Let’s see if the eleventy billionth time is the charm:

House Democratic leaders have decided to make one last push to repeal the military’s ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly before the end of the lame-duck Congress.

Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the House majority leader, said he and Representative Patrick J. Murphy, Democrat of Pennsylvania, would bring a stand-alone repeal of the ban to the floor as early as Wednesday.

The House move comes in response to the Senate’s failure last week to break a Republican filibuster against a broader Pentagon measure that would have lifted the ban.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, urged Senate leaders to try to pass a separate measure ending the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule, untangling the issue from the broader measure.

The way this is being done, it would only have to go through one procedural vote in the Senate, which would require sixty votes.

Here’s hoping.

Press release from the ever-fey leader of the Family Research Council:

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins reacts to comments President Barack Obama made at a press conference today calling for revoking the current policy on homosexuals serving openly in the military, commonly referred to as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

“Last night millions of Americans went to the polls to express their strong disagreement with the change President Obama has brought to Washington . Out of control spending, government takeovers of health care and other private enterprise and an allegiance to a pro-abortion/anti-family coalition are all issues the American people said ‘Enough!’ to last night.

“When it comes to the homosexual agenda, the American people could not be clearer. The flipping of at least six state legislatures, the defeat of three justices in Iowa who imposed same-sex ‘marriage’ and the defeat of the House Member leading the charge to overturn the current military policy are all examples of how the American people have grown tired of the Democratic Party’s adherence to an anti-family coalition.

“I agree with the President that Congress should wait for the coming report from the military on changing the current policy. However, that does not mean Congress should rubber stamp any study. The study itself is likely to have problems, and the next natural step would be to have the new 112th Congress hold hearings on the issue.

“The arrogance of the President and his allies in Congress, many of whom will not return in the new Congress, to force such a drastic change on our military in the middle of fighting two wars is disrespectful of our troops, and should not be tolerated.”

Actually, Tone-bone, the American people, and the troops, aren’t bothered by DADT repeal, at all. To pretend that Patrick Murphy lost his job over DADT repeal is foolish. The Iowa situation is sad, but wouldn’t have happened if a busload of bigots with a bunch of donations from yokels’ maxed out credit cards hadn’t descended on the state with a fear campaign against those judges. It’s to be noted that the judges themselves actually respected their role as the judiciary and didn’t engage in campaigning to keep their jobs. Nope, Tony, the only reason that happened is because, instead of doing something Christ-ian like feeding the hungry or caring for the sick, y’all decided to waste a bunch of money punishing people smarter than you for interpreting the Constitution correctly. I wonder how many kids that money could have fed.

I know wingnuts are comforted right now, because they had their kind of election — the low turn-out, old white people kind.  But there will come a day when even the low turn-out, old white people kind of election goes squarely in the direction of fairness and equality.  People are only able to remain rubes on this issue for so long, before they either die out or become enlightened.  Tuesday was a bump in the road, to be sure.  But the road continues on.

The compromise isn’t great, but it’s a step in the right direction, and I feel more comfortable with it with Patrick Murphy leading the way. Before the interview, Rachel points out how stupid and disingenuous it is that extremist right-wingers keep framing DADT repeal as something fringe or liberal, considering the fact that 75% of Americans support it. The 25% who still support DADT are, perhaps not coincidentally, also the 25% of Americans who would most benefit from protective helmets.

(h/t Joe Sudbay)

Peter LaBarbera decided to get on the computer tonight to reprint a malformed little tirade from one Daniel Zanoza, “executive director” of some group called “Republicans for Fair Media.” Zanoza’s piece bemoans the fact that Bill O’Reilly ran a “Culture Warriors” segment, and none of the panelists supported keeping Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in place. Worse than that? Even Bill O’Reilly supported repeal! (See update below.) The hysterical, fearful mental state which led to Zanoza’s dismay also leads him to ask “Is Fox news tacking to the left” to “appease and attract more liberal viewers?”

Uh, Daniel, no.

Fox News is not tacking to the left. Your positions are just rapidly becoming so grotesque in the public eye that even Fox is beginning to realize how ill-informed and bigoted they are.* You refer to lifting DADT as a “social experiment,” the favored term of know-nothings like Elaine Donnelly, but the reality is that gays serve in the US Military already and have for years, and the institution hasn’t fallen apart. Likewise, gays serve openly in the militaries in the United Kingdom, Israel, and a host of other places, and if you’d done any research on the issue before hunting/pecking your ignorance into the perpetuity of the internet, you’d know that the Israeli military is one of the fiercest fighting forces in the world. EVEN WITH ALL THOSE HOMOS!

I guess we’re just a hell of a lot tougher than your tortured little minds would like to admit.

As I said above, when you’re losing Fox News, you might as well pack it in, because you’ve lost the war.

(By the way, the funniest line in Zanoza’s screed is where he talks about how shocked he was to hear this “liberal” stuff because Fox is supposed to be “Fair and Balanced,” which, in the wingnut mind, means never having to be confronted with ideas you disagree with/have no rational argument against. Wingnuts are such delicate creatures.)

*A turning point for that was likely Elaine Donnelly’s embarrassing testimony before Congress a while back, when Patrick Murphy tore her to pieces as others present in the room openly marveled at the insane things coming out of her mouth. Good times.

UPDATE: Jeremy pulled the transcript (something I should have done, but didn’t think about in my pre-coffee writing) and it seems that Daniel Zanoza’s account of the O’Reilly segment doesn’t even match reality. The two panelists indeed supported repeal, and O’Reilly played a bit of devil’s advocate against them, and from what I can see, pulled out some tired conservative tropes about the military not wanting openly gay people serving. (They tend to rely on a flawed, unscientific poll of Military Times readers, who are mostly older, and many are retired.) As Jeremy said, the exchange is pretty much what you would expect from O’Reilly. So Zanoza’s “the sky is falling!” hysteria, aside from being insane, was based on watching a television segment that simply didn’t happen.