Imagine you’re a sand collector in Libya and you see 20,000 of these gays coming at you.

That is true terror.

http://www.zombietime.com/up_your_alley_2008/

Donnelly’s inability to show discretion and tact in defending her position was unwise and insulting to veterans like Alva, which perhaps in the long-run will help in repealing this stupid ban.

*Perhaps.* Against that, we have to set the fact that the committee members were disrespectful, at least in the video I saw. She was trying to answer Congress’ questions - and in the video I saw, they were rude to her, making her fight just to get a word in edgewise. What were they so afraid of? If her arguments are, in fact, faulty or even heinous, then show courtesy and let her talk all the more.

This is not to defend DADT as some great policy. More a plea for accurate language.

As for Shays and Donnelly: It isn’t clear from what Milbank says that Shays actually got the better of the exchange. It would be interesting to see a transcript. Milbank is clearly not an objectiver reporter.

To illustrate Milbank’s bias with a small example: he tells us that Donnelly made “an extraordinary exhibition of rage”, when she made a point about transgenders in the military being the next discussion after America allows open gays in the military. Maybe her point was bad, maybe not. But was she “enraged”? I looked at your Youtube reference John. It was a different exchange, with Rep. Patrick Murphy, but if Donnelly showed rage, it wasn’t in that exchange. The handsome and fetching Rep. Murphy quite possibly did display rage. He gradually but steadily raised his voice, misunderstood and talked over the witness (Donnelly), and became visibly agitated. Yet Milbank chose to skip over that, only imputing “rage” to Donnelly - why? On what basis?

So, taking that (the knowledge that Milbank is one-sided) back to the Donnelly-Shays exchange: Donnelly may have had a reasonable point; we simply can’t know from Milbank, because he simplistically condenses her testimony instead of quoting her. Hypothetically, if she had had a halfway reasonable point - say, that military service does force same-gender servicepeople into intimate situations where gays had better be keeping their sexuality under wraps, for the good and comfort of all - then, hypothetically, Shays, like Murphy, would not be a hero, but just a bully for trying to stuff words into Donnelly’s mouth and prevent her actual point (good or bad) from being heard or understood. Again, we just can’t tell from the one-sided Milbank and would need a transcript.

I’m all for gays serving openly in the military. My main concern is that I don’t think that talking over witnesses (or practically shouting over them) and treating the other side with disrespect in self-congratulatory, highly biased and one-sided accounts is going to be, or should be, the way to get there.

Let’s hope that DADT is on its way to the ash heap of history. It will happen..the sooner the better.

Hearing on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy

I never heard of Ms Donnelly or her organization but I am, sadly, very familiar with the vile filth she spewed at the congressional hearing. I repeatedly heard that kind of talk month after month at our county’s Republican Central Committee meetings until I finally chose not to run for re-election as a precinct committeeman.

As much as I love Colin Powell, I wish he and former senator Sam Nunn and others who forced Bill Clinton to accept DADT had been forced to publicly sit through Ms. Donnelly’s hateful testimony. And then be asked to comment on her testimony.

It takes a sick mind to devote one’s life to the mission Ms. Donnelly has taken on.