The Texas governor had been plunging in the polls for weeks before he decided to run what looks to most analysts like a desperate, pandering, anti-gay ad in Iowa. The Perry campaign seems to have decided that the best route to the White House is to draw the anti-gay votes in evangelical Republican circles in Iowa from deeply social conservative candidates Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann. That move would appear to put Coffman in a tough spot, not that anyone in the Perry camp asked for Coffman’s opinion. Coffman’s deep red district was remade recently by Colorado courts as a toss-up district, where right-wing ads like Perry’s would almost all but guarantee defeat.

Perry cuts right to the chase in the ad:

“I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian. But you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in schools.”

In response to the ad (watch it below), Colorado Democratic Chair Rick Palacio issued a blistering statement Thursday, telling Coffman he should repudiate the ad and its content.

Palacio’s prepared statement:

“In thirty seconds, Rick Perry’s latest campaign ad highlights what’s wrong in politics today. Instead of offering constructive solutions to the real world problems that our country is facing, he has chosen the well worn path of division and bigotry.

“Many things make this country great, not the least of them is our diversity. Brave men and women from all walks of life, from every race and religion and from every sexual orientation have fought and died for the basic freedoms that make this country great. Including the right of free speech that Governor Perry is exercising today. Sadly Governor Perry is choosing to exercise that right in way that spreads hate and pits Americans against one another.

“As a Christian and a gay man, I find this ad to be deeply offensive and I call on Governor Perry to remove this ad from the airways. I also call on Congressman Coffman, who chairs Rick Perry’s Colorado campaign, to denounce both the tactics and the content of this video. If Congressman Coffman refuses to do so, he owes the people of Colorado an explanation why such bigotry should stay on the air.”

Palacio is not the only one to have noticed the ad and found it troubling. The Huffington Post and others have reported that the ad has caused a rift in the Perry campaign itself.

From The Daily Beast:

Rick Perry’s political campaign may be ending as ineptly as it began. Some of his staff is apparently in revolt over his recent anti-gay turn, which has included an ad attacking openly gay soldiers. According to The Huffington Post, Perry’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, sent the ad’s creator an email calling it “nuts.”

From The New York Times:

In that campaign ad, released on Wednesday, Mr. Perry says “you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday” to know it is wrong that gay men and lesbians openly serve in the military at a time when there is no organized prayer in public schools.

Internally, a top Perry campaign adviser, Tony Fabrizio, was critical of the ad. A Perry aide did not deny division inside the campaign over the commercial — a split first reported by The Huffington Post — but chalked it up to the “occasionally salty” and robust interchanges between advisers.

…

But even if most voters do not have a problem with the issues Mr. Perry is focusing on, his approach might still succeed. Analysts say even a narrow issue — but one that gives some voters a reason to turn out for him — might improve his single-digit standing in most polls.

“This might be his best shot — he needs something, right?” said J. Ann Selzer, an Iowa pollster.

Coffman’s congressional office had no comment and said the Perry campaign did not yet have a phone number in Colorado. Of course, the ad may not bother Coffman who has worked to prevent gay service members from being married in military facilities.

(Photo: Patrick Michels/Texas Independent)

scotkersgaard at gmail.com

“Barry Goldwater once said, ‘You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight.’ I say it’s time for some straight talk on this issue. The Pentagon says it’s ready. Our troops say they’re ready. The American people say they’re ready. It’s time for us to get it done,” Udall, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees, said of the repeal.

“I opposed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ when it began, and 18 years later, there’s ample evidence that the policy is harming our national security by hindering our ability to recruit and retain troops while we’re fighting two wars.

“Ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ has been supported by military leaders from former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said repeal is about ‘common sense and common decency,’ to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, who said it was ‘the right thing to do.’”

When he introduced legislation in 2010 to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Udall explained that the policy had wasted hundreds of millions of dollars and negatively effected the lives of thousands Americans dedicated to their country.

“I feel very strongly about this,” he said. “More than 14,000 service members have been discharged in the last decade. These are jet pilots, translators of Arabic, Farsi, Pashtun– languages so important in the War on Terror. All the skill sets needed in the military are met by gay Americans.”

Udall said the process of identifying gay members and discharging them was costly and counterproductive. Government accountants estimated that the policy cost the country more than $200 million since its implementation.

“We train these men and women and prepare them for duty. It’s a major investment in time and energy and money.Then we spend all this time and energy and money discharging them.”

Udall said he talked to gay and straight service members and veterans who agreed the policy was outdated and detrimental.

“Repeal has been studied extensively by groups inside and out of the military,” he said in today’s release. “We’ve had numerous congressional hearings. We know that more than 20 countries successfully allow open military service.

“The Pentagon has been given the time and flexibility our leaders said they needed to implement repeal. It’s been studied, and the conclusion is clear: It’s past time for repeal.”

Capitol Hill Republicans fought the repeal even after military leaders testified that they supported it and that repeal would not compromise readiness or security.

In their letter to Panetta, McKeon and Wilson argued that the Pentagon was somehow unprepared for official repeal because their committee had yet to receive copies of the various armed services regulation and policy changes that would occur as a result of the repeal.

“The Department of Defense is not ready to implement the repeal because all the policies and regulations necessary for the transition are not yet final,” the congressmen wrote.

Coming less than a week before repeal, the letter has been widely viewed as a political stunt or last-ditch salvo to hold back change.

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Duncan Hunter

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a long-time opponent of open service in the military for gays and lesbians, is drafting legislation, according to Army Times, that wouldn’t seek to reinstate the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy set to end this month, but would allow military personnel to voice their opposition to serving with such individuals.

Speaking with National Public Radio in February 2010, Hunter gave his reasons for opposing repeal of DADT:

… I think that its bad for the cohesiveness and the unity of the military units, especially those that are in close combat, that are in close quarters in country right now. Its not the time to do it … [T]he folks who have been in the military that have been in these very close situations with each other, there has to be a special bond there. And I think that bond is broken if you open up the military to transgenders, to hermaphrodites, to gays and lesbians. …

It’s not just gays and lesbians. Its a whole gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual community. If you’re going to let anybody no matter what preference – what sexual preference they have that means the military is going to probably let everybody in. Its going to be like civilian life and the I think that that would be detrimental for the military. …

The Hunter proposal is expected to specifically address sensitivity training that is being conducted by the military branches in preparation for the Sept. 20 repeal date of DADT.

“We’ve heard the training is really pushing the line for people who believe homosexuality is wrong on religious and personal grounds,” an aide, who asked not to be identified, told Army Times. “It is a legitimate concern, under the circumstances, with the services working on disciplinary policies for people who don’t agree with this decision.

“The military always falls in line, but that doesn’t mean that the men and women who serve in its ranks should suddenly be forced to personally accept something that is contrary to their own principles,” the aide said.

The proposal has not yet been submitted for consideration, but it is believed that if such a measure is going to be considered, it would need to be one of the first proposals viewed by Congress when it reconvenes on Sept. 7.

Hunter, who was first elected to Congress in 2008 as the successor to his 14-term father of the same name, served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan as a member of the Marine Corps. He is the first Marine combat veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan elected to Congress.

Since DADT was first introduced in 1993, the military has discharged more than 13,500 soldiers for being gay.

Smith’s group is waging a national campaign called “Refuse to Lie.”

“The Federal Government must stop requiring… gay couples to deny the existence of our families and hide our marriages. It is dehumanizing and it is wrong…. The government has chosen to discriminate and we choose to expose [its] bigotry,” explains the campaign website.

The campaign brings to mind debate last year around the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” U.S. military policy that prevented gay soldiers from serving openly. A compelling argument made by opponents of the ban was that the policy committed the government to abetting deceit. The unworkability of such a position was thrown into relief by arguments that trust among soldiers and their commanders serving together was an essential foundation for unit cohesion and effectiveness.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was officially ended as policy in December, the details of its repeal yet to be worked out by military leaders.

The business section blog at the New York Times reports on the Florida campaign.

Nina E. Olson, the national taxpayer advocate who acts as an ombudsman for the I.R.S., acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding federal taxation of same-gender spouses in an annual report to Congress. In the report, she said that taxpayers may take a filing position without penalty if there is “substantial authority” to do so, such as a court case that hasn’t been overruled by the United States Court of Appeals. And there happen to be two such cases, which are currently on appeal.

In July 2010, the Federal District Court in Massachusetts declared the Defense of Marriage Act — the federal law known as DOMA that defines marriage as between a man and a woman — as unconstitutional in two cases. They are now being appealed in the First Circuit. “Thus, there may be substantial authority for same-gender spouses to take certain tax positions as married as long as the Massachusetts district court’s opinions stands,” Ms. Olson said in the report.

The “Refuse to Lie” Web site warns same-sex couples of the risks of filing jointly, and explains different options to both adhere to the law while expressing that they disagree with it. One way to do that would be to put an asterisk by the “single” box, and then indicate at the bottom of the tax form that you are “only single under DOMA.” Another option, the site says, is to attach a note with a similar message.

Last month the Obama Administration announced that it believed the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional and for that reason the Justice Department would no longer defend DOMA in court.

House Republican leaders then took up the cause. Analysts have said the Republican leaders’ position is becoming increasingly untenable by the day.

Linda Hirshman writing at Slate was particularly skeptical that any new defense of the 1996 law could succeed.

Whoever the Republicans hire will start where the Justice Department finished, arguing that there is nothing suspicious about [DOMA]. This will be tricky. Heightened scrutiny is required when the target group has experienced a “history of purposeful unequal treatment or been subjected to unique disabilities on the basis of stereotyped characteristics.” And the legislative history conservatives will be unspooling explicitly reveals that Congress [with DOMA] intended to disadvantage homosexuals: “Closely related to the interest in promoting traditional marriage is a corresponding interest in promoting heterosexuality,” the legislators wrote at the time. “[R]eason suggest[s] that we guard against doing anything which might mislead wavering children into perceiving society as indifferent to the sexual orientation they develop.” So the newer, more truthful DOMA defendants will now be in the peculiar position of defending a law quite purposely intended to discriminate against homosexuals on the grounds that homosexuals have not been the victims of purposeful discrimination.

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The groups said Pawlenty was pandering to social conservatives to shore up a floundering presidential campaign.

Here’s video of Pawlenty’s statements in Iowa (story continues after video):

Pawlenty then doubled down on his call to defund the repeal.

Think Progress asked him, “Do you think gays should be allowed to serve in the military at all, or do you think it’s detrimental to unit cohesion?”

Pawlenty responded, “I really defer to the military leaders to a large degree on this issue. I supported maintaining Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

GOProud, a group of LGBT conservatives and a sponsor of the CPAC conference Pawlenty will speak at this weekend, belittled Pawlenty’s campaign. Chris Barron, chairman of the board of GOProud, released this statement:

I understand that Pawlenty is trying hard to get people to pay attention to his campaign. Its certainly a challenge for someone with such little stature in the conservative movement to compete with high profile conservative leaders like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, etc. Unfortunately for Pawlenty, comments like this simply show how totally out-of-touch he is with the issues that rank and file conservatives care about. If he wants to show he is a committed social conservative he would be much better served talking about the need to defund Planned Parenthood, end federal funding for abortion, reign in an out of control judiciary and support for a parents rigths amendment to protect home-schoolers.

The Log Cabin Republicans also dinged Pawlenty for his positions on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“Governor Pawlenty’s comments fly in the face of both overwhelming public opinion and common sense,” said R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin Republicans executive director. “Congress voted in a bipartisan majority in December to enact the clear will of the American people, which demanded that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ be stricken from the books. The Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and leadership throughout the Pentagon along with Congressional leaders, including Senator John McCain, are now in full support of implementing open service. The debate on this matter is done, and that Governor Pawlenty continues to fight the end of this failed and unconstitutional policy demonstrates that he is willing to put personal ambition and political pandering ahead of the priorities of the American people.”

“It would be easy to pay the $2500 bill and be swiftly done with this diseased chapter of my life,” he wrote. “…But my obligation is to take a stand… I refuse to pay your claim.”

Choi’s DADT bill (click to enlarge)

The U.S. Military spent roughly $200 million on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell since its implementation nearly two decades ago, recruiting, training, investigating and replacing gay service members. If Choi’s bill is any indication, the government has been, in effect, heaping on bureaucratic injury to insult by demanding discharged gay soldiers help foot the bill the whole time.

“By flagrantly and repeatedly violating an immoral law, I have flagrantly and repeatedly saluted the honor of America’s promise,” Choi wrote in his “screw you” letter to the White House. “At West Point, when we recited the Cadet Prayer we reminded ourselves ‘always to choose the harder right over the easier wrong.’”

Now that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been repealed, will Choi and all of the other discharged gay soldiers still be forced to pay? Or will the government be made to pay reparations to the gay soldiers it discharged under the policy and whom it apparently billed for the pleasure?

Choi’s letter:

Dear Mr. President:

Today I received a $2,500 bill from your Defense Department Finance and Debt Services. Specifically, you claim payment for “the unearned portion” of my Army contract. Six months after my discharge under the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy I have tried to move forward with my life, and I was inspired by your clarion calls for our progress as one nation towards a more just society. I have served my country in combat and I have tried to live my life by the values I learned at West Point in continued service to our nation. To move forward in my own life I have finally sought treatment for Combat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Military Sexual Trauma (MST), Insomnia, and Depressive Disorder from the Veterans Affairs Department. But I still find myself on a domestic battlefield for basic dignity as an American citizen. I know I am not alone in this fight because of the desperate cries for help I get from discharged, unemployed, discriminated, and suicidal veterans. I have felt all of their same pains personally. Today I also witness the disgrace of a country that perpetually discovers methods to punish its own citizens for taking a moral stand.

By flagrantly and repeatedly violating an immoral law, I have flagrantly and repeatedly saluted the honor of America’s promise. At West Point, when we recited the Cadet Prayer we reminded ourselves “always to choose the harder right over the easier wrong.” It would be easy to pay the $2500 bill and be swiftly done with this diseased chapter of my life, where I sinfully deceived and tolerated self-hatred under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Many thousands have wrestled with their responsibilities and expedient solutions when confronted with issues of this magnitude. I understand you also wrestle with issues of our equality. But I choose to cease wrestling, to cease the excuses, to cease the philosophical grandstanding and ethical gymnastics of political expediency in the face of moral duty. My obligations to take a stand, knowing all the continued consequences of my violations, are clear.

I refuse to pay your claim.

Respectfully,
Dan Choi
Former Army First Lieutenant
West Point Class of 2003

Attached:
DFAS Account Statement 12/20/2010 (2 pages)

Hat tip to Pam.

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The San Diego Union-Tribune:

Hunter, a Marine combat veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, is calling the legislation the Restore Military Readiness Act.

“The idea behind the Restore Military Readiness Act is not necessarily to prevent the implementation of the DADT repeal, but rather to ensure that military readiness and combat effectiveness are not adversely impacted,” Hunter said in a statement.

“Given that the service chiefs carry most of the day-to-day responsibilities for each service branch, their independent certification is just as important and equally necessary.”

The current law requires the president, the secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to sign off on the repeal.

A new Government Accountability Office report says the military spent over $193 million between 2004 and 2009 to replace around 3,660 troops. A Palm Center study in 2006 reported $363.8 million was spent by the military in the policy’s first ten years.

It’s worth noting that though Gen. James Amos — a Marine Corps Commandant — opposed the repeal, he said he would implement it anyway if Congress passed a law.

Cosponsors of the legislation include:

Rep Bartlett, Roscoe G. [MD-6]
Rep Bilbray, Brian P. [CA-50]
Rep Chaffetz, Jason [UT-3]
Rep Conaway, K. Michael [TX-11]
Rep Davis, Geoff [KY-4]
Rep Fleming, John [LA-4]
Rep Franks, Trent [AZ-2]
Rep Gibbs, Bob [OH-18]
Rep Gingrey, Phil [GA-11]
Rep Huelskamp, Tim [KS-1]
Rep Kline, John [MN-2]
Rep Lamborn, Doug [CO-5]
Rep Luetkemeyer, Blaine [MO-9]
Rep Manzullo, Donald A. [IL-16]
Rep Miller, Jeff [FL-1]
Rep Pearce, Stevan [NM-2]
Rep Rogers, Mike D. [AL-3]
Rep West, Allen B. [FL-22]

Update, 4:51 p.m. EST: The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a national, legal services and policy organization committed to repealing DADT, released a statement today about the new GAO report.

“Today’s GAO report underscores that the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law not only deprives the military of the qualified Americans it needs, but has also been a huge waste of taxpayer dollars on replacing patriots lost under this discriminatory law,” said Aubrey Sarvis, Army veteran and executive director for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. “These numbers remind us why it’s time to move forward on certification so we can begin implementing repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and make a smooth transition to open service.”

Fischer asked Pawlenty at the end of the interview, “We just saw the ban on homosexual service in the military repealed, overturned. Conservatives will be working over the next couple of years to see that that ban is reinstated. If you become president in 2012, will you work to reinstate the prohibition on open homosexual service in the military? Would you sign such a prohibition if it got to your desk?”

Pawlenty said, “Bryan, I have been a public and repeat supporter of maintaining Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but if you look at how the combat commanders and the combat units feel about it, the results of those kinds of surveys were different than the ones that were mostly reported in the newspaper and that is something I think we need to pay attention to. But I have been a public supporter of maintaining Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and I would support reinstating it as well.”

Pawlenty also spoke out against abortion, noting that he appointed “strict constructionist” judges in Minnesota and that he opposes same-sex marriage.

Fischer is no stranger to controversy; his group is now listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Here’s what the SPLC had to say about Fischer:

Fischer claimed in a blog post last May 27 that “[h]omosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and 6 million dead Jews.” (Ironically, the elder Wildmon was widely denounced as an anti-Semite after suggesting that Jews control the media, which the AFA says “shows a genuine hostility towards Christians.”) Fischer has described Hitler as “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He proposed criminalizing homosexual behavior in another 2010 blog post and has advocated forcing gays into “reparative” therapy. In a 2010 “action alert,” the AFA warned that if homosexuals are allowed to openly serve in the military, “your son or daughter may be forced to share military showers and barracks with active and open homosexuals.”

Gays aren’t the AFA’s only enemies. In late 2009, Fischer suggested that all Muslims should be banned from joining the U.S. military. “Islam is a totalitarian political ideology,” Fischer added in August 2010. “It is as racist as the KKK. … Allowing a mosque to be built in town is fundamentally no different that granting a building permit to a KKK cultural center built in honor of some King Kleagle.” A little later, according to the Huffington Post, Fischer said that whatever the government does to “to make it unthinkable for America’s youth to join a white supremacist group,” it should also do “to make it as unthinkable for a resident of America to embrace Islam.” Around the same time, the Huffington Post said, he blogged that Muslim values are “grossly incompatible with American values,” and therefore no place in America should allow a mosque to be built.

Here’s Pawlenty’s interview with Fischer:

Specifically, DADT opponents continue to impugn prediction of gay/straight segregation made by U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, picked by House Republicans to lead the 22-member transition team. Conaway is senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee’s Defense Acquisition Reform Panel and will chair a House Agriculture Committee panel. According to the Houston Chronicle, Conaway “may be the most important Texas lawmaker you don’t yet know.”

Recently, Conaway, who voted against repealing the 17-year-old policy that bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, said the rollback would result in an unnecessary increase in defense spending, at a time when budgets need to be cut. The Midland Republican predicted excess spending would result from segregated barracks and bathrooms that would likely be created for service members uneasy with the new policy.

“You’re going to accommodate folks’ preferences as to whether or not they want to be in the same sleeping arrangements or bathroom facilities, all those kinds of things,” he told Scripps reporter Trish Choate, according to the Wichita Falls Times Record News.

Chuck Smith of LGBT rights group Equality Texas said Conaway’s concerns were not germane to the repeal of DADT and highly inaccurate.

“There is really no special treatment or separate accommodations,” Smith said. “Service members are going to continue to do their job and sexual orientation is not going to play a part in sleeping or shower situations.”

The arguments are nonsense, says Denny Meyer, national public affairs officer of American Veterans for Equal Rights. Not only are the majority of showers closed-off in the armed forces today, but DADT’s repeal would actually alleviate spending as the Department of Defense loses millions from the policy. A 2006 Palm Center blue ribbon commission report found about $360 million had been spent on enforcing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ through discharging and replacing service members from its enactment in 1994 to 2003. The study also discovered the figure was 91 percent more than what was initially reported by the Government Accountability Office.

“People who cannot express progress are tying any major issue Americans are concerned about, like the economy and the budget, to fan the flames of bigotry and get attention,” said Meyer, who served a decade in the armed forces.

An estimated 13,500 service members have been discharged under DADT, including 730 mission critical soldiers and more than 65 Arabic and Farsi linguists.

Nancy Russell, a retired Lt. Colonel in the Army and 20-year activist against DADT, said the measure has only helped drain defense spending as training costs for booted out senior service members is hefty. Russell compared the shower hysteria to the early misconception that AIDS could be contracted via swimming pools.

“There is a great deal of ignorance about the circumstances,” Russell said. “Most soldiers, marines and sailors do not see it as a problem and the military has said they don’t recommend separate facilities.”

Others are also propagating the notion straight men and women will be uncomfortable showering alongside homosexual service members, according to TPM Muckraker. Some, such as U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tyler), claim hundreds and thousands of troops would leave the military as a result of DADT’s repeal. Gohmert also challenged the argument DADT is inconsistent with American values, countering the military is inconsistent with American values in that basic guarantees such as freedom of speech and assembly are void in the armed forces, therefore the same rules need not apply.

“When militaries throughout history of the greatest nations in the world have adopted the policy — that it’s fine for homosexuality to be overt, you can keep it private and control your hormones fine, but if you can’t, that’s fine too — they are toward the end of their existences as a great nation,” Gohmert said during a U.S House DADT hearing in December.

An omnibus spending bill containing $8 billion in earmarks — many from Republican senators who awkwardly opposed the bill — failed, and Congress passed a continuing resolution to fund the government at current levels until March without funding for the implementation of financial or health care reform.

President Obama signed an extension of the Bush tax cuts — as expected — wherein he kept the support of liberal voters and neutralized conservative opposition. In the deal was a 13-month extension of unemployment insurance, which will end short-term — but painful — unfunded lapses that hurt the purchasing power of the economy.

These initiatives gave most of the tea party what they wanted. On the same day of TWI’s preview, I attended a small tea party rally outside the Capitol. Dallas Woodhouse, the North Carolina state director for Americans for Prosperity, told me at the rally that their group wanted Congress to pass a “clean, continuing resolution to fund the government” and an extension of the Bush tax cuts. (The Tea Party Patriots did make a last-minute push against the tax cut deal comparing it to the Troubled Asset Relief Program; however, the deal was consistently popular.)

The DREAM Act, a bill that would have created a path to citizenship for undocumented workers who come to the United States as minors, did not pass and certainly won’t pass in the next Congress either with a Republican majority in the House and a more powerful Republican minority in the Senate. Activists did lobby Congress hard, and got three Republican votes in the Senate. (The measure passed the House.) But in the end, even a small sliver of the immigration debate proved to be too much to resolve — paradoxically, though the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government is in charge of immigration policy, Congress remains paralyzed over the issue.

Then there were three pieces of legislation that looked dead in the water, but were passed thanks to some heavy lifting.

Congress repealed the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian servicemembers — “don’t ask, don’t tell” — just over a week after it failed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. This vote was after the exhaustive Pentagon report — endorsed by Secretary of Defense Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen — showing few, if any, potential negative effects in repealing the policy. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) was dedicated to repealing the policy, and pushed for it to be a standalone bill — and it passed both chambers.

The START treaty limiting nuclear arms with Russia also looked dead after Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) — negotiating for the Republican caucus — said on November 16 it couldn’t be done in the lame-duck session. However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and the White House lobbied Republican senators, and Republican opposition collapsed Tuesday. It will very likely be ratified Wednesday by the Senate with over 70 votes.

The Food Safety Modernization Act also looked like that it would languish because a provision in the Senate bill violated the origination clause of the Constitution. However, the Senate suddenly passed the House bill by a voice vote Sunday, without the objection of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who had filibustered the bill. That version of the bill passed in the House Tuesday. The bill gives the Food and Drug Administration authority over 80 percent of the food supply, to prevent foodborne illnesses.

Congress adjourns Wednesday — three days before Christmas. Larry Sabato, University Professor of Politics and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, tweeted, “It’s official. Like it or not, this lame-duck session is the most productive of the 15 held since WWII.”