Obama Talks 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' With Liberal Bloggers
Barack Obama invited some special friends for a first-of-its-kind, in-person White House chat today: liberal bloggers who are always mean to him! And the first report back suggests that they discussed Obama's legislative strategy for repealing DADT. He has one!
Sam Stein at the Huffington Post confirmed that the five invited liberal bloggers were "Joe Sudbay of AMERICABlog; Duncan Black ('Atrios'), who runs the site Eschaton; Barbara Morrill, who writes for the DailyKos; Jon Amato, who is the founder of Crooks and Liars; and Oliver Willis, who runs an eponymous site." You can see these handsomely clad typing-monsters up top, in some order, posing for a Twitter photo!
AMERICABlog, in particular, has protested the president's lack of movement on gay rights issues pretty aggressively over the past two years. So it's no surprise that Sudbay asked several pointed questions about those during this meeting, a brief recap of which he sent back to his co-blogger, John Aravosis. We're glad that he asked this important (but rarely asked) one and appeared to get something resembling an answer: What's the plan for moving a repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" through a 60-vote Senate filibuster after the election?
Finally, Joe asked the President if he has a strategy for passing the DADT compromise legislation during the lame duck session in Congress. The President did make some news here, by telling Joe that he asked the Log Cabin Republicans in a meeting at the White House yesterday to get him 2 to 5 votes. The President seemed to think that Joe could help persuade Log Cabin to help. Joe told the President that he didn't have sway with those people.
Yeah, good luck getting leftie gays and rightie gays to work together, you silly president, you.
