Today, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Became Even More Dishonorable
Obama’s Call For 21,000 Troops To Afghanistan Makes Gay Troops Indispensable
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Today, President Obama announced far-reaching plans that commit the United States to aggressive action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, possibly for the next quarter-century. Initially, the president is asking for $1.5 billion each year for the next five years, and is ordering 21,000 additional U.S. troops to train Afghan security forces, and hundreds of civilians from the State Department and other US Government agencies to assist the Afghan government.
Where are all these people going to come from?Â
Think about this for a moment:
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Pursue”, the law of the land since 1993, is responsible for the discharge of over 12,000 service men and women, at a direct cost of over $363 million – and those figures are only through 2006. And that doesn’t even take into account the actual value those men and women added to the military.
Consider this post I wrote just a few weeks ago:
Nathaniel Frank, author of “Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens Americaâ€, appeared on The Daily Show last night and offered an interesting theory: The military’s ban on gays is in part responsible for the success of the 9/11 attacks.Â
It’s well-known that the military has discharged dozens of Arabic linguistics because of their homosexuality.
About four minutes into the video, Frank says, “You know that on September 10th, 2001, the U.S. government intercepted a cable that said, ‘Tomorrow is zero-hour.’ It wasn’t translated until the 12th because we didn’t have enough Arabic linguists.â€
Think about that again: “didn’t have enough Arabic linguists.”
The military has fired over 12,000 people, the sole reason for their termination is because they are gay.
Just a handful of those people, possibly just one, could have been the difference between 9/11 being just a warm day in September, and the day 3000 innocent people died and the world was changed forever.
I’ll go one step further: Taking Nathaniel Frank’s premise, had we translated that cable and been able to act, the global economy wouldn’t be in such terrible shape right now. The US wouldn’t be spending an average of ten billion dollars a month, for the past six years, in Iraq. The bailouts wouldn’t be as damaging to the economy, to the strength of the US dollar, because we’d have more money around.Â
If you’ve lost your job because of the recession, there’s a chance you wouldn’t have, had 9/11 not happened, had we not gone into Iraq, had we kept our eye on the ball in other areas. Tell me I’m playing the “what-if” game if you want, but these are serious “what-ifs”.
Regardless of your personal view of homosexuality, regardless of your personal view of gays in the military, the fact is that gay men and women have served in the military since there was a military. The fact is that in many other countries, gay men and women serve in the military, openly, without damaging “unit cohesion”, which is a made-up term that had no meaning until “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” had to actually be justified.
In 2003, ten years after Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell became law, 91% of military-aged men and women “were supportive of allowing gays to serve openly, as were 85 percent of all women, and 73 percent of all men.” Last year, 75% of Americans “said gay people who are open about their sexual orientation should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military, up from 62 percent in early 2001 and 44 percent in 1993.”
And the fact is that our troops have done double, triple tours of duty, their time home has been compromised, their families have had to shoulder the burden of lost wages and lost companionship. Surely, if you were to ask every soldier if twelve thousand openly gay men and women were back in the armed forces, and they could in turn spend more time with their own families, surely they would say, “yes”.
Two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John Shalikashvili and Colin Powell have said, “Yes.”
Senator Sam Nunn has said “Yes.”
113 Congressmen in the US House of Representatives have said, “Yes.”
It’s time for you to say “Yes”, too.Â
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(photo:Â dbking)
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
