Obama Creates Independent BP Oil Spill Commission, Weekly Address

Sources: Whitehouse.gov, Youtube

Obama Admin., Pentagon Reviews "Don't Ask", Seeks Repeal

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Gates: Fewer Gay Troops Will Be Dismissed


Defense Secretary Robert Gates is promising to try to spare more gay troops from being dismissed from the military while the Pentagon takes a year to study revising its "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

An announcement of the study, expected Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, marks a measured step toward President Barack Obama's goal of eliminating the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which is based on a 1993 law.

Obama has called on Congress to repeal the law, but Democrats say they want more guidance on how to allow openly gay service members to serve without causing a major upheaval.

The yearlong study could pave the way for the biggest social change to the military since the 1948 executive order for the racial integration of units.

While his promise is being hailed as a good start by gay rights' activists, Obama is finding resistance in several corners. Some high-ranking military officers are reluctant to embrace the change while troops are stretched thin at a time of two wars.

For their part, Democrats in Congress are unlikely to press the divisive issue until after this fall's midterm elections.

Needs to be done very, very carefully

This will probably satisfy Gates, who has long suggested that change shouldn't come too quickly. In a speech last year at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he noted that the executive order for racial integration took five years to implement.

"I'm not saying that's a model for this, but I'm saying that I believe this is something that needs to be done very, very carefully," he said.

According to U.S. officials, the senior-level study will be co-chaired by a top-ranked civilian and a senior uniformed officer.

It would recommend the best way to lift the ban, starting from the premise that the goal will take time to accomplish but that it can be done without harming the capabilities or cohesion of the military force, officials said.

A more lenient standard

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the emerging Pentagon plan ahead of Gates' announcement during his Senate appearance alongside Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

One U.S. official said Gates and Mullen will outline a more lenient standard for enforcing the current ban, as Gates had said last year he would consider. The interim policy would make it harder for a third party to turn in a gay service member and would raise the standard for evidence that the service member is gay before the person could be dismissed.

Under the 1993 law, engaging in homosexual conduct — even you don't tell anyone — can been enough to qualify a person for dismissal.

The law was intended as a compromise between then-President Bill Clinton, who wanted to lift the military's ban on gays entirely, and a reluctant Congress and military that said doing so would threaten order.

According to figures released Monday, the Defense Department last year dismissed the fewest number of service members for violating its the policy than it had in more than a decade. Overall, more than 10,900 troops have been fired under the policy. The 2009 figure — 428 — was dramatically lower than the 2008 total of 619.

End of a dream

David Hall, a former Air Force sergeant, said he was discharged in 2002 after someone else reported that he was gay.

"That ended it," said Hall, who now works for a gay rights advocacy group. "Just like that, based off what one person said, ended my dream of getting to fly planes."

In addition to addressing the military's policy on gays, Gates and Mullen planned to outline the military's $768 billion budget for 2011 and another $33 billion requested in war spending this year.

Both Gates and Mullen were expected to underscore the importance of succeeding in Afghanistan, where Obama has ordered 30,000 more troops.

"Our future security is greatly imperiled if we do not win the wars we are in," Mullen said in prepared remarks.

Further, he added, "the outcome of today's conflicts will shape the global security environment for decades to come."


Sources: MSNBC, NY Daily News, Zimbio

Obama Responds To Detroit Plane Al-Qaida Terrorist Attack From Hawaii

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Obama Addresses Airline Security In Low-Key Fashion



President Obama has performed a difficult but familiar balancing act over the past few days: ordering new security measures in the wake of an attempted airliner attack without excessively alarming the public -- or triggering an outcry from civil liberties advocates.

He has done so almost entirely out of sight. On vacation in Hawaii, tucked away in a lush neighborhood where his family is renting a waterfront home, Obama dispatched surrogates back in Washington -- chiefly Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano and press secretary Robert Gibbs, who appeared on the Sunday talk shows -- to reassure the public and explain his approach.

Yet even as the president avoided cameras and played golf and basketball over the weekend, his aides were quick to explain how fully Obama minded the aftermath of the Detroit case. He was briefed shortly after 6 a.m. on Sunday about the latest developments in the Christmas Day incident, aides said. After another airplane security breach occurred three hours later, his advisers quickly issued a statement on his behalf, even though that episode turned out to be a misunderstanding.

For Obama, who campaigned on a promise of restoring respect for individual rights and shifting away from the Bush-era "war on terror," the struggle between security and freedom is defining his presidency much as it did his predecessor's. Three of his most important national security speeches -- one at the National Archives in the spring, one announcing a troop increase in Afghanistan and one accepting the Nobel Peace prize on Dec. 10 -- addressed the need for a reasonable balance between competing goals.

After the attempted terrorist act, Obama sought answers to questions about the suspect and asked for new security steps at airports, White House officials said. But he did not ask to raise the nation's threat level -- and, in fact, left the decision entirely to Napolitano, senior officials said. Nor did he rush to address the public on camera, though he is likely to do so in the next few days, an official said.

Obama did not directly bring up the subject of protecting civil liberties in the aftermath of the Christmas Day case, a senior adviser said. If he calibrated his message, it was by allowing others to toe the national security line for the first few days. "It's not that the president sat back and thought, 'How do I find the middle course?' " an official said on Sunday. "The president was presented with the facts and said, 'What are the steps we need to take to protect the American people and make sure they understand all the requisite steps are indeed being taken and implemented?' "

The middle road is not without peril, as the president and his advisers have discovered. Throughout his first year in office, Obama disappointed liberals in his party with a series of policies -- from his failure to close the Guantanamo Bay military facility to his retention of the Bush policies of indefinite detention of prisoners and military commissions. But with other moves, such as trying the accused Sept. 11 plotters in federal court and opening a domestic detainee facility in Illinois, Obama has made good on civil-liberties-related campaign pledges -- provoking conservative ire.

That was the case on Sunday, when Michigan's Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that the Obama administration should be held accountable for the near-catastrophe aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Hoekstra said that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's presence on the flight was part of a pattern of administration neglect on preparedness questions, stemming from a failure to recognize essential dangers. "The threat to the United States is real. I think this administration has downplayed it," he said on Fox News.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) called for the administration to tip further in the direction of security, even if it comes at the expense of some individual rights. "We do need the full-body scan, especially when you have countries like Nigeria, which have inadequate security to begin with; then you have passengers transiting in Amsterdam and coming here," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

But Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chair of the intelligence subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee, said this weekend that the administration has to be cautious. "Civil liberties matter, and we must stay mindful that an overreaction has the potential to overwhelm the system and fail to make us more safe," she said in an interview.

Many of the new security measures are not being announced, and the administration's decision to review its various watch lists does not appear to have set off alarm bells. "I think it is too early to draw any conclusions -- and I hope there is no short-term, knee-jerk reaction," said Tom Parker, policy director for terrorism, counterterrorism and human rights at Amnesty International.

Obama is used to explaining policy himself. But so far in Hawaii, the Christmas Day incident has not required a presidential appearance or Obama's rhetorical skills.

Instead, after going to the gym and playing basketball with a small group -- including friends and staff -- Obama took his family and friends to a Marine Corps base beach that had been closed for the presidential entourage.

His aides noted another important balance Obama is trying to strike: between work and play, his job as president and his family, his public profile and a personal retreat that has been almost completely private for four full days.



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Sources: Washington Post, Politico, Huffington Post, Fox News, MSNBC, Google Maps