Excerpts from Scott Brown's letter to a constituent regarding DADT

Proof that Massachusetts' junior senator is no friend of equality under the law, in a state whose voters are far ahead of the curve when it comes to gay rights.

     Current members of the military are required to abide by the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that became federal law in 1993.  This policy restricts the United States military from forcing service members to disclose homosexual or bisexual orientation, while barring those that are openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual from military service.  In response to this policy, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2010 (S. 3065) was introduced in the Senate on March 3, 2010, and referred to the Senate Committee on Armed Services where it was offered as an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  As a member of the committee, I voted against this amendment, which was ultimately approved by a vote of 16 to 12.  Currently, the NDAA awaits further consideration by the full Senate.

 

     The service chiefs of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps sent individual letters to the Senate Committee on Armed Services expressing their support for not repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" until the Pentagon completes their ongoing review.  I agree with the views expressed by the service chiefs and believe it would be premature to act on a repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” until Congress receives and analyzes the findings and recommendations of the Department's report. 

You can't take intolerance out of a Republican elected official. Bigots are his base; they are, ultimately, whom he must speak for first.

Cartoons, courtesy of France

Although the French, like most Europeans, are decades behind the United States on matters of race and ethnicity, they are far, far savvier about religion.

"OK, so you committed rape. But was it with or without a rubber?"

"The Holocaust-denying bishop's pleas for forgiveness failed to convince."

Sumerian aphorisms

5000 years old.

In a city that has no watch dogs, the fox is the overseer

Flatter a young man, he’ll give you anything;

Throw a scrap to a dog, he’ll wag his tail.

A sweet word is everybody’s friend.

If you take the field of an enemy, the enemy will come and take your field.

Conceiving is nice; pregnancy is irksome.

For a man’s pleasure, there is marriage;

On thinking it over, there is divorce.

The New Republic publisher Marty Peretz on Islam

He actually said this:

But, frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood. So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Jason Linkins on Marty Peretz:

Hey, from time to time, I harbor grave doubts about whether or not Peretz is worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment. But in the end, I suppose pornography provides a low bar for Peretz to barely clear.

Peter Beinart

From the conclusion of a recent essay on Reagan's foreign policy in Foreign Affairs. Subheading: "Obama is the new Reagan."

Even more importantly, Obama must rebuild U.S. economic strength. Although Reagan boosted the defense budget, he saw the contest between the United States and the Soviet Union fundamentally as a struggle between political and economic systems in which the dynamism of American capitalism was the West's trump card. As a liberal taking office in the wake of a financial collapse, Obama is rightly concerned not only about capitalism's dynamism, but also its stability and decency. Still, the crucial insight is that power in world affairs rests on economic strength. Obama needs to remind Americans that their most successful Cold War presidents -- Reagan included -- saw the conflict as a primarily economic struggle. Soviet communism threatened the United States less because the Red Army might overrun Western Europe than because, for a time at least, it represented a serious competitor for the hearts and minds of people across the globe.

In that regard, it is not jihadi fanaticism that has taken the Kremlin's place. After all, even in the Muslim world, barely anyone really believes that al Qaeda, the Taliban, or Iran's ruling clerics can build a society prosperous and stable enough to challenge the West. The better analogue is China's 21st-century authoritarian capitalism, which has built a record of political stability and economic dynamism that has captured the imagination of people (and governments) throughout the developing world.

In the nascent economic and ideological struggle between the United States and China, wars that Washington cannot possibly pay for -- and which leave the country more reliant on foreign central bankers -- don't make America stronger; they make it weaker. Of course, the United States and China are far more economically interdependent than were the United States and the Soviet Union. But within every interdependent relationship lies a balance of power, and Obama's leverage over China will depend in large measure on his ability to stop hemorrhaging money, lives, and attention in the Muslim world so he can rebuild the political and economic institutions that form the foundation of U.S. national strength. Do that, and the American model can triumph again, peacefully. Ronald Reagan -- if not his contemporary right-wing admirers -- would understand.

The Republican Party's contributors and, in particular, its media supporters, are bankrolled by China and the Middle East. The third largest shareholder in Fox News' parent company News Corp. is an Arab sheikh. So you have to give our domestic traitors the upper hand in the fight against the president. Between their trillion dollar wars, horrific taxation policy and science and education policies that promise to make our rivals better than us at everything within 50 years, Republican Party is set to hand economic and hence geopolitical victory to the Chinese. A century before it would have happened otherwise.