintended moment of clarity into the power behind the Tea Party movement. These aren't peasants with pitchforks; these are plutocrats with payrolls.

There is genuine populist anger out there. But the angry have been deceived and exploited by posers who belong to the same class of "elites" and "insiders" that the Tea Party movement supposedly deplores. Americans who want to stick it to the man are instead sending money to the man.

Consider the candidates on the ballot next month who are getting Tea Party support. In the Connecticut Senate race, there's Linda McMahon, who with her husband has a billion-dollar pro-wrestling empire. The challenger to Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold in Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, is a millionaire manufacturing executive. The former head of Gateway computers, Rick Snyder, is spending generously from his fortune to win the Michigan governor's race.

In New York, the Republican gubernatorial candidate is developer Carl Paladino, with a net worth put at $150 million. And Rick Scott, running for governor in Florida, has a net worth of $219 million from his career as a health-care executive. Then there's California, where the Republican Senate nominee is former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina and the gubernatorial candidate is former e-Bay boss Meg Whitman.

Democrats have their phony populists, too. Billionaire Jeff Greene, who cashed in on subprime mortgages, made an unsuccessful attempt at the U.S. Senate nomination in Florida. But more often this year, it's the Democrats who are defending themselves against the "elite" allegation.

"The elite's fear and loathing of the tea party movement is rooted in the recognition that the real change is only now coming," writes Tony Blankley, the conservative commentator who exempts himself from the elite label even though he worked for the speaker of the House and now toils for a prominent PR firm. The Tea Party, he wrote, will "constrain the elite's economic and cultural hegemony."

Oh? Who will do this constraining of the elite's hegemony? Why, people such as the Tea Party's Senate candidate from Alaska, Joe Miller (Yale Law School); and from Kentucky, Rand Paul (Duke Medical School), and from Colorado, Ken Buck (Princeton University).

There's also the Tea Party Express, the creation of longtime Republican consultant Sal Russo. A colleague at Russo's consulting firm pitched the Tea Party Express idea as a way to boost the company's bottom line. According to an internal e-mail intercepted by the New York Times, it came from a "desire to give a boost to our PAC and position us as a growing force/leading force."

The guy who put together the Tea Party "Contract From America" previously worked on Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Another Tea Party group, Americans for Prosperity, has been lavishly funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.

A movement of the plutocrats, by the political professionals and for the powerful: Now that's something Tea Partyers should be mad about.

Jonathan Chait:

I hope every deficit hawk Tea Partier reads this Davide Leonhart column ... if you know  any, pass it on:

In their Pledge to America, Congressional Republicans have used the old trick of promising specific tax cuts and vague spending cuts. It’s the politically easy approach, and it is likely to be as bad for the budget as when George W. Bush tried it.

The sad thing is, a truly conservative approach to the deficit does exist. You can find strands of it among Republican governors, some of the party’s current Congressional candidates and the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan.

The brief version might sound something like this: The federal government has outgrown its ability to pay for itself. Our economic future and even our national security depend on solving the problem. Yet President Obama has expanded health insurance, increased education spending and escalated a war of choice. Elect us, and fiscal responsibility won’t have to wait in line.

The detailed plan would start in the same place that Republican campaign rhetoric does, with rooting out waste and bloat. Some tasks, like mail delivery and air traffic control, could be privatized. The federal work force could be reduced, and pay for federal workers could be cut. Federal aid to states could be cut, too.

But then comes the crucial difference.

Actual fiscal conservatives acknowledge that these steps do not come anywhere close to solving the long-term deficit. By 2035, the deficit (even without counting interest payments on the federal debt) is on course to reach $1.9 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. If you reduced domestic discretionary spending to its share of the economy under Ronald Reagan and then eviscerated it an additional 20 percent, you would shrink the deficit by all of $100 billion.

The bulk of the deficit problem instead comes from three popular programs, Medicare, Social Security and the military, and they happen to be the ones the Republican pledge exempts from cuts. But it’s impossible to fix the deficit without making cuts to these programs or raising taxes. To suggest otherwise is to claim that 10 minus 1 equals 5.

“We as Republicans need to realize that you can’t just cut off the welfare queen and balance the budget,” says Rand Paul, a Senate candidate in Kentucky, who has some extreme views on other issues but is evidently pro-arithmetic. “The only way you’ll ever get close to balancing the budget is if you look at the entire budget.”

When they’re not talking for quotation, some Republicans will explain that the pledge is, of course, a political document: although it may not spell out specific budget cuts, the party is willing to make them. But I think this view misreads recent history.

Republicans controlled the White House and Congress for much of 2001 to 2006, and they turned a big surplus into a big deficit. In the last two years, they have opposed several Obama administration plans for reducing the deficit, including cuts to Medicare, weapons programs and farm subsidies, as well as tax increases on the affluent. Given this history, my colleague Ross Douthat concluded that the pledge “might create a larger deficit than the Obama alternative.”

In short, the pledge imagines a world without tough choices, where we can have low taxes, big government and a balanced budget. And therein lies the path to ever larger deficits.

•

The essential question for any would-be budget balancer is how large the federal government should be.

For most of the last century, the government has been getting bigger. Its spending equaled about 2 percent of gross domestic product in 1900, 14 percent just after World War II and, after ballooning to almost 25 percent during the financial crisis, will fall to 23 percent in the next few years.

There is a good argument that the government should grow as societies become richer. Once people can afford the basics, they want services that the private sector often does not provide, like a strong military, good schools, generous medical care and a comfortable retirement, as Matt Miller, a McKinsey & Company consultant and former Clinton administration official, has pointed out.

To me, this pattern argues for making tax increases a big part of the deficit solution. Maybe taxes would eventually rise to 23 percent of G.D.P., rather than 19 percent, as under current policy. Spending could then be cut from the 26 percent it is scheduled to reach in 2035, yet still be high enough to afford the investments that lead to prosperity. After all, the Internet, the highway system and the biotechnology sector all began as government programs.

Conservatives counter that governments just as often allocate resources badly, and there is something to this. It’s the small-government case that Mr. Paul, Mr. Ryan and governors like Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Chris Christie of New Jersey are making.

Mr. Paul emphasizes wasteful military spending that lines the pockets of military contractors rather than protecting the country. A bipartisan task force of military experts has identified cuts that would eventually equal almost 1 percent of G.D.P.

On Social Security, Marco Rubio, the Republican Senate candidate in Florida, has suggested raising the eligibility age. Two other Republican Senate candidates, Sharron Angle of Nevada and Joe Miller of Alaska, have gone further, suggesting a phaseout of Social Security. In the long run, changes to Social Security could save even more money than military cuts.

But the biggest cause of looming deficits is Medicare. Mr. Daniels, a possible 2012 presidential candidate, recently told Newsweek that he favored Medicare cuts. Mr. Ryan has been willing to get specific. For everyone now under 55, he wants to turn Medicare into a voucher program that’s much less generous than the program is scheduled to be.

Mr. Ryan’s budget blueprint offers an especially pointed contrast with the pledge. The Ryan plan calls for holding taxes at around 19 percent of G.D.P. and suggests specific cuts to bring spending in line. The pledge calls for even lower taxes — while offering almost no detail on spending cuts.

Which seems more credible?

Unfortunately, elected Republicans have often backed away from their own fiscally conservative ideas when pushed. Mr. Ryan says he supports the pledge. Ms. Angle has reversed herself on Social Security. Mr. Daniels has said tax increases should be an option, but that will be a tough position to keep in a presidential campaign.

And I get it. Voters don’t like having their taxes raised or their benefits cut. I don’t like it, either.

But, remember, when politicians tell you that they are opposed to tax increases, Medicare cuts, Social Security cuts and military cuts, they’re really saying that they are in favor of crippling deficits.

Not only is the GOP's Pledge hypocricital, but it's far from new:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Postcards From the Pledge
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Ezra Klein:  

"America is more than a country," begins the GOP's 'Pledge to America.' America, it turns out, is an "idea," an "inspiration," and a "belief." And the GOP wants to govern it.

Their policy agenda is detailed and specific -- a decision they will almost certainly come to regret. Because when you get past the adjectives and soaring language, the talk of inalienable rights and constitutional guarantees, you're left with a set of hard promises that will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars, take health-care insurance away from tens of millions of people, create a level of policy uncertainty businesses have never previously known, and suck demand out of an economy that's already got too little of it.

You're also left with a difficult question: What, exactly, does the Republican Party believe? The document speaks constantly and eloquently of the dangers of debt -- but offers a raft of proposals that would sharply increase it. It says, in one paragraph, that the Republican Party will commit itself to "greater liberty" and then, in the next, that it will protect "traditional marriage." It says that "small business must have certainty that the rules won't change every few months" and then promises to change all the rules that the Obama administration has passed in recent months. It is a document with a clear theory of what has gone wrong -- debt, policy uncertainty, and too much government -- and a solid promise to make most of it worse.

Take the deficit. Perhaps the two most consequential policies in the proposal are the full extension of the Bush tax cuts and the full repeal of the health-care law. The first would increase the deficit by more than $4 trillion over the next 10 years, and many trillions of dollars more after that. The second would increase the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next 10 years, and many trillions of dollars more after that. Nothing in the document comes close to paying for these two proposals, and the authors know it: The document never says that the policy proposals it offers will ultimately reduces the deficit.

Then there's the question of policy uncertainty. The health-care law, which is now in the early stages of implementation, would be repealed. In its place, Republicans would write a new health-care bill. They offer some guidance as to what it would look like, but as every business knows, the congressional and regulatory processes are both long and uncertain. That's joined by three sentences on shrinking and reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- the policy's anticipated effects on the housing market, where the two mortgage giants are backing nine out of every 10 new loans, are not mentioned -- and a promise to force a separate congressional vote on every regulation with more than $100 million in economic impact, which would force businesses to figure out a new, dual-track regulatory process.

The agenda is least confused on the subject of reducing government. Though it says little about specific cuts it would make, the pledge includes a cap on non-security discretionary funding, the aforementioned congressional review process for big-ticket regulations, a hiring freeze on federal employees, and weekly votes on spending cuts. None of these policies is spelled out in any detail, but nor are they contradicted by other elements of the plan. If you believe, as the Republicans say they do, in the benefits of reducing the number of public jobs and the amount of public spending in an economy that has too few jobs and too little spending, then this makes some sense. Otherwise, it doesn't. And as Republicans have been hammering Democrats over recent jobs reports where public payrolls fall and private payrolls rise, it's not even clear that they believe this.

Of course, you could say that about most of the plan. It is hard to believe in both deficit reduction and policies that would add trillions to the deficit. It's also hard to warn of the dangers posed by regulatory uncertainty and then propose changing all the rules.

At the end of the day, America may be an idea -- but it is also a country. And it needs to be governed. This proposal avoids the hard choices of governance. It says what it thinks will be popular and then proposes what it thinks will be popular -- even when the two conflict. That, I fear, is a bad idea.

Lisa Moraes:

Comedy Central is going to stage the mother of all marketing stunts here in Washington -- oh wait, Fox News Channel already did that.

Well, anyway, the Viacom-owned network will launch the second mother of all marketing stunts in Washington on Oct. 30 when both its late-night hosts, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, host opposing rallies on the Mall.

"The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart announced on his show Thursday night his Rally to Restore Sanity -- "a rally for the people who've been too busy to go to rallies, who actually have lives and families and jobs (or are looking for jobs) -- not so much the Silent Majority as the Busy Majority." The rally will be held, Stewart's camp said, "to beg America to stop shouting, throwing and drawing Hitler mustaches on people other than Hitler (or Charlie Chaplin)."

Immediately thereafter, "The Colbert Report's," um, Colbert, announced his Keep Fear Alive rally, with instructions to "pack an overnight bag with five extra sets of underwear -- you're going to need them. Because to Restore Truthiness we must always ... Shh!!! What's that sound?! I think there's someone behind you! Run!"

Comedy Central promises the Rally Rivalry will be "bigger than Nixon/Kennedy, Ali/Foreman, Aniston/Jolie, 50 Cent/Nas, Joe/The Volcano, Alien/Predator, Bunny/Fudd and Ecks/Sever combined."

But both men are operating in the shadow of FNC's prime-time talking head Glenn Beck, who, back in July, announced that he would, on Aug. 28, stage a "Restoring Honor" rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Imagine Beck's surprise when he discovered that was the same day Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial 47 years earlier.

We've discovered a permit application was indeed submitted for the Rally Rivalry, on Sept. 8 to the National Park Service by Minassian Media, Comedy Central, and Chris Wane and Associates.

While the permit has not yet been issued, "we do not see any hugely outstanding issues that would prevent or bar the signing of a permit," Bill Line, spokesman for the National Park Service, told WaPo TeamTV's Mall Rally Correspondent, David Montgomery.

The permit application modestly estimates a crowd of just 25,000 people. Comedy Central apparently does not think there are very many people with a sense of humor living within a reasonable commute of the Mall. According to press reports, about 87,000 people showed up for Beck's rally -- though Beck on his show dismissed that number as pure horseradish and told his viewers they should believe no one but him and he says the number was hooey, and to believe only his estimate. He said "a minimum of 500,000" people came to his rally which, he added, was "the sixth-largest gathering" on the Mall, ever and approximately the same sized crowd as had come to the Mall for that other defining moment:

"Ronald Reagan's inauguration."

The Stewart/Colbert permit application is for the north side of the Washington Monument grounds, which does not include the Lincoln Memorial, Reflecting Pool or what is known as the National Mall, Line says, what with the Monument grounds being bounded by Constitution, Independence, 15th and 17th, and the north side is the side toward Constitution.

On the other hand, he also said the Park Service and applicants are negotiating details as we write. Line declined to discuss specifics of those negotiations.

Watch the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert announcements here:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Rally to Restore Sanity
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The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
March to Keep Fear Alive
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

At War:

Since the 1993 law known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” (D.A.D.T.) was enacted by Congress, more than 14,000 gay service members have been discharged, at a cost to taxpayers of $363 million over the last decade. I am one of them. I was discharged just one month ago.

I am a 31-year-old West Point graduate who spent nine years in the military, served as a platoon leader in the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy and commanded both a Stryker Infantry Company and a brigade headquarters company in Alaska.

Many people do not even realize the D.A.D.T. policy is still being enforced, especially in light of recent legal rulings, or they think the policy merely asks us not to talk about it. But it goes much further, denying even our ability to exist legally within the military, regardless of the quality of our performance.

As a result, it makes any gay service member a target of anyone who chooses to make an accusation, or a casualty of any unlucky combination of facts that might expose him or her. All someone has to do is to be considered minimally reliable to report a service member as being gay. An investigation results.

I have always told people when discussing the military that “it makes everyone better, teaching us all important values like teamwork and selflessness.”

But if you are gay, I am no longer sure that is entirely accurate. People in the military are not trained to be liars. Our mission is not subterfuge, but that is what this policy forces those of us who are gay to become party to, and the cognitive dissonance is immense. We are trained to manage the fear that may descend during a firefight, but we do not expect to live under the daily fear that our peers may sense something different about us and report us as being gay.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Be

While I spent every hour at work trying, like all my peers, to be the perfect Army officer, taking care of and leading our soldiers, I also spent every day being paranoid, worrying about who suspected I was gay, and what they might do about it.

The paranoia is sickening, and it just eats you from within. Some quietly slip out of the service while others, indoctrinated to serve a cause that is just, stick it out.

The Department of Defense spends millions of dollars and dedicates immense amounts of time to ensure the psychological welfare of our service members remains sound. Except if you are gay. Some gay members of the Armed Services suffer from depression because they try to deal with being all they can be at work, but are unable to live a life that could make them happy.

Unfortunately, from 1993 until the spring of 2010, you could be reported as gay by your chaplain, your doctor and even your psychiatrist. Nowhere in the organization could you be safe if you were gay, even when the assistance provided could be vital.

A colleague of mine relayed a story of a soldier whose boyfriend was killed by a roadside blast while both were deployed. The only person the grieving soldier could safely talk to was an Australian officer he didn’t even know. His most trusted teammates — members of his unit — were not allowed to be there for him when he needed them most.

Failure Is the Only Option

There is no way that a gay service member can navigate this policy with honor, integrity, or self-respect intact. Soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen traditionally know virtually everything about one another. The military is inherently a personal affair. Thus, if you are gay and choose to have a relationship, you must isolate yourself from your otherwise inclusive and close-knit organization, then lie about your “housemate” and cover up where you socialized. There go the Army values of “honor” and “integrity” — values we all believe very deeply in.

If you attempt to comply, somehow, with the policy, you dedicate yourself to the most epic and despicably unnecessary sense of loneliness one can imagine, while working in a profession in which you desperately need the nurturing support of others. I know; I’ve been there. You are forced to lie when soldiers, peers or superiors ask you why you’re not married, or anything else about your personal life.

Many service members end up in a no-man’s-land: they break the rules (i.e. have relationships), but can never maintain something meaningful and long-lasting because of the pervasive environment of fear and deception that they have to maintain. Any route you take, you may be able to maintain your career, but you are destroyed bit by bit on the inside each step of the way. Part of you always feels stigmatized or ashamed for something you cannot change, no matter how badly you might want to.

And no matter what you do, you are somehow failing to live up to the military’s highest stated values, because you are an outlaw as a gay soldier from the day you step into the military. When told to “do the right thing” you are left with no feasible option meet that demand.

I Already Lived in a Post-D.A.D.T. Army

In my case, after the military learned from others that I was gay, I served for 14 more months during investigations and administrative actions to discharge me. Everyone knew, so, essentially, I lived for more than a year in a post-D.A.D.T. work environment.

During that time, I was part of a two-officer team planning our 4,000-soldier brigade’s redeployment from Iraq to Alaska. I did initial planning in relation to the Iraqi elections. I served for one year in the brigade’s planning cell in Alaska after return from deployment. The unit could have sent me somewhere else, but chose not to because they felt I made a critical contribution to the organization and they had always respected my work.

Four months after being found out, and 10 months prior to leaving the Army, I found myself with a boyfriend for the first time in my life, because I was no longer scared to have such a relationship. He and I attended social events and dinners with my peers. I talked about him at work. My life became one of full disclosure.

Amid all of that, the unit continued to function and I continued to be respected for the work I did. Many, from both companies I commanded, approached me to say that they didn’t care if I was gay — they thought I was one of the best commanders they’d ever had. And unbeknownst to me, many had guessed I was probably gay all along. Most didn’t care about my sexuality. I was accepted by most of them, as was my boyfriend, and I had never been happier in the military. Nothing collapsed, no one stopped talking to me, the Earth spun on its axis, and the unit prepared to fight another day.

There are parts of my story in the lives of all of the gay service members who continue to serve in our military — and there are 65,000, according to the Urban Institute. Their commitment is immense. So dedicated are they to service that they eschew the rights that every other soldier enjoys. Their road is more difficult than most people realize, and we reward their exceptionally dedicated and selfless service by undermining their ability to live a happy, honest, and fulfilling life — all of which would actually make them even better soldiers.

I wish that they could tell their own stories, but in a master-stroke of policy-making, they are under a gag order that prevents from discussing D.A.D.T.’s impact upon them, if they wish to keep their job serving their country. So I have tried to tell part of my story.

A Policy Without Credible Rationale

A remarkably consistent string of research reports have shown that there is no link between openly gay service members in the United States or foreign militaries having a negative effect on performance. Nevertheless, the “cohesion” argument remains the primary defense for the policy.

But in the most recent Gallup survey of American attitudes toward gays in the military, every demographic broadly supports gays serving openly. Among 18-year-olds to 29-year-olds — who make up the vast majority of the military force — support for overturning the current policy is at 79 percent.

What this shows, in fact, is that upon entrance into the military, we are indoctrinating an otherwise very accepting group of Americans to be more prejudiced than they were when they entered the military. Meanwhile, some leaders paradoxically argue that we cannot make the change because the force is not ready for it.

Using this logic, racial desegregation of the military would have happened in MY lifetime, not my grandfather’s, simply because an outspoken but small minority would remain opposed to it long after 1948. In that case, we made a change simply because it was right — and enforced the standards in a very rule-abiding military — through the virtue of leadership.

We spent very little time surveying our troops before desegregation, integration of women in the service, women at the military academies, women in fighter jets, women on aircraft carriers or submarines. The most instructive question whenever discrimination was an issue has always been simple: “Can this person do the job?”

The current D.A.D.T. policy deprives us of even being able to make an informed decision. It functions through ignorance, which begets stereotypes without fact. In turn that prejudice, from which good people are forced to suffer.

The words of Harvey Milk actually ring very true: “I would like to see every gay doctor come out, every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out, stand up and let that world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody would imagine.”

It is for this reason alone that supporters of discrimination seek to keep the truth hidden, gay service members in fear, and the current D.A.D.T. policy in effect. The only accomplishment of the policy is mandatory ignorance.

Jonathan Hopkins is a former United States Army captain who was honorably discharged in August 2010. Mr. Hopkins graduated fourth in his class at West Point. He was deployed three times to Iraq and Afghanistan, earning three Bronze Stars, including one for valor. He is now a graduate student at Georgetown University’s security studies program.

Here is a clip of Jonathan Hopkins appearing on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC in August.

If only the Democrats were as smart, and could communicate as brilliantly as Jon and team.

First, they satirize Fox's, and the Right's, guilt by association reasoning:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Then, they cleverly devastate Fox's duplicitious fear mongering with an "either they're evil or stupid" bit:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Parent Company Trap
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Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Ezra Klein:

See if this structure seems familiar to you: Over the past two years, Barack Obama has done X. Now, his poll numbers have slipped to 44 percent. His party is slated to lose a lot of seats in the 2010 midterms. Obama's decision to do X is to blame.

"X" can be a lot of things. Maybe it's the decision to attempt health-care reform. Or his socialist tendencies. Or his cool, professorial demeanor. In Matt Bai's latest article, John Podesta says it's Obama's pursuit of an ambitious legislative agenda. If he'd spent less time passing legislation, he could've spent more time developing and selling popular themes. In John Judis's latest article, it's the absence of populism in Obama's speeches and policies.

The problem with the essays is that they don't consider the counterfactual. What if Obama had done not-X? Would things really be better for him? How do we know they wouldn't be worse?

Sadly, we can't hit rewind on the cosmic VCR and persuade Obama to do the other thing in the name of science. But we have had a number of presidents who did very different things, and that gives us some basis on which to make judgments. Let's start with approval ratings. Gallup's system will let me compare only four presidents at once, so I chose the last three presidents who entered office amid a recession and didn't have a country-unifying terrorist attack in their first year. That gives us Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. The dashed line is an average of all recent presidents. Click on the graph for a larger version.

Obama's current approval rating of 44 percent beats Clinton, Carter and Reagan. All of them were between 39 percent and 41 percent at this point in their presidencies. And all of them were former governors who accomplished less legislatively than Obama has at this point in his presidency. That seems like a problem for Bai's thesis. At least two of them are remembered as great communicators with a deft populist touch. That seems like a problem for Judis's thesis.

Now let's look at midterm results. The following graph shows the change in House seats for the president's party in every first-term midterm election since 1900.

The pattern here is obvious: Losses, and big ones. Except for FDR's first midterm and George W. Bush's post-9/11 victory, there've been no gains at all.

Now, this is a bit of an imperfect comparison. When the president's party controls more seats, it can lose more seats. In 1982, Republicans had 192 seats in the House, and they lost 26 of them. Democrats currently have 253 seats in the House, and Larry Sabato predicts they'll lose 32 of them. That's actually a smaller percentage than what the Republicans lost under Reagan.

There's plenty to criticize in Obama's policies and plenty to lament in his politics. But when it comes to grand theories explaining how his strategic decisions led him to this horrible -- but historically, slightly-better-than-average -- political position, I'm skeptical. There are enormously powerful structural forces in American politics that seem to drag down first-term presidents. There is the simple mathematical reality that large majorities are always likely to lose a lot of seats. There is a terrible and ongoing economic slump -- weekly jobless claims hit 500,000 today -- that is causing Americans immense pain and suffering. Any explanations for the current political mood that don't put those front and center is, at the least, not doing enough to challenge the counterfactual.

After watching this, it is clear there is no rational basis for opposing marriage equality. In fact, conseravative attorney Olson makes a great argument at the end as to why this should be a conservative, not just liberal, crusade. (Read the transcript.)

It tuns out that Tom Toles, the Wash Post's excellent cartoonist, is as good with his words as his pen:

The great part about not remembering everything is that you can see the significance of the things you do remember. The Bush-Gore recount in Florida is one of those things. I remember thinking as the argument was raging that there was a certain asymmetry in the emotional approach the two sides brought to the controversy.

You might have expected that the Bush side, having demonstrably and unequivocally received fewer votes nationally than their opponents, might have approached their claims to a disputed, technical electoral college victory with just a tiny bit of trepidation and humility. But it was just the other way around. The Gore side gingerly focused on the undercounts, whereas, if memory serves, the overcount ballots would have given them Florida and the White House. But, regardless, they seemed almost apologetic in asking for anything at all.

The GOP, on the other hand, roared into action, demanding to be given the election forthwith, which the Supreme Court obligingly handed them, once again demonstrating that the court's lip service to constitutional rigor is really in the shape of a kiss to Republicans. In hindsight, the lesson is that conservatives act as though they feel on a gut level that any Democratic president is simply illegitimate, PER SE, and will do anything to stop or undermine one. This is currently known as the "enthusiasm gap," but I think it might be better called the "fanaticism gap." And what do you do about that? 

Wash Post:

Opposition to the landmark health care overhaul declined over the past month, to 35 percent from 41 percent, according to the latest results of a tracking poll, reported Thursday.

Fifty percent of the public held a favorable view of the law, up slightly from 48 percent a month ago, while 14 percent expressed no opinion about the measure, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The approval level was the highest for the legislation since it was enacted in March, after a divisive year-long debate. In April, the poll found 46 percent in favor and 40 percent opposed.

Though the legislative battle is over, the political tug-of-war continues. Democrats and Republicans have been fighting to shape public opinion on the issue in hopes of influencing the fall elections.

Among Republicans, opposition to the law remained steady at 69 percent, but the intensity of that opposition ticked upward. Fifty-three percent of Republicans said they had a "very unfavorable" opinion of the law this month, up from 50 percent in June.

Independents, who can tip the balance in elections, split 48 percent to 37 percent in favor, compared with 49 percent to 41 percent a month earlier. The intensity of opinion among this group showed little change; just less than a fifth expressed a very favorable view, and just more than a quarter expressed a very unfavorable view.

The legislation was passed by Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and was signed into law by a Democratic president, and over the past month Democratic support for the legislation grew. Seventy-three percent of Democrats expressed a favorable opinion, up from 69 percent in June. Fifteen percent of Democrats expressed an unfavorable opinion, down from 19 percent in June.

A third of Democrats held a very favorable opinion of the health care overhaul.

The public remains split into rough thirds as to whether the law will leave their own family better off, worse off or unchanged, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported.

The poll found that misconceptions about the legislation persist, including the "death panel" falsehood propagated by opponents of the legislation.

"A year after the town meeting wars of last summer, a striking 36% of seniors said that the law 'allowed a government panel to make decisions about end of life care for people on Medicare', and another 17% said they didn't know," Kaiser Family Foundation chief executive Drew Altman wrote.

Gallup:

Democrats have a 48% to 44% advantage for the week of July 19-25 in Gallup tracking of registered voters' preferences for the 2010 congressional elections. This marks the second straight week in which Democrats have held an edge of at least four percentage points.

Although Republicans have moved to a four-point or higher advantage on three separate occasions, this is the first time either party has held an advantage of that size for two consecutive weeks. Republicans and Democrats have been tied on average across the 21 weeks of Gallup's tracking.

Republicans' Enthusiasm Lead Persists

Republicans continue to be substantially more enthusiastic about voting, as they have been since March. Their current 18-point lead in voting enthusiasm is down slightly from last week's 23-point lead, but it remains slightly higher than the average 16-point lead they have enjoyed since tracking began in March.

Overall enthusiasm for voting was little changed last week. Thirty-four percent of registered voters say they are very enthusiastic about voting, compared with 36% a week prior and an average of 33% so far this year.

Bottom Line

This past week marks the second time since March that either party has held any type of edge on the generic ballot for three consecutive weeks. Exactly what is behind the uptick in support for Democrats is not clear, although last week's gains coincided with the passage of the financial reform bill. Independents continue to be more likely to say they will vote for the Republican rather than the Democratic candidate, while both Republicans and Democrats maintain more than 90% allegiance for their party's candidates.

Democrats' improved position on the generic ballot is counterbalanced by the continuing wide advantage Republicans have in voting enthusiasm. This GOP enthusiasm gap foreshadows a typical Republican turnout advantage in midterm election voting, meaning that Democrats need a substantial lead on the registered voter generic ballot to offset their turnout disadvantage. Still, the results show that expectations of an assured Republican landslide in the congressional elections this fall are not a foregone conclusion.

Gallup's final generic ballot measure, based on likely voters, has since 1950 closely matched the total percentage of votes cast nationally for Democratic and Republican candidates in all 435 U.S. House races -- a statistic that bears a predictable relationship to the number of House seats won by each party. Gallup does not screen for likely voters until closer to Election Day, but historically, Republicans' turnout advantage in midterm elections widens the Republican-Democrat gap in the GOP's favor. Thus, if these numbers held through Election Day, the two parties would likely be closely matched at the ballot box.

Some people have way more patience than I ... an amazing video (how long did it take him to create??):

Wash Post:

"Subjects."

That's what Thomas Jefferson first wrote in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence to describe the people of the 13 colonies.

But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated.

Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word "citizens."

No longer subjects to the crown, the colonists became something different: a people whose allegiance was to one another, not to a faraway monarch.

Scholars of the revolution have long speculated about the "citizens" smear -- wondering whether the erased word was "patriots" or "residents" -- but now the Library of Congress has determined that the change was far more dramatic.

Using a modified version of the kind of spectral imaging technology developed for the military and for monitoring agriculture, research scientists teased apart the mystery and reconstructed the word that Jefferson banished in 1776.

"Seldom can we re-create a moment in history in such a dramatic and living way," Library of Congress preservation director Dianne van der Reyden said at Friday's announcement of the discovery.

"It's almost like we can see him write 'subjects' and then quickly decide that's not what he wanted to say at all, that he didn't even want a record of it," she said. "Really, it sends chills down the spine."

The library deciphered the hidden "subjects" several months ago, the first major finding attributed to its new high-tech instruments. By studying the document at different wavelengths of light, including infrared and ultraviolet, researchers detected slightly different chemical signatures in the remnant ink of the erased word than in "citizens." Those differences allowed the team to bring the erased word back to life.

But the task was made more difficult by the way Jefferson sought to match the lines and curves of the underlying smudged letters with the new letters he wrote on top of them. It took research scientist Fenella France weeks to pull out each letter until the full word became apparent.

"It's quite amazing how he morphed 'subjects' into 'citizens,' " she said. "We did the reverse morphing back to 'subjects.' "

France said the possibility that the erased word was "subjects" came up during a talk she gave to library donors and visitors about how to study historical documents without harming them. France had determined that a word existed beneath "citizens," and she asked the group for ideas. One woman called out "subjects," and library staff members immediately realized that she was on to something. The intensive work on the document soon began.

The erased word is on the third of the draft's four pages, in the section that addressed grievances against King George III and outlined his incitement of "treasonable insurrections." The sentence is not found in the later Declaration of Independence, but "citizens" is used elsewhere in that document and "subjects" is not.

Scholars previously determined that Jefferson had been writing his early version based on the first draft of Virginia's constitution, where the words "our fellow subjects" appear.

Finding Jefferson's erased word is the library's greatest accomplishment using its new technology, but several other projects are in progress. The imaging device, for instance, found thumb and fingerprints on the Gettysburg Address using infrared light, and library researchers are seeking to determine whether they are President Abraham Lincoln's.

Light outside the visible range has also brought to life details of Pierre L'Enfant's design for Washington and notes on papers of Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin.

Van der Reyden said the research and discoveries illustrate why it's so important to keep and protect original documents. The erased "subjects," she said, could have been detected only from Jefferson's original draft.

Wash Post:

The health-care overhaul gained popularity from May to June, according to a new tracking poll.

The results suggest that the Obama administration's promotion of the legislation may be paying off or that the public may be warming to the law as early provisions take effect.

The Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 48 percent of the public had a favorable view of the law in June while 41 percent had an unfavorable opinion. A month earlier, the split was 41 percent favorable to 44 percent unfavorable.

The latest survey results were not much different from those in March, shortly before the law was enacted. Then, at the end of a bitter year-long battle, 46 percent said they supported the proposed legislation while 42 percent opposed it.

Since President Obama signed the law, Democrats and Republicans vying for advantage in the fall elections have been fighting to shape how the public perceives the historic legislation. The administration has been spotlighting potentially crowd-pleasing elements as they are phased in, including a provision that will allow many parents to keep young adult children on their insurance policies until age 26, and another provision that is helping some Medicare beneficiaries narrow a gap in their prescription drug coverage.

"Overall, roughly a third of voters say that a candidate who voted for the health reform law will be more likely to get their vote, a third say less likely, and a third say it doesn't really matter," said the foundation, which studies and distributes information about health-care policy.

When voters were pressed to choose the issue most important to them, "economic concerns came out on top, with 29 percent naming either the economy or unemployment," the foundation said. Thirteen percent mentioned dissatisfaction with government, 12 percent mentioned health care, and 9 percent each pointed to the Gulf Coast oil spill and the budget deficit, the survey found.

The full impact of the health-care legislation will not be felt until 2014, when some of the most far-reaching and controversial elements take effect. Those include an end to discrimination by insurers based on preexisting conditions and a requirement that everyone carry health insurance.

The Kaiser tracking poll was conducted June 17 through 22 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points, the foundation said.

Also see Chris Cillizza's more overtly political analysis of the Kaiser poll.

Jonathan Capehart:

Without question, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s “Christmas” retort to Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) will be the most memorable moment of her confirmation hearings. Graham asked, “Christmas Day bomber. Where were you at on Christmas Day?” Kagan, whose day job is solicitor general of the United States, seemed confused by his query and started answering him seriously. But Graham cut her off and said, “No. I just asked where you were at on Christmas.”

Kagan’s response -- "Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant" -- was brilliant in its humor, timing and the self-effacing manner in which it was delivered. Despite the laughter in the chamber, it was one of those “only in New York” references that might go over the heads of a few folks. Even Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) admitted that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) explained it to him before the hearing. Then Schumer kindly pointed out that Chinese restaurants are the only places that are open on Christmas Day, which is vital in a city where making reservations IS making dinner. For those of you out there who are in need of a similar cultural life raft, take a look at this instant classic video from Saturday Night Live.

Check out Kagan's other funny moments here.

A devastating critique ... what's wrong with us?

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NY Times (watch their accompanying video report):

Henry David Thoreau was jailed here 164 years ago for refusing to pay taxes while living at Walden Pond. Now the town has Jean Hill to contend with.

Mrs. Hill, an octogenarian previously best known for her blueberry jam, proposed banning the sale of bottled water here at a town meeting this spring. Voters approved, with the intent of making Concord the first town in the nation to strip Aquafina, Poland Spring and the like from its stores.

In orchestrating an outright ban, Mrs. Hill, 82, has achieved something that powerful environmental groups have not even tried. The bottled water industry is not pleased; it has threatened to sue if the ban takes effect as planned on Jan. 1. Officials here have hinted that they might not strictly enforce it, but Mrs. Hill, who described herself as obsessed, said that would only deepen her resolve.

“I’m going to work until I drop on this,” she said. “If you believe in something, you have to persist and you have to have a thick skin.”

Tom Lauria, a spokesman for the International Bottled Water Association, questioned why Mrs. Hill would single out bottled water when there are so many other things packaged in plastic. “Some people in the industry kind of respect her because of her age and her vision,” he said, “but we believe that vision is distorted. There are far worse products to pick on than water.”

Mrs. Hill’s crusade began a few years ago when her grandson, then 10, told her about the so-called Pacific garbage patch, a vortex of plastic and other debris floating between California and Hawaii, thought to be twice the size of Texas.

She researched and homed in on bottled water, finding that millions of plastic bottles were disposed of daily and that most were not recycled. While most opponents of bottled water have sought piecemeal change, like getting government agencies to stop buying it, Mrs. Hill wanted her affluent, erudite town to take a bolder step.

“The bottled water companies are draining our aquifers and selling it back to us,” she said, repeating her pitch from the town meeting in April. “We’re trashing our planet, all because of greed.”

Mrs. Hill’s presentation compelled some 300 voters to support the ban. But days later, town officials said the ban appeared unenforceable. They have asked the state attorney general’s office for guidance.

“It’s our responsibility to carry out the wishes of town meeting, but we’re struggling a little with how to do that,” said Christopher Whelan, the town manager. “It’s still up in the air what will happen on Jan. 1.”

Mr. Lauria said the bottled water association would consider suing if the attorney general’s office signs off on the ban. “It’s a completely legal commodity, and to ban it runs afoul of interstate commerce considerations,” he said.

As for Mrs. Hill, Mr. Whelan said she belonged to a long tradition of town residents channeling Thoreau and other big-thinking forbears.

“She’s the classic Concordian who conceives of an idea and doesn’t take no for an answer,” he said. “She’s a strong-willed citizen who is very committed to the environment, so in a lot of ways she’s typical of this place.”

Mrs. Hill said she developed an activist streak as a teenager during World War II, when she spent a summer working in a New York City parachute factory. She discovered that employees got no paid vacation, and tried to stir a revolt.

“I went to a local union office,” she said. “Here I was, only 16, and they said, ‘Get lost, kid.’ ”

After that, she stopped agitating but read a book a night and honed her research skills as a clerk at Life magazine. She got married and raised four children here, returning to activism only about 15 years ago when she fought a plan to build a visitors center in a historic meadow.

Mrs. Hill’s current battle is lonely, despite the overwhelming support of voters who attended the April meeting. She reached out to Corporate Accountability International, an advocacy group in Boston that gave Mrs. Hill a PowerPoint presentation to help make her case. But most of her work — researching online, passing out pamphlets at church — has been solitary.

She recently organized a screening of “Tapped,” a documentary about abuses in the bottled water industry. A representative from Senator John Kerry’s office came — Mrs. Hill had threatened not to vote for him otherwise — but the crowd she had hoped for did not.

She has critics, including some who dismiss her as a retiree with too much time on her hands.

“Oh, I know,” she huffed, “this little old lady in tennis shoes butting into everyone’s business. It’s annoying and it’s not true. I’m not meddling; I’m trying to accomplish a legitimate goal.”

Mrs. Hill attributes the popularity of bottled water to the widespread belief that everyone needs eight glasses worth a day.

“People thought, ‘Oh God, got to have my water,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “If you did that, you’d spend the whole day in the bathroom!”

She does not drink enough water herself, she allowed; orange juice, milk and Scotch are higher on her list. For those who do sip water all day, she has some characteristically blunt advice.

“Get yourself a nice Thermos,” she said. “I’ll give you one if you want.”

Mrs. Hill made a point of finding out how many public water fountains Concord has — 11 — and sharing their whereabouts in a letter to the local newspaper, The Concord Journal. She also approached a local merchant to suggest selling Thermoses instead of bottled water.

“He was not impressed by that at all,” she said. “The stores aren’t happy about it.”

Her movement suffered a blowback last month, when a water main break forced a boil-water order in the Boston area for several days. The pursuant clamor for bottled water gave some in Concord, which was not affected, second thoughts about a ban.

Mrs. Hill never flinched.

“People got hysterical,” she said. “All they had to do was boil their water for one full minute and that would be fine.”

In a crisis — or whenever they wanted — the people of Concord could always get bottled water elsewhere, Mrs. Hill said. Nor could the ban stop them from stockpiling water from big-box stores, a loophole that does not vex her for now.

“I’m not prepared to take on Costco at this point,” she said. “Maybe when I get a rest, I will.”

Starting at about 2:30 minutes in ...

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Wash Post:

In the past year and a half, President Obama has quietly used his powers to expand federal rights and benefits for gays and lesbians, targeting one government restriction after another in an attempt to change public policy while avoiding a confrontation with Republicans and opponents of gay rights.

The result is that scores of federal rules blocking gay rights have been swept aside or reinterpreted by Obama officials eager to advance the agenda of a constituency that strongly backed the president's 2008 campaign.

Among the changes: Gay partners of federal workers will now receive long-term health insurance, access to day care and other benefits. Federal Housing Authority loans can no longer consider the sexual orientation of applicants. The Census Bureau plans to report the number of people who report being in a same-sex relationship. Hospitals must allow gays to visit their ill partners. And federal child-care subsidies can be used by the children of same-sex domestic partners.

On Wednesday, the Labor Department is expected to announce that federal officials have rethought the Family and Medical Leave Act, concluding that under the law, a gay federal employee may take leave to care for a child with a gay partner.

Individually, none of the changes is especially dramatic. But taken together, they significantly alter the way gays and lesbians are viewed under federal law.

The administration's effort, made largely under the radar -- and outside the reach of Congress -- has alarmed opponents of gay rights, who accuse the president of undermining traditional marriage even as he speaks about respecting it.

"He's been a supporter of married mothers and fathers in name only," said Jenny Tyree, a marriage analyst for CitizenLink, an affiliate of Focus on the Family. "He speaks very passionately and touchingly about how he grew up without a father. And yet there is this huge disconnect in how he's undermining that same opportunity for other children."

In a Father's Day statement Sunday, Obama called fathers "our first teachers and coaches, mentors and role models" and said that "nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a stepfather, a grandfather, or caring guardian."

Tyree called the inclusion of "two fathers" in the proclamation a "very troubling" decision to promote a "motherless family."

But gay rights advocates have greeted the changes as evidence that Obama has not abandoned them -- even as he has frustrated some by failing to act quickly on campaign promises to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act and bring an end to the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

"The administration is moving the executive branch to really provide interpretations that will change the lives of millions of [lesbian and gay] people for the better," said Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign.

Winnie Stachelberg, a senior vice president at the Center for American Progress, praised Obama for finding creative ways to unravel policies that she said have long been unfair to gays.

"This administration has really opened up the toolbox that it alone has access to, to address the problems faced by gays and lesbians," she said.

Obama remains under pressure from some members of the gay community to move more quickly and forcefully on the major battles with Congress. A group of activists interrupted his speech at a Democratic fundraiser in California last month, yelling that he should do more to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

He will probably hear similar complaints Tuesday night, when he hosts a Gay and Lesbian Pride Month event at the White House for the second year in a row.

Administration officials are quick to note their legislative successes. The president signed a federal hate crimes bill into law that for the first time provides protections against crimes committed on the basis of sexual orientation. And the Senate is one vote away from ending the military's controversial policy on service by gays and lesbians.

But aides said the administration has purposely sought to take other actions to circumvent those battles.

"While many of the items of concern to the [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community require Congress to act, the president has also taken many steps that don't require a change in the law," said Shin Inouye, a White House spokesman. "The president and his administration remain committed to achieving equality for all, and it's clear that we're moving forward."

Obama's orders have relied largely on authority the president has to reshape the federal government, much in the way that George W. Bush used the levers of the federal bureaucracy to relax government restrictions on oil and gas exploration on federally protected land. In April, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. reinterpreted the Violence Against Women act to cover partners in a same-sex relationship. In remarks Monday to gay employees at the Justice Department, Holder promised more of the same.

"Too many of the challenges that confronted the LGBT community 16 years ago . . . confront us still today," he said at the department's celebration of gay pride month. "Too many of the same obstacles that existed then remain for us to overcome. Too many talented men and women cannot, in the words of this year's motto, "serve openly, with pride."

Wash Post:

A French drug company is seeking to offer American women something their European counterparts already have: a pill that works long after "the morning after."

The drug, dubbed ella, would be sold as a contraceptive -- one that could prevent pregnancy for as many as five days after unprotected sex. But the new drug is a close chemical relative of the abortion pill RU-486, raising the possibility that it could also induce abortion by making the womb inhospitable for an embryo.

The controversy sparked by that ambiguity promises to overshadow the work of a federal panel that will convene next week to consider endorsing the drug. The last time the Food and Drug Administration vetted an emergency contraceptive -- Plan B, the so-called morning-after pill -- the decision was mired in debate over such fundamental questions as when life begins and the distinction between preventing and terminating a pregnancy. Ella is raising many of those same politically charged questions -- but more sharply, testing the Obama administration's pledge to keep ideology from influencing scientific decisions.

Plan B, which works for up to 72 hours after sex, was eventually approved for sale without a prescription, although a doctor's order is required for girls younger than 17. The new drug promises to extend that period to at least 120 hours. Approved in Europe last year, ella is available as an emergency contraceptive in at least 22 countries.

Ella is being welcomed by many U.S. advocates for family planning and reproductive rights as a much-needed additional form of emergency contraception. Opponents of the drug, however, argue that the French company and the FDA would be misleading the public by labeling ella as an emergency contraceptive. Its chemical similarity to RU-486 makes it more like the controversial abortion pill, which can terminate a pregnancy at up to nine weeks, they say. RU-486 has soared in popularity since approval 10 years ago in the United States, raising the possibility that ella (ulipristal acetate) might become ubiquitous in American women's medicine cabinets.

"With ulipristal, women will be enticed to buy a poorly tested abortion drug, unaware of its medical risks, under the guise that it's a morning-after pill," said Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America, which led the battle against Plan B.

Plan B prevents a pregnancy by administering high doses of a hormone that mimics progesterone. It works primarily by inhibiting the ovaries from producing eggs. Critics argue it can also prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the womb, which some consider equivalent to an abortion.

Ella works as a contraceptive by blocking progesterone's activity, which delays the ovaries from producing an egg. RU-486, too, blocks the action of progesterone, which is also needed to prepare the womb to accept a fertilized egg and to nurture a developing embryo. That's how RU-486 can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting and dislodge growing embryos. Ella's chemical similarity raises the possibility that it might do the same thing, perhaps if taken at elevated doses. But no one knows for sure because the drug has never been tested that way. Opponents of the drug are convinced it will. "It kills embryos, just like the abortion pill," said Donna Harrison, president of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Critics fear that women who do not realize they are already pregnant will use the drug, unwittingly giving themselves an abortion.

"The difference between preventing life and destroying life is hugely significant to many women," said Jeanne Monahan, director of the Family Research Council's Center for Human Dignity. "Women deserve to know that difference."

They also fear some women will try to use ella to abort a fetus, putting themselves at risk for potentially life-threatening complications that have been reported among a small number of women using RU-486, and possibly damage their developing child if it doesn't work.

Proponents dismiss those concerns, saying that ella has been tested only within five days of unprotected sex and there is no evidence that it works as anything other than a contraceptive. Ella appears to be about twice as effective as Plan B in preventing pregnancy, and its effectiveness remains constant for at least 120 hours. Plan B begins to lose its effectiveness almost immediately and becomes ineffective after 72 hours.

"There is an great unmet need out there for emergency contraception that is effective as this for so long," said Erin Gainer, chief executive of HRA Pharma of Paris. Studies involving more than 4,500 women in the United States and Europe show that ella is safe, producing minor side effects including headaches, nausea and fatigue, she said.

The company has no plans to test ella as an abortion drug, but it did not appear to cause any problems for the handful of women who have become pregnant after taking the drug, she said.

"We're very clear on the fact that this is indeed a contraceptive -- a method of prevention of pregnancy," Gainer said.

But based on the FDA's repeated delays in approving the sale of Plan B without a prescription, Gainer and others said they feared the accusations might influence the agency.

"FDA should be a 'Just the facts ma'am' organization," said Susan F. Wood, an associate professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services who resigned from the FDA to protest delays in making Plan B more accessible. "I'm hoping the FDA will take that position."

"The people who are opposing this are not just opposed to abortion," said Amy Allina, program director at the National Women's Health Network. "They also opposed contraception and they are trying to confuse the issue."

If ella wins approval, it will likely inflame a long-running debate: whether doctors have an obligation to write prescriptions for medication they oppose on moral or religious grounds and whether pharmacists have an obligation to fill them. Many doctors and pharmacists refuse to write or fill prescriptions for Plan B, or refer patients elsewhere for it.

"My suspicion is that more pharmacists will wish to opt out of dispensing ulipristal than any other of the previous drugs," said Karen L. Brauer, Pharmacists for Life International president.