Senate Repeals 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' — BUMPED AND UPDATED!

At NYT.

I've been on record as favoring repeal for a long time, but that doesn't mean I don't find the military's rationale compelling. See, "Against Gays in the Military."

And I haven't seen this kind of reaction for a while, but see Bryan Fischer's, "Benedict Arnold Republicans destroy military and our national security."

The GOP platform is plain and unambiguous:

“Esprit and cohesion are necessary for military effectiveness and success on the battlefield. To protect our servicemen and women and ensure that America's Armed Forces remain the best in the world, we affirm the timelessness of those values, the benefits of traditional military culture, and the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service.” (emphasis mine)

For those who say the Republican Party does not need a litmus test for its candidates, you just lost the argument and frittered away the strength of the U.S. military at the same time.

The armies of other nations have allowed gays to serve openly in the military. The reason they could afford to do this is simple: they could allow homosexuals to serve in their military because we didn’t allow them to serve in ours.

They knew they could count on the strength, might, power, and cohesion of the U.S. military to intervene whenever and wherever necessary to pull their fannies out of the fire and squash the forces of tyranny wherever they raised their ugly heads around the world.

Those days are now gone. We will no longer be able to bail out these other emasculated armies because ours will now be feminized and neutered beyond repair, and there is no one left to bail us out. We have been permanently weakened as a military and as a nation by these misguided and treasonous Republican senators, and the world is now a more dangerous place for us all.

PREVIOUSLY: "Gen. James Amos Comes Out Against DADT Repeal." And lots of commentary at Memeorandum.

UPDATE: Eric Rawls, "Hello flamers, goodbye Marine Corps," cross posted at Astute Bloggers.

Also, from the comments at This Ain't Hell:

"I will be tendering my resignation this summer after 27 years of service."

I saw this comment in response to similar sentiment on another blog and I think it’s true here as well…

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You know what is irritating… while I 100% understand and support anyone who will now leave the military or refuse to join, because they don’t like the PC bullsh!t with which it has been infested, this then plays right into the Left’s hands.

Now, with conservatives leaving or not joining the military, it allows the Left/progressives to take it over and destroy it from within… just as they have done with the MF-ing media, with our grammar schools, high schools, universities, Hollywood, etc.

Just as they did with all those organizations, they are now going to take over the military and make it a liberal PC utopia. And, just as they don’t care about results in the other organizations (don’t care about facts in the MF-ing media, don’t care about education of children in schools and universities, don’t care about making money in Hollywood, so long as they get their message out, etc), they won’t care if the military becomes inefficient.

This is their goal. Take over the military from within, destroy it with PC bullsh!t.

And more:

"Can we talk about something else now? Something important? Something like killing large numbers of our enemies who won’t tolerate gays either?"

And here's Senator McCain's comments from the Senate floor:

And see Politico, "John McCain's New Role: GOP Agitator." (At Memeorandum.)

Plus, radical progressives weigh in at Rachel Maddow's.

And from AmericaBlog:

More, at NPR, "Gays See Repeal as a Civil Rights Milestone."

Related, from William Kristol, "Gays in the Military, ROTC back on Campus?" Plus, more at Instapundit, and Volokh Conspiracy, "DADT is History."

At 9:52am on Sunday, check out some of the progressive reaction to John McCain:

From Steve Benen:

Watching McCain rail endlessly yesterday was a genuinely painful experience. In one sense, he was practically embracing the caricature of himself, lashing out as a bitter, cantankerous ass. I kept expected McCain to start shaking his fist at clouds and demanding that children stay off his lawn.

But that's really not that unusual anymore, and it's only part of a larger picture. McCain wasn't just an angry old man yesterday; what we saw was darker and uglier. The Arizona senator on the floor yesterday, with a series of cringe-worthy tantrums, was hateful and filled with bile. McCain was even sarcastic at times, as if he almost relished the role.

This wasn't about policy. By all appearances, this was personal.

And Thers at Firedoglake:

The United States Senate is a preposterous institution that has no place in an advanced democracy — or even the turd-festering cesspit we’re currently soaking in.

The pig-stupid disgraces of the Senate are multiple. It is antidemocratic; states where nobody lives except gay cowboys and halfwit moose-slaughtering reality teevee stars are as equally represented as states containing multi-millions of people deemed contemptible because they inhabit “cities,” a term that in contemporary Official American Moron Discourse translates as “Mordor.” Moreover, the Senate operates according to a set of “rules” that a Distinguished Panel of Geniuses comprised of Nostradamus, Caligula, and a cherrystone clam would consider arcane, vicious, and primitive.

Most hideously, the Senate tends to produce Senators, who as a class are insufferable cretins whose self-regard and pomposity and belief that they are not horrible loathsome shitheaded troglodytes stand in precisely inverse proportion to the fact that they are, often enough, James Inhofe.

So one can never really expect very much from an encounter with a United States Senator; all one might reasonably express is the wan hope that they might not prove overly difficult to scrape off one’s shoe.

Nevertheless, John McCain has recently managed to dunk head and shoulders below his colleagues in terms of Senatorial road-apple bobbing.

Road-apple bobbing?

I learn a new progressive phrase of demonization almost every day.