Thursday, September 30, 2010

The Long Debate Over "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

Two events last week returned the nation’s attention to the debate on the law that restricts members of the United States military, if they are gay, from openly declaring or overtly practicing their sexuality –- a law popularly known as "Don't Ask, Don’t Tell" or "DADT."

The law has been, since its inception, one of the nation’s most widely discussed legislative activities, and few other recent laws come to mind as capturing as much of the passion of American opinion. DADT's history is a complicated one to summarize, but even the briefest overview shows how greatly the issue resonates with Americans interested in privacy rights, gays rights, and in the unparalleled demands of military service.

Last week, on Tuesday, September 21st, the U.S. Senate voted against attaching Sen. Joseph Lieberman's Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2010, (S.3065), which would have explicitly repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011. Voting was divided along party lines, as many had expected, and Democrats were unable to overturn the Republican threat of filibustering the vote while any such amendment was attached. Reading the Congressional Record for the day provides insight into the the dialogue and process of the debate on the DADT repeal, before the eventual vote.

It is worth noting that the original DADT policy was also attached as an amendment (H.AMDT.318) to a 1993 Defense appropriations bill, H.R. 2401. What is less commonly known is that the DADT text was added partially in response to a failed amendment, H.AMDT.317, that would have allowed the military to directly ask whether a recruit was homosexual or bisexual, and "whether the person engages in, or has a propensity to engage in, homosexual acts."

As recorded in the Congressional Record for September 28, 1993, the debate between the Meehan (317) and Skelton (318) amendments was contentious. Rep. Meehan's comments in particular appear to speak to legislators today:
"I rise today to say clearly that enough is enough. The issue of homosexuals in the military has been far too divisive, has consumed far too much of the Nation's energy, and has robbed this body of far too much of our legislative agenda. We must put this issue behind us, we must do so immediately. It is my hope that we will do so today."

Indeed, President Clinton’s July 19, 1993 announcement of the DADT policy goal acknowledged the very active divide in opinions on the issue, while attempting to prepare the nation to respond positively to the gradual acceptance of openly gay members of the U.S. military.

Clinton’s policy announcement is embedded below.



Returning to the present day, on September 24th, three days after the Senate stalled S.3065, a court decision from the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington challenged the constitutionality of DADT.

As detailed in WITT v. UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE AIR FORCE (Search for: 2010 U.S. Dist LEXIS 100781), Major Margaret Witt was honorably discharged by the Air Force in 2007 after making an unsworn statement that she had both committed adultery with another woman, and had previously been in long-term relationship with a woman. The Major sued the Air Force arguing that the DADT discharge violated "her procedural and substantive due process rights under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment."

Judge Ronald B. Leighton of U.S. District Court agreed, and in his opinion wrote that "the evidence produced at trial overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that the suspension and discharge of Margaret Witt did not significantly further the important government interest in advancing unit morale and cohesion. To the contrary, the actions taken against Major Witt had the opposite effect... Her discharge from the Air Force Reserves violated her substantive due process rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution."

The Air Force was ordered to reinstate Major Witt to active service.

The court’s decision is simply the latest of legal challenges against DADT. For an overview of other cases, the Congressional Research Service published its June 2010 report, "'Don't Ask, Don’t Tell' : A Legal Analysis." For more on military policy toward gays, see the CRS report, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" : The Law and Military Policy on Same-Sex Behavior," updated in March of this year.

Clearly, for a law that is only sixteen years old, "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" is one of the most widely and publicly discussed pieces of legislation in contemporary history, engendering passionate followers to speak out against and in favor of open recognition of homosexuality in the military. In turn, there are literally hundreds of primary documents available from all branches of government discussing and dissecting the effect of the law.

Even the current president has been drawn out to publicly state his policy goals surrounding DADT. During a fund-raising speech for Senator Barbara Boxer (Calif.) in March, President Obama was provoked by an audience member demanding the repeal of DADT. A video of Obama's dialogue with the heckler is embedded below.



In short, there can be no brief summary or compact legislative history of DADT that also captures how deeply the issue speaks to Americans. This is an on-going, active example of not only the power of the legislative process, but of the importance of the citizenry making informed decisions about policies that, while written by others, may have a very direct impact on their everyday lives.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Census and Statistics

The past two days have had headlines in the local papers discussing data from the Census Bureau. Therefore, I thought I would talk a little bit about the two topics that have been all over the headlines.

Poverty

Yesterday brought us "Census finds record gap between rich and poor" from the Daily Camera and "Recession rips at US marriages, expands income gap" from the Denver Post. Both of these articles are based on data from "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance in the United States: 2009." This is an annual report released by the Census Bureau that you can actually look at back to 1985 online. The interesting fact about this article is that both articles discuss the growth in the income gap between rich and poor, which if you read further in the Census report you will discover is "not statistically significant" (Press Release), but since it was an increase that makes for much better headlines.

Want to see how the US compares to other countries in the income gap? The variable used to discuss the income gap is the Gini-coefficient of inequality. If you want to learn what about this variable and some other variables check out the Measuring Inequality section of the Poverty pages at the World Bank. For the data itself, go to World Development Indicators, a database from the World Bank.

Homeownership/Income/Education for Colorado

Today we got a series of articles from the Denver Post: "In tough economic times, Coloradans go back to school, census stats show," "Household income drops in Colorado over past 3 years, decade," and "Rate of Colorado homeownership drops 2% in 2 years." All three of these articles used 1-year estimates of the American Community Survey for 2009, which was released yesterday. This data is available from the "American Community Survey Data Sets" section of American Factfinder. Again, these articles leave out the margin of error rates for these estimates, which come about due to the fact that this is a survey, not the census form we all filled out earlier in the year. If you want data that goes in more depth, with lower margin or error rates, check out the three-year estimates (which go down to communities larger then 20,000), the one for 2007-2009 will be released in January. Even more exciting is the first 5-year estimates which will be released in December 2010, which will have data down to the census tract level. Learn all about this on the American Community Survey web site.

Not overwhelmed by the data offerings? Then why not check out one of the library's guides to statistics.

Monday, September 27, 2010

GAO Reports and Releases

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) which is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This past week GAO investigated finance, child care, security, and other issues. If you would like to know more about GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Correspondences
Testimonies

Friday, September 24, 2010

Stephen Colbert Appears, in Character, Before Congress

If you've been watching or reading the news recently, you’re already aware that earlier today Comedian Stephen Colbert, known for his stint on The Daily Show and his own mock-news program The Colbert Report, appeared today before a subcommittee of the House of Representatives.

Colbert was on the calendar for the House Committee on the Judiciary to make a statement before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. The remarks were intended to speak to Colbert's one-day experience working alongside migrant laborers, an effort designed to encourage legislative leniency toward illegal immigrants performing in jobs that are undesirable to many American citizens.

Not surprisingly, Colbert's prepared comments, linked to from the calendar above, were a much more conservative preview of the comedian's actual statement before the committee.

The C-SPAN Video Archive offers the complete Subcommittee hearing for viewing online, or, embedded below, is the portion primarily featuring Colbert.


These spoken remarks are making their way around the Internet, but transcripts of the comments will eventually find their way into government sources, including the Subcommittee's Web site, the official published version of the hearing, and in turn, into clearinghouses of government information such as GPO's FDsys and in LexisNexis Congressional.

An interesting side note is that while this may be his first appearance before Congress, Stephen Colbert has been mentioned several times by congressional members and witnesses. A search in LexisNexis Congressional reveals that:
  • Colbert's use of the word "frenemy" was cited by Dr. Derek Reveron of the U.S. Naval War College in a 2007 hearing of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
  • In July 2009, the House Subcom. on Space and Aeronautics, Committee on Science and Technology's hearing on "Enhancing the Relevance of Space To Address National Needs" made note of Colbert's campaign to have an International Space Station node named after him.*
  • Stephen Colbert has been named or quoted in hearings of The Defense Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the House Committee on Education and Labor, and in a joint meeting of the Senate Finance Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
For a comedian trafficking in political humor and current events, it's hard to knock that kind of credibility.

*That effort went unapproved, but NASA did offer up the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill -- or the COLBERT, for short.


Thursday, September 23, 2010

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports

Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a research agency of Congress and writes reports at Congress' request. These short reports (usually 10-40 pages long) cover recent topics of concern. This week brings us reports on the military, foreign affairs, and border issues, and much more. Although these reports are in the public domain, there is no central database available to the public. To get a copy of a CRS report, you can request it from your senator or representative. These reports were discovered by Secrecy News:
Interested in historical CRS reports? If you are here at the Boulder campus, check out the LexisNexis Congressional database, which has reports dating back to 1916.

Not on campus but still want access to additional reports? The library has a guide linking to various additional sources of CRS reports.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

GAO Reports and Releases

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) which is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This past week GAO investigated healthcare, defense, the enviroment, and other issues. If you would like to know more about GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Correspondences
Testimonies
  • Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Implications of Caseload and Program Changes for Families and Program Monitoring, by Kay E. Brown, director, education, workforce, and income security, before the Senate Committee on Finance. GAO-10-815T, September 21. http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-815T
    Highlights: http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d10815thigh.pdf
  • Veterans' Benefits: Training for Experienced Disability Claims Processors, by Daniel Bertoni, director, education, workforce, and income security, before the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs, House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. GAO-10-1029T, September 16.
    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-1029T

    Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d101029thigh.pdf
  • Combating Nuclear Smuggling: Inadequate Communication and Oversight Hampered DHS Efforts to Develop an Advanced Radiography System to Detect Nuclear Materials, statement for the record by Gene Aloise, director, natural resources and environment; and Stephen L. Caldwell, director, homeland security and justice, before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. GAO-10-1041T, September 15.
    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-1041T

    Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d101041thigh.pdf
  • Medicare: CMS Has Addressed Some Implementation Problems from Round 1 of the Durable Medical Equipment Competitive Bidding Program for the Round 1 Rebid, by Kathleen M. King, director, health care, before the Subcommittee on Health, House Committee on Energy and Commerce. GAO-10-1057T, September 15.
    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-1057T

    Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d101057thigh.pdf
  • Defense Health Care: Status of Efforts to Address Lack of Compliance with Personality Disorder Separation Requirements, by Debra A. Draper, director, health care, before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. GAO-10-1013T, September 15.
    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-1013T

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

What is cloture?

Today, we have reached the 2000th post on this blog. In celebration of this feat I thought I would tackle explaining cloture.

The Senate defines cloture as "The only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, normally 60 votes." (Glossary, Cloture entry). Now does this make sense? Well, how about we follow this time line:
1) Bill comes out of committee to floor of Senate
2) Filibuster is begun. A filibuster (in case you haven't seen "Mr Smith Goes to Washington") is a delay on a bill's passage. This delay can be done in a number of ways, through procedures or just lots of talking.
3) Filibusters can continue on and on, until the party(ies) involved stop or cloture is evoked. Cloture requires 3/5ths of the Senate (which unless they have a vacancy is 60 votes) and doesn't stop debate, just gives a limit on how much longer debates can be held.

So, what happened this week? Well, the "
Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010" had a few amendments proposed that would have changed how one provision of the Health Care bill passed earlier in the year dealt with reporting income. There were two amendments to this, one from the Republican side (Johanns Amdt. No. 4596) and one from the Democratic side (Nelson (FL) Amdt. No. 4595). These were both proposed and filibustered and attempts on cloture to force a vote happened on September 14th, but neither passed (See roll call on Nelson and Johanns). Therefore, debate continued, but today another attempt at cloture was successful (Roll Call) and the bill passed (Roll Call) without these two amendments. You can see the final text of the bill on Thomas.

Want to learn more about these amendments? Listen to "Senate Fails to Cut Tax Provision" from NPR. Need more Congressional resources? Check out the library's guide.

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports

Congressional Research Service (CRS) is a research agency of Congress and writes reports at Congress' request. These short reports (usually 10-40 pages long) cover recent topics of concern. This week brings us reports on the sciences, justice, and much more. Although these reports are in the public domain, there is no central database available to the public. To get a copy of a CRS report, you can request it from your senator or representative. These reports were discovered by Secrecy News:
Interested in historical CRS reports? If you are here at the Boulder campus, check out the LexisNexis Congressional database, which has reports dating back to 1916.

Not on campus but still want access to additional reports? The library has a guide linking to various additional sources of CRS reports.

Friday, September 10, 2010

GAO Reports and Releases

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) which is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This past week GAO investigated energy, stimulus, and other issues. If you would like to know more about GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Testimony
Correspondence

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Fourmile Wildfire

The smoke that has descended over the city of Boulder today is from the Fourmile wildfire. There are a number of places to go for information, both government and media sources. Here they are:

Wednesday, September 01, 2010

GAO Reports and Releases

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) which is often called the investigative arm of Congress. This past week GAO investigated foreclosures, auditing, and other issues. If you would like to know more about GAO, check out the library's guide.

Reports
Presentations by Acting Comptroller General
  • "Anticipating and Meeting Accountability Challenges in a Dynamic Environment," by Gene L. Dodaro, acting comptroller general, before the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers, and Treasurers. GAO-10-954CG, August 10, 2010
    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-954CG
  • "Challenges Facing Government and the Contracting Community," by Gene L. Dodaro, acting comptroller general, before the 2010 annual conference of the National Association of State Procurement Officials, in Washington, D.C. GAO-10-1021CG, August 23, 2010
    http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-1021CG