The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, working with a number of progressive organizations and blogs including Senate Guru, has put out a poll to gauge netroots interest – in Vermont and all across the country – in supporting an effort to draft Congressman Joe Sestak to challenge recently-Republican Arlen Specter in the PA-Sen Democratic primary next year. The poll will be open for the next four days, and provided are both pro and con arguments regarding a draft effort. To read the arguments and vote in the poll, click the below link:
I don’t know this guy, and I can’t vote for him. But he suddenly got a lot more interesting after his appearance this week on the Rachel Maddow Show. Rachel was interviewing Lt. Dan Choi, another of the many Arabic linguists who have been discharged from the Army for being gay and either revealing that fact or because the Army found out through (questionably legal) investigations. Lt. Choi got fired for telling the truth about himself in March on Rachel’s show.
Sestak, the highest-ranking retired military officer currently in Congress (according to Rachel), was pretty clear on this point: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has got to go.
Cool.
The other good news from Rachel being that President Obama hand-wrote a reply to a note from another discharged service member, Lt. Sand Tsao, whose DADT-based discharge is effective May 19. In it he promised to fulfill his commitment to end DADT (transcript here).
The policy has resulted in the discharge of 12,500 willing-and-able-to-serve members of the military simply because members of Congress get the heebie jeebies worry about close quarters in submarines or showers in barracks or trenches and foxholes.
Anyway, Congressman Sestak is on board.
NanuqFC
In a Time of Universal Deceit, TELLING the TRUTH Is a Revolutionary Act. – George Orwell