SeriouslyPolitikal

stfuconservatives:

smart-tart:

notthatkindagay:

Mr. President, my unit is extremely undermanned.  We’re working around the clock in Baghdad.  My commander informed me that the Army cannot afford to lose me.  I was told that they would prepare my discharge paperwork, “stick it in a Manila envelope, and keep it in a desk — for now.”

One moment they wanted to throw me out and the next they are hiding evidence to keep me in.

My comrades now know that I am gay, and they do not treat me any differently.  Work runs as smoothly as ever, and frankly the only difference I see — besides my pending job loss — is that I am free of the burden of having to constantly watch my words and ensure my lies are believable.

Having this out in the open makes things a bit less stressful.  But it’s also clear the Army is only keeping me around until they are done with me.  After I have served my two deployments — and am only a year shy of separating from the military honorably — I suspect they will kick me to the street.

It’s bad enough that there is a law that denies tens of thousands of service members from serving with integrity, but it’s even worse when such a law is carried out with such inconsistency, without any warning of when it might come down.

If my suspicions are true, my discharge will move forward after my deployment.  I am good enough to serve in war, but not at peace? I will never be at peace until this law is repealed – and neither will my partner.  In fact, he won’t even be informed if I am killed in action.  That might be the hardest part for us both.

Mr. President, when you took office I remember watching your inauguration knowing that history was being made. I remember feeling like this weight was being lifted off of my shoulders.  I truly believed in you, and I still do.

But, Mr. President, please keep your promise to me.

Please do everything in your power to help Congress repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” this year.  Our government called upon us to fight for our country.  So many of us answered the call; we did not delay.  We were sent world’s away to defend your freedoms. Mr. President, won’t you fight for mine?

The administration’s prospects may be better than the Liberal Democrats’

CHANGE, indeed. On the campaign trail, David Cameron and Nick Clegg often sounded nebulous as they pledged a break from the past. They could not have envisaged keeping their promise in such concrete and spectacular fashion. As Conservative prime minister and Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, they now run the first coalition government that peacetime Britain has seen since 1935.

Not all Greece’s protestors are the same

GREECE’S hard-pressed workers are so enraged by the austerity measures their government has imposed on them, as part of an internationally agreed economic rescue plan, that they are venting their rage in any way they can, including acts of violence. This was the impression presented by the images that flashed round the world on May 5th, when a wave of protest in Athens claimed its first lives: three employees of a bank, one of them a pregnant woman, who died when demonstrators set fire to their building.

Ed Miliband joined his brother David in formally declaring his candidature for the Labour leadership today. Mr Miliband, speaking at the Fabian Society ‘Next Left‘ conference in central London this morning, said he hoped it would be a “fraternal contest“, not just in terms of his family, but of “all the candidates”.

He described the past week as “a depressing week for everyone in the Labour Party and all who believe in a fairer Britain”, imploring the party to face “uncomfortable truths”, that Labour had lost, that it was the “second worst result” for the party in the past 80 years.

The Next Left blog’s claim to be perhaps the world’s most active home of comparative Milibandism may now face greater competition as the Labour leadership contest prepares to gets underway.

David Miliband announced first as a candidate for leader this week, and Ed Miliband’s speech to the Fabians tomorrow is widely trailed in the morning newspapers as he begins his own candidacy for the leadership. Their fraternal contest is to be welcomed, as we argued earlier this week.

Ed Miliband will stand for the Labour leadership, the BBC has learned.

The former energy minister told members of his local constituency party in Doncaster that he intends to run and will announce it on Saturday morning.

His older brother David - the former foreign secretary - is also standing for the post vacated by Gordon Brown.

Ed said he had thought long and hard about standing against his older sibling, while David earlier insisted “brotherly love will survive”.

A new energy and climate bill appears in America’s Senate. Does it have a chance?

“KERRY-GRAHAM-LIEBERMAN”—it sounded so promising. One Democrat, one Republican and one independent (senators John, Lindsey and Joe) have been busily writing a new energy and climate bill taking in ideas from both sides of the partisan aisle. Alas, the unity was shattered last month when Mr Graham, the Republican, refused to come to the bill’s press launch, after hearing that the Senate would consider immigration first. Then the spill in the Gulf of Mexico fouled the waters: one of the bill’s key elements is an expansion of domestic offshore oil exploration. Mr Graham says the bill does not have the votes, though he may still vote for it. Messrs Lieberman and Kerry unveiled it nonetheless, on May 12th.