**UPDATE** – As a number of commenters pointed out when this posting first appeared, Log Cabin arranged “Call to Duty” — a college speaking tour of former armed services members speaking out against DADT. Call To Duty website link here. Unless my eyes are fooling me, there are actual people there with actual names. Names that could have been used in the lawsuit that was dismissed because the US District Judge said Log Cabin failed to identify anyone affected by the policy and lacks standing to maintain the suit on its own.***

Suit challenging ‘don’t ask’ dismissed for lack of names – SFGate.com

A federal judge has dismissed a gay rights group’s challenge to the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy because the group wouldn’t tell the judge the names of the people it was representing.

The Log Cabin Republicans’ refusal to name any of the past or present service members on whose behalf the organization filed the lawsuit means the group has failed to identify anyone affected by the policy and lacks standing to maintain the suit on its own, said U.S. District Judge George Schiavelli of Los Angeles.

The organization’s claims of harm to its members are merely “hypothetical and conjectural,” Schiavelli said in a ruling issued March 22. He said other past and present suits over the same policy have shown that those who believe their rights are violated “will step forward to legally challenge the perceived injustice despite the potential consequences.”

The dismissal is not final, however, as Schiavelli gave the organization until April 28 to file an amended lawsuit naming at least one member harmed by the policy. Patrick Guerriero, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, said Monday the group would reluctantly comply.

The suit was filed anonymously largely to protect plaintiffs who were still in uniform, because “if they came out publicly they would be thrown out of the military,” Guerriero said. He said his organization was talking to current and former service members involved in the case to see which of them would agree to be named publicly.

Once again, Log Cabin fails by trying to go through the courts. When they should instead focus on trying to win the hearts and minds of their fellow Republicans. But, it seems too much to ask Patrick to pull himself away from the gay political cocktail parties in D.C. and go to less fabulous, but more important, Republican gatherings. More important, that is, if Log Cabin really wants to influence the GOP.

-Bruce and Dan

Families United, the organization trying to get the media to recognize Iraq Liberation Day as a big deal, has now begun to publish stories about our fallen soldiers. Their families are speaking about their support of the War On Terror – Iraqi Theatre even though they have lost a loved one.

Marine Lance Corporal Justin M. Ellsworth
Died 11/13/2004 in service to his country in the War on Terror

John and Debbie’s son Marine Lance Corporal Justin M. Ellsworth, fell on November 13, 2004 as a result of enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. He was assigned to Combat Service Support Battalion 1, Combat Service Support Group 11, 1st Force Service Support Group, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, California. He joined the service September of 2003.

Until the death of his son in Iraq, John Ellsworth considered himself just a “little country boy” who worked as a police officer, went to church and just enjoyed spending time with his family. “I didn’t plan on becoming an activist,” Ellsworth, 41, of Wixom, said Tuesday.

That change came Nov. 13, when Marine Lance Cpl. Justin Mark Ellsworth, 20, of Mt. Pleasant was killed by a roadside bomb in Fallujah. His platoon did construction work, including building schools for Iraqi children. He received the Bronze Star with valor for helping save the lives of 11 of his fellow soldiers.

That’s why it bothered John Ellsworth when Cindy Sheehan, a founder of Gold Star Families for Peace, an antiwar group, grabbed national headlines as a grieving mother against an unjust war.

Ellsworth and his family also grieve deeply, but they believe there is good being done in Iraq because Justin believed that.

“We wanted to make sure people knew she didn’t speak for us,” said Ellsworth, who is part of Families United For Our Troops and Their Mission. Detroit Free Press, 10/26/05

At the Families United page honoring Corporal Ellsworth, his dad speaks frankly in a short video clip about the stakes in Iraq. Watch it.

Thanks to the Ellsworths and all of our soldiers and their families making the sacrifices around the world so the Islamic terrorists stay away from our shores.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

As I flew home today, being very tired from having to get up at 3:30AM, a thought struck me about the complete and utter lack of principles by Liberal Democrats and Liberal Republicans. I tend to look for patterns in life and politics. And there is a huge principle connecting the two issues of the Illegal Immigration “compromise” (aka – Senate Amnesty Agreement) and the pushback from Liberals on the Bush Tax Cuts.

Remember the argument against the tax cuts? “You need to cut spending first, then cut taxes.” And anyone with a brain knew that A) Democrats didn’t really mean it… and B) Taxes would never get cut if they were taken off the table from the start.

And now we have Illegal Immigration Amnesty as a “compromise” in the Senate. Yet this time the Liberal Democrats and Sellout Republicans are reversing the Tax Cut Argument. This time, they tell us, amnesty comes first and toughening the border comes second. So we all know what that means….. no toughening of the border. It will fizzle away now that the Senate has gone with Amnesty First.

In the meantime, under the category of “Spinning Wheels” — BoiFromTroy wants to amend the Senate Amnesty Compromise of 2006.

But what has not gained any attention during this debate is the plight of bi-national same sex partners. Whereas getting straight-married is a front-of-the-line to citizenship, the gays get nothing in terms of recognition from the government when one half of a couple is not an American.

For years the Gay Political Establishment in Washington has talked about passing a “Permanent Partners Immigration” Bill, but now they’re not even trying to get it tucked into the Senate Bill as an amendment.–instead focusing on defeating the Sensenbrenner legislation which would make things even worse (even though it is common knowledge that Sensenbrenner will never become law). What a shame.

His solution? Having Patrick Leahy or Diane Feinstein champion the cause. Uh. Yeah. They hold a lot of weight in a Republican-controlled Senate. Hmmm…. wait a sec. Since the Republicans in the Senate look more and more like Democrats on the Illegal Immigration Issue, maybe BFT has a point.

In any case, count me out of amending this crappy legislation that risks US security. It should be KILLED.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

A few weeks ago, Patrick (Gryph) responded to Bruce’s surprise at Log Cabin’s decision to feature Andrew Sullivan at its “convention” later this month, by providing a list of conservative and libertarian policy proposals that Andrew claims to support, a list of proposals which, to a large extent, corresponds to my own views. As I read that list, I wondered why if Andrew support these proposals, he spends so much time bashing the president and so little time promoting these things. (Perhaps he’s saving that for his book.*)

In a post today, it seems that Andrew, like many he once reviled, has become so consumed with hatred for George W. Bush that he will spin any news story to show the president in the worst possible light. Today, he contends that the latest revelations in the investigation of former Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby indicate that Bush is “Nailed”. But as Tom Maguire (Just One Minute) puts it, “Either Andrew Sullivan can’t read, or he can’t write.”

I agree with the New York Sun‘s Josh Gerstein that this “disclosure could be awkward for the president because it places him, for the first time, directly in a chain of events that led to a meeting where prosecutors contend the identity of a CIA employee, Valerie Plame, was provided to a reporter.” (Via Powerline.) But, this does not nail the president in the least. It merely shows him authorizing the release of information which would serve to discredit a dishonest critic — former Ambassador Joe Wilson.

In his piece, Andrew attempts to rewrite history by asking, “Who really cared about Joseph Wilson’s op-ed?” Um, Andrew, the MSM and the Democrats were all over the story. Or as an astute GayPatriot reader noted, this was “the major media story of that summer.” Wilson worked for a presidential candidate, the man Andrew would endorse in ’04 — John Kerry. (To be fair to Andrew, after the Senate Intelligence Committee discredited Wilson, that dishonest man lost his job for the Democratic nominee. So Wilson was not working for Kerry when Andrew issued his official endorsement of Wilson’s one-time boss.)

As Tom Maguire puts it:

we *don’t know* what Cheney and Bush discussed before Bush authorized the partial disclosure of the NIE. President Bush may have been vitally interested specifically in discrediting Joe Wilson (and rebutting one’s critics is not a crime); he may not have heard that name, and simply authorized the disclosure to help with the White House side of the press coverage.

All we have here is the president doing what he has the “legal right” to do — declassifying information which shows that the “consensus estimate” of intelligence agencies in October 2002 was at odds with Joe Wilson’s posturing. While Andrew may think the president has been “nailed,” in reality all he was trying to do was get the facts out. And thus quite the opposite of someone feeling, as that blogger puts it, that “he had a lot to hide.” To some, it seems the president is always trying to hide something even when he authorizes the release of documents upon which the president based his past decisions.

But, I guess to those who (the facts notwithstanding) believe that “Bush Lied,” any disclosure which contradicts their dogma amounts to having something to hide.

-Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com

(H/t: Tom Maguire via Glenn Reynolds & Powerline.)

WELCOME INSTAPUNDIT READERS! While you’re here, take a moment and browse around to what has been called “probably the most reliably conservative gay blog on the Internet.” And you might want to check out my latest where I take issue with Log Cabin for preferring the rhetoric of the gay left to the ideals of conservatives and libertarians.

* I will be trying to get review copy of this book and hope it’s as good as his previous book
Love Undetectable: Notes on Friendship, Sex, and Survival which I recommended here. I may well experience Andrew’s next book as I experienced that one. I recall souring on Andrew’s writings in the mid-1990s; he seemed then so caught up in the ethos of gay culture that he was losing his iconoclastic (and insightful) voice. I all but stopped reading his stuff. Then, one day, in a D.C. bookstore, I picked up this book, started reading and found Andrew’s prose so engaging, I ended up buying it so I could, as Glenn Reynolds would say, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: In a post I read just after I finished writing this one, Powerline’s Paul writes that the information which the president agreed to release “was not about Valerie Plame.”

UP-UPDATE: Captain Ed explains why the President released the information:

Because Joe Wilson had busied himself by spreading misinformation via leaks to Nick Kristof and Walter Pincus, and then finally under his own by-line at the New York Times twelve days prior to the release of the NIE information. The media had demanded answers to the charges leveled by Wilson and his supporters, and those answers were found in the NIE. The decision to declassify it and publish it came as a result of that demand. Once the decision is made to declassify information, it can be released in any number of ways. This was both leaked and openly presented in the same fortnight.

Adding that the president

declassified the NIE so that everyone could see what exactly the intelligence services had told him about Iraq’s WMD programs. Now everyone wants to proclaim George Bush a criminal for releasing the information that the entire media establishment demanded he reveal.

UP-UP-UPDATE: Austin Bay: “The flap is yet more evidence that the national press is more interested in playing ‘gotcha’ with the Bush Administration than reporting the news.” Via Glenn with whom I agree: Read the whole thing.

NBC News was exposed on Tuesday by Michelle Malkin for its blatant and racist attempts to stigmatize millions of Americans who love NASCAR.

GayPatriot reader Neil was pissed and emailed, “I’ve got news for NBC…try sending these same [Muslim-looking] guys to a social gathering on the Upper East Side, or better yet, to a Hollywood benefit and see how THEY react.” Or a cocktail party in Chelsea or Dupont Circle, perhaps?

On Wednesday, NASCAR struck back hard.

“This is outrageous for a news organization with the reputation of NBC to stoop to the level of attempting to create news instead of reporting it. Any legitimate journalist should be ashamed.” -Ramsey Poston, managing director of corporate communications at NASCAR

NBC is lazy. Neil really has the right idea. A really creative Dateline “sting” would be a non-Liberal/PC take on this idea… how about sending a Orthodox Jew into a mosque? Instead of dirty looks, there may well be the need to call an ambulance.

If NBC really wants to get an angry reaction out of NASCAR fans, they should have people walking around with Hillary masks.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Unfortunately, I’m missing all the action as I’m on a flight from Seattle to Charlotte and won’t be landing until late afternoon after President Bush has left my fine city.

So, for the latest in coverage of the Big Guy’s visit to the Queen City…. I’d suggest this website from the local NBC affiliate (WCNC, Channel 6) which I normally watch for local news. Hopefully they will have live coverage.. maybe streaming video if we are lucky!

Welcome, Mr. President. God Bless you and God Bless America!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

H-Bomb at AnkleBitingPundits (love the photobanner!) reminds us that April 9th is Iraq Liberation Day. He reports that the good folks at Families United are on a mission to mark this important day and also honor our troops.

Sign the letter!

Families United for our Troops and Their Mission is a grassroots coalition of families who are united in our steadfast support of our men and women in uniform fighting the War on Terror, and for ensuring our troops are allowed to finish their mission.

By signing this letter, you are signaling that you support FUM’s 4 Principles:

1. The United States Was Attacked.
2. Our Troops Want to Finish the Job.
3. Democracy Abroad Is Necessary for Our Security At Home.
4. We Will Not Be Safe Until the Terrorists are Defeated.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

*sputtering*…..WHAT??!! You mean President Bush was right in October 2002 when he told the American people:

“The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his “nuclear mujahideen” — his nuclear holy warriors.”

Yes he was. Bush told the truth, and Americans lived!

The proof? Yet another translated document from The Saddam Files. This one shows that Saddam had a meeting with his Chief of Atomic Energy and research scientists on May 12, 2002 and June 9, 2002. Remember, Saddam told the UN and the world that he no longer had an atomic program. His paid-off diplomats in Paris and Moscow probably new this as well. From PajamasMedia’s Iraq Files:

Pages 186 and 193 of document BIAP 2003 00090 carry one of the most important information revealed so far regarding Saddam Nuclear Program. In these two pages which document a summary of meetings held by members of The Military Office of the Iraqi Baath Party and dated May/12/2002 and June/9/2002 they have a section that discuss Saddam Hussein meeting with the Chairman of the Atomic Energy and an elite of researchers.

I first thought that this may be a reference to a meeting between Saddam and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) so I called both of IAEA offices in New York and Vienna to check if Saddam had any meeting with the IAEA Chairman prior to May 2002, and they indicated to me that they do not recall any such meeting of IAEA chairman and Saddam prior to May 2002.

Which means Condi Rice was also right when she warned (after the 9/11 attacks) on September 8, 2002: “”We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” That same CNN report says:

White House sources also tell CNN that Saddam has in recent months met several times with Iraq’s top nuclear scientists and encouraged them to continue their work.

It has now been confirmed by Saddam’s own documents.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)