"Alaska is right next to Russia" -- John McCain

Liberals mock John McCain for claiming that Governor Sarah Palin understands international affairs because she lives "next to " Russia. According to the punditocracy and netroots, living next to somewhere does not translate into understanding it. For example, my next door...

Sure, hindsight is 20-20. But after watching Hillary and Bill Clinton's speeches over the past two nights, you have to believe that their rousing endorsements of Barack Obama were inevitable. There was simply no way that the Clintons -- perhaps the most strategic, committed Democrats in the country -- were...

Today is the fourteenth anniversary of the enactment of the "don't ask, don't tell" law which prohibits gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military. When President Clinton tried to force the military to include openly gay service members, opponents insisted that military culture was too intolerant of homosexuality...

I was just having an internal conversation with myself, one of those endless loop kind of things that you use to substitute for entertainment when you can't listen to NPR. Which is anytime I'm driving, because my car radio doesn't work. This is totally my fault, because my partner just...

After New York Times columnist David Brooks offered a revisionist account of Ronald Reagan's appeal to states rights during the launch of his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil-rights workers were murdered in 1964, commentators debated whether or not Reagan was a racist. According to some, Reagan's tactics...

Larry Craig is out the door, and he doesn't have many fans left. I'm certainly not one of them. As has been widely reported, Craig is the proud recipient of a zero -- ZERO! -- from the Human Rights Campaign for his anti-gay voting record. As HRC concluded, it's pretty...

One has to admire Mitt Romney's ability to dance around all sides of an issue without conveying even an iota of shame about how he sounds. Take the latest example: "don't ask, don't tell."

During tonight's debate among GOP presidential candidates, Romney, who criticized the gay ban in 1994 when...

Reports about the military's ongoing dismissal of gay Arabic linguists continue to show what can, and regularly does, happen to even mission-critical servicemembers who are caught up in the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. But an Associated Press story this week was noteworthy for its reporting of what did not...

The New York Times and Associated Press reported today that the number of felons allowed to serve in the military has surged since the invasion of Iraq nearly four years ago. The data, which were obtained by the Michael D. Palm Center at UC-Santa Barbara, show that both...

If you spend a lot of time talking to opponents of gays in the military, one of the arguments you hear again and again is that U.S. troops cannot form bonds of trust with gay peers. This idea is the basis of the so-called unit cohesion rationale which was formulated...

Arizona Sen. John McCain, almost certainly a contender for the White House in 2008, wants you and me to believe that he is a straight-talker. At least that's what his carefully-crafted reputation is all about.

For a straight-talker, though, McCain seemed caught off-guard when ABC political correspondent George Stephanopoulos recently...

What a strange week for gays in the military. Earlier this week, Huffington Post reported that an official, recently-revised military document now suggests that homosexuality is a "defect".

Strangely, some observers, including leaders in the gay-rights community, said that the designation was "no big deal". Then, this morning, Senator John...

Tuesday was an outstanding day for the Democrats. A solid majority in the House. And, depending on the outcomes of tight races in Virginia and Montana, the possibility of a Senate majority as well. Given the daunting obstacles that Democrats had to overcome - gerrymandering, dirty tricks, incumbency - it...

It took less than a day for traditional values groups to celebrate the boost they think they are about to receive from the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that gay couples must enjoy the same rights as heterosexuals. According to the Court, gay couples must receive the same privileges...

The story had only been out on the wires for about a day when the right wing message machine went into action. A former Cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point had received an award for his senior thesis arguing that "don't ask, don't tell" -- the law...