If Democrats accomplish one thing in the lame-duck session of Congress, it should be a repeal of Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT).   Indeed, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, initially appointed to the post by then-President George W. Bush in 2006, said as much:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Congress should act quickly, before new members take their seats, to repeal the military’s ban on gays serving openly in the military.

He, however, did not sound optimistic that the current Congress would use a brief postelection session to get rid of the law known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

“I would like to see the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” but I’m not sure what the prospects for that are,” Gates said Saturday, as he traveled to defense and diplomatic meetings in Australia.

One of the reasons there’s no chance of a Republican Congress repealing the ban is that the various gay groups in Washington have spent little time reaching out to the incoming House majority.   And Republicans have nothing to gain politically by voting for the ban.  (Perhaps that may change now that they realize gay voters aren’t beholden to the Democrats.)

Now, to be sure, with the proper efforts, these groups could change Republicans minds, but that takes time.  GOProud which could be instrumental in this process is only now getting off the ground.  So, it’s up to Senate Democrats to act swiftly on repeal.  No more procedural shenanigans, Mr. Reid, just a simple up or down vote on repeal.

If outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi could get it through the House, the reelected Majority Leader should be able to get it through the Senate.

Until a visiting Thatcher honoree informed me that Prop 19, while legalizing pot in the (once-)Golden State, would also make it difficult for employers to fire someone who toked a bit too much:

Prop 19 failed also because it overreached. One feature attempted to protect the “rights” of employees who get fired or disciplined for using marijuana, including a provision that employers could only discipline marijuana use that “actually impairs job performance.” That is a much higher bar than required by current policy.

Commenting on this, Walter Olson observes

Like so many other developments in employment law in recent years, this would have chipped away at the basic principle of employment at will, which holds that in the absence of a contract specifying otherwise, either party to an employment relation may end that relation at any time for any reason or for no reason at all.

Via Instapundit.  So, while the law may have removed one barrier to our freedom, it created another.  Just as individuals should be free to smoke marijuana, so should employers be free to ensure that their employees don’t.

It seems that the initiative’s authors, like many on the left, only understood the idea of freedom in personal terms, not economic ones.  Let us hope that, in future years, they put forward a proposition which recognizes both an individual’s freedom to toke and a company’s freedom to set its own employment policies.