News: Pelosi on DADT, White House "Unhelpful", ENDA Vote Delayed

Several updates on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ...

· Speaker Nancy Pelosi vows to repeal DADT this year. "[Pelosi] wouldn’t say whether the House will take the lead or predict when [it] would be repealed. But she made it clear ending 'Don’t ask, don’t tell' is at the top of her agenda. 'I don’t have any doubt that ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ will be a memory by the end of this year,' she said."

· Pelosi less confident about ENDA—stalled since September. Pelosi recently said ENDA would have a "much better likelihood" of passage if DADT repeal was successful first.

· Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA), sponsor of the DADT repeal bill, has an op-ed in Politico.  The Iraq War vet slams anti-repeal arguments as "weak and outdated."

· Next week, Murphy expected to introduce DADT repeal amendment to the Defense Authorization Act.

· Servicemembers United discovers 630 additional discharges under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" that have NOT been counted. The discharges were discovered in a Freedom of Information Request. Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army intelligence officer discharged under DADT, says the data confirms SU's "suspicions" the Pentagon's numbers are "incomplete and under-reported."

· Nicholson was a guest on Michelangelo Signorile's Sirius radio show yesterday and discussed a February 1 White House meeting. The meeting was only days after President Obama's State of the Union address and WH staff reportedly said they did not intend to repeal DADT in 2010.

· Nicholson says the White House was "passive" on repeal. "Our sense in leaving the meeting was that it was going to be a difficult battle to get them to ... [include] repeal language in the [Defense] Authorization bill...I certainly left that meeting with the impression that they weren't going to help us."

· Complete audio of Signorile's interview HERE.

· Barney Frank: ENDA vote delayed until "late June, early July."

· Finally: Timeline of promised ENDA votes in 2010.

FWIW: The House and Senate will recess in August.  The election is November. Will House members want to vote on ENDA only days before August  townhall meetings and campaigns? And the Senate is expected to vote ... when?

Comments

[Andy Niable]

Time to get on the phones...

Congressional Switchboard#
202-224-3121

There's a Congressional Phone Swarm for DADT repeal planned for Monday, May 24. Let's make those phones ring...