Catharsis

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Full video of the President's tête à tête with House Republicans can be found here.

It's a good thing they were able to put all those responses into his teleprompter beforehand.

"Let's have a war! Give guns to the queers!"

One thing I've always found interesting about the debate over "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is how those who defend the policy do so by characterizing the military in quite insulting terms. I'm sure there are some knuckleheads but to think the thought process of the average man serving in the armed forces is "HULK SMASH GAY" doesn't seem fair to me.

Another strange notion about repealing this policy is that it would somehow put us in dangerous uncharted territory mankind has never entered and would take years to adapt to. Arguing this implies that we have more in common with countries like Iran, China, North Korea, and Venezuela than we do with the United Kingdom, Israel, France, Italy, Canada, and Australia, which allow gays in the military.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald updated the post I linked to with a very astute observation:

It should go without saying that debates over homosexuality, the military, warriors, masculinity and the like are suffuse with all sorts of complex psychological influences. But one thing is clear: in American culture, there has long been a group of men (typified by Kristol and O'Hanlon) who equate toughness and masculinity with fighting wars, yet who also know that they lack the courage of their own convictions, and thus confine themselves to cheerleading for wars from afar and sending others off to fight but never fighting those wars themselves (Digby wrote the seminal post on that sorry faction back in 2005). It seems that individuals plagued by that affliction are eager to avoid having it rubbed in their faces that there are large numbers of homosexualwarriors who possess the courage (the "testosterone-laden tough-guyness") which the O'Hanlons and Kristols, deep down, know they lack. Banning gay people from serving openly in the military as warriors is an excellent way of being able to deny that reality to themselves.