Don't Ask Don't Tell

There will be 60 votes if Scott Brown and Joe Manchin reverse themselves, though that could still depend on House passage of the tax deal and whether or not Joe Manchin sees his shadow when he leaves his tree stump tomorrow morning.

But Barney Frank sounds very slightly hopeful that this won't be yet another wasted House vote: "There would be no point doing this if there wasn't a real chance to get this done in the Senate," Barney Frank told Metro Weekly. He puts odds of Senate action at "better than even."

Will the stand-alone bill pass after the defense authorization bill failed? It probably won't attract Scott Brown's support until the tax deal is passed -- and while that could clear the Senate tomorrow, the House is still a bit of a question. Sen. Joe Manchin voted against proceeding with repeal last week, and when people asked why, his explanation was utterly incoherent. So I am actually not much more optimistic about repeal today than I was at the beginning of the month. But it's still alive.

"I don't feel like I'm going up against the military, I really don't. I just feel like this is a necessary step for doing away with this policy," said former Air Force Staff Sergeant Anthony Loverde. "I believe the military, the majority of troops I've served with and those who have been studied to death are with us."

The 31-year-old Loverde is working in Iraq for a private military contractor that's providing the Army with technical support. The lawsuit was also filed on behalf of former Air Force Major Michael Almy, 40, and former Navy Petty Officer Second Class Jason Knight, 28.

The legal action comes four days after the U.S. Senate for the second time this year blocked a military spending bill that also would have repealed the 17-year-old ban on openly gay troops.

Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., have introduced a standalone measure, but it's uncertain if it will be brought for a vote before the Senate and House adjourn for the holidays.

Servicemembers Legal Defense Network director Aubrey Sarvis said the case is meant as a warning to lawmakers that if they don't act to repeal "don't ask, don't tell," the courts could step in and order an integration timetable that is less to the Pentagon's liking.

"This filing is a notice to the Senate and to the U.S. government that if the Senate fails to act in the lame duck session, we are prepared to litigate this aggressively," said Sarvis, whose group coordinated the lawsuit and prepared it with lawyers from a private law firm.

"From my perspective, this is the first shot over the bow," she said.

Nothing better illustrates the moral vacuity of the United States Senate than when a broadly popular measure receives a majority of votes but still fails because senators who claim to support the measure vote to block it for process reasons. (Besides, I guess, when something horrible passes with broad bipartisan support.)

Thankfully, Senate comity could still prevail! Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins decided to bring a stand-alone bill on repealing the policy to the floor as soon as possible, which, in Senate time, means not that soon. Harry Reid says he'll get it done before the end of the year, but a stand-alone bill would have to be passed by the House and go through conference committee and our "moderate" GOP friends could still come up with serious reasons to delay the vote for just a little bit longer.

So, again, while there's still a chance that the policy will be repealed legislatively, I continue to be convinced that "moderates" will assist in the effort to just run out the clock, and block one last Obama administration priority before the real war begins next year.

And if "don't ask, don't tell" isn't repealed before the end of the year, we can "blame" Harry Reid for attaching it to the defense authorization bill or saying he wanted to limit debate, but the people responsible are actually the ones who voted it down despite supporting it. They apparently find the rights of a minority of senators to propose an unlimited number of amendments more compelling than the rights of Americans to serve in the armed forces without lying about who they are.

Democrat Joe Manchin may be new in town, but he's already sounding as incoherent and cowardly as a multiple-term Senate veteran. His aides say he voted "no" as a "stunt," but Manchin then released a statement saying he straight-up doesn't support repeal. He'd like to make his position clear:

"I do not support its repeal at this time," he said in the statement. "I would like to make clear that my concern is not with the idea of repealing DADT, but rather an issue of timing."

Oh, it's timing! He isn't concerned with doing it, he just doesn't want to do it now. He'd maybe prefer to do it later, when it will be impossible because of the Republican House majority? And he also apparently doesn't understand that, should the Senate repeal the policy, it won't actually end until the president, the joint chiefs and the Pentagon all decide they're good and ready, after what Robert Gates said would be an extended period of training and education.

Manchin's actual thoughts on the matter were made more clear when he explained that while he can't bring himself to cast this particular vote, he wouldn't be too upset if Barack Obama ended the policy himself, by fiat, because then ol' Joe Manchin wouldn't be on the record as having supported it himself. In other words, this guy suddenly realized that there was a chance that his might be the decisive vote on this, and he got terrified.

If you're part of the overwhelming majority of Americans who want DADT ended, you might consider blaming some or all of the following people for today's development:

• Scott Brown and Lisa Murkowski: Both Republican senators made news in the last week by announcing their support for repeal. Their backing came with a catch: Republican senators, as a group, had already pledged to take no action on anything until all of the Bush tax cuts were extended. That condition was seemingly met on Tuesday, when Barack Obama cut his tax deal with GOP leaders, and yet both Brown and Murkowski joined the GOP's DADT filibuster on Thursday. They haven't explained themselves yet, but presumably they will use one of two excuses: 1) The deal on the Bush tax cuts hasn't yet cleared Congress, so it was still too soon to do anything else; or 2) Our fellow Republican, Susan Collins, made some not-unreasonable demands about the terms of any Senate debate on DADT, and yet Reid ignored her; while we're for repealing DADT, this just isn't the way to do it.
• Susan Collins: As noted above, Maine's junior Republican senator, who reaffirmed her support for ending the policy last week, wanted Reid to make guarantees about the length of any floor debate (four days, she said) and the number of amendments that would be allowed for consideration. Reid, apparently believing that Collins was trying to run out the clock (the Senate is scheduled to adjourn for the year next week), went ahead with the vote without reaching an agreement. Collins decried his action -- but then voted for cloture. So what were all her objections about? If she could live with repeal without a protracted debate, why did she spend the last week helping to hold up the process? Maybe she really was trying to help her fellow Republicans (like, say, her good friend/ardent DADT repeal foe John McCain) run out the clock -- so that, once it was clear Reid didn't have 60 votes, she cast a symbolic vote for cloture (which probably won't look bad back home).
• Harry Reid: It's tough to tell how much, if any, blame the majority leader deserves. The answer depends on the motives of Collins, Brown and Murkowski. If there really was a scenario under which they'd all vote for cloture, and potentially bring a wavering Democrat (like West Virginia's Joe Manchin, who joined the filibuster on Thursday) along with them, then Reid dropped the ball by rushing to call a vote. If Collins was sincere in wanting four days of debate (and if that would have brought several other senators on board for repeal), Reid could have accommodated her by extending the Senate session past next week. But if he was right that they were looking for excuses to stick with the filibuster, then there was no reason not to force the issue now.
• Barack Obama: One of the reasons why I wrote that the tax deal reached earlier this week wasn't that bad was that it potentially created an opening to repeal DADT this month. But in the wake of the tax compromise, the White House didn't seem particularly interested in engaging in this battle.

It's still possible that there will be another DADT vote before the new Congress convenes in January -- there's even some chatter that Democrats will bring the issue back on its own, and not as part of the overall defense bill. But if and when this happens, there'll be even less time left in the session -- and it will be only easier for Collins, Brown, et al. to make excuses for joining McCain's filibuster. And once the clock runs out and the new Republican Congress is sworn in, you can pretty much forget about repeal working its way to the president's desk in 2011 and 2012 -- and maybe well beyond that.

Update: Per Andrew Sullivan, who is monitoring Joe Lieberman's Twitter feed, Collins and Lieberman plan to introduce repeal as a standalone repeal legislation. At least theoretically, this keeps the possibility of repeal alive. If there really are 60 (or 61 0r 62, as Collins claims) senators who want to end DADT, this might make it easier for them to stand as a bloc to prevent time-killing/poison pill amendments from being introduced. We'll see.

No one seems to know exactly where everyone stands. It looked like Maine Senator Susan Collins agreed to vote for the defense authorization bill in exchange for four days of floor debate and 15 amendments, but Reid might think that's just another delaying tactic. So... Reid may hold a vote today, or this week, in which case Collins will almost certainly vote against it.

Reid might think that Collins' demands are actually impossible to meet, given the time-frame. (Reid might be right, too, even if Joe Lieberman forces everyone to work over Christmas.) And with House Democrats making waves over the Obama tax cut deal, Collins could still "regretfully" torpedo "don't ask, don't tell" even if she is promised everything she wants, because of that pledge to block everything until our richest citizens are properly taken care of.

So if Reid thinks Collins is making impossible demands, he'll hold a vote without her, and it will fail, and I dunno, I guess we can just blame both of them.