Both houses of Congress have now passed the bill which repeals the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (DADT), which did not allow gay Americans to openly serve their country in military uniform. President Obama has scheduled a signing ceremony for the repeal bill this Wednesday. While this is a significant achievement on the civil rights/gay rights front, it is also a significant political achievement. And one man stands out as the driving political force behind the successful effort to repeal this discriminatory federal policy. Which is why, today, I'd like to publicly thank Senator Joe Lieberman.

As the old saying goes: "success has many fathers, and failure is an orphan." This political success is no different, really. Senator Lieberman didn't singlehandedly repeal DADT. He had a lot of help, and a few other Democrats showed both some real leadership and some real political savvy in the last few weeks. In fact, the three most powerful Democrats in Washington all had a hand in this victory -- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and President Barack Obama. They deserve thanks as well, as does every Democrat and Republican member of Congress who voted for this historic step forward.

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My apologies to anyone tuning in who was expecting to see the 150th "Friday Talking Points" column, since it will be pre-empted for two weeks here. But the good news is we're doing so to bring you our annual "McLaughlin Awards," which are even more fun!

I admit we're jumping the gun a bit on the whole "year-end wrapup season," but this is due to the vagaries of the calendar. This is the first of a two-part article, and last year I published these on Christmas Day and New Year's Day -- which interfered with my holiday enjoyment too much. This year, the columns normally would have fallen on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, so the decision was made to bump them both up a week.

So welcome to our review of 2010, via our annual homage to the McLaughlin Group television show's award categories. "Homage" sounds ever so much nicer than "blatant ripoff," don't you think?

Ahem.

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No column today, sorry.

But tomorrow should make up for it, as we present the first of our two-part end-of-the-year awards, here. Preparing these columns takes a LOT of time, which is what I've been doing all day (I'm only up to May in reviewing last year...). We're doing the awards columns early this year, because otherwise they would fall on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve -- and last year we did them on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and that was just too exhausting. So this year, we're moving them up a week for our own sanity's sake. Tune in tomorrow to see the results....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The House of Representatives has just voted overwhelmingly to repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (DADT), which forbids gays from openly serving their country. The vote was an impressive 250 to 175 -- which is sixteen more votes for repeal than the previous tally in the House (when they voted on the issue as part of the Pentagon's yearly budget). What this vote means is that we are now only one Senate floor vote and a presidential signing ceremony away from a historic end to such blatant discrimination being enshrined in federal law. Whether the Senate will pass the measure before the end of the year or not is still uncertain, but even with the down-to-the-wire nature of the lame duck session, this still represents the best chance for DADT's repeal yet -- and also the last chance for what could be a very long time to repeal the policy by legislative means.

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[Program Note: I've got an airport run to take care of today, so I didn't have time to put together a new column. However, a federal judge's ruling has given me the perfect opportunity to re-run the following column, which originally appeared here on 9/21/10. This is a losing issue for President Obama and the Democrats on any number of levels -- the most obvious being that they'd be fighting squarely in the corner of the insurance companies against pretty much everyone else. In any case, as I said, it seemed the perfect column to run today. Regular columns will resume tomorrow.]

Howard Dean is (as he is often wont to do) making all kinds of sense on healthcare reform today. His idea is to jettison the "individual mandate" part of the healthcare reform law passed this year. And he's right, on both political and practical grounds.

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A theme has emerged, in recent years, of America as a nation almost hopelessly divided, politically. This theme is most often reinforced by such superlative declarations (by "journalists" who really should know better) as "America is more politically divided than ever," or "this is the most politically polarized Washington has ever been," or similar such alarmist rhetoric. It has even gotten to the point where many see such statements as truisms -- statements so obviously true that they are seen as irrefutable. This is a gross error, born of the fact that most "journalists" simply have no concept of their own country's history. Because while we are indeed currently politically divided and somewhat polarized, this is actually our normal state as a nation -- and on the polarization scale, we're nowhere near the "most divided" we've ever been. Far from it.

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The holidays are just around the corner, and the preparatory legislative sausage-making on Capitol Hill is in full swing. What a happy, happy time of year!

Well, perhaps not. In fact, almost nobody has been happy with the way the past week shaped up. Except possibly Republicans, but they've been pretty quiet either way, so it's hard to tell.

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Well, that's one of those headlines that's a lot better poetically than literally, I'll admit up front. But yesterday's news in spaceflight deserves some sort of mention, because it could be the start of a new era. A private company launched a capsule into orbit, and then recovered it by splashing it down in the Pacific Ocean. This was a test flight, but eventually the company will use this arrangement to ferry astronauts up to the International Space Station for the United States, after N.A.S.A.'s space shuttle is retired forever.

This is truly a stunning development. It may be the largest government "privatization" program ever to be accomplished. This is the first time in history an entity other than a government has achieved this technological advance. From the Associated Press story:

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As I write this, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is attempting to move forward on the Pentagon budget bill, which includes a repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy (DADT) of forbidding gays from serving openly in the military. At this point, most Senate-watchers expect it to fail to get the 60 votes it needs to move to the floor for debate (it could always succeed, and surprise everybody, but I wouldn't bet much on the prospect right now). But if Senate Democrats were smart, they'd change tactics after losing this procedural vote. Democrats, led by Harry Reid and Joe Lieberman, should strip the DADT repeal out of the military appropriations bill and, instead, attach it to the tax cut bill being prepared. Because doing so would not only change the entire tone of the debate in a big way, but it might actually work.

Congressional Democrats are fuming right now that the tax deal President Obama worked out with the Republicans isn't much to their liking. It extends the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy for two years, which is seen as a serious defeat for the Democrats' (and, supposedly, Obama's) agenda. It is a defeat, politically, there is no doubt about that. But Democrats in Congress should realize two things about this deal, before deciding what to do next.

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President Obama's recently announced deal with Congressional Republicans on the Bush tax cuts (which I will hence refer to as "The Deal," because it is way easier to type) certainly seems to be burning up the blogosphere. Being a denizen of this mythical realm, I suppose I'm expected to weigh in on things here.

As usual, though, I'm reluctant to do so right away because I have a profound distrust of knee-jerk reactions from anyone -- myself included. I prefer to take a few days, study the details as they emerge, and see how things play out before leaping into the fray myself.

Today, although it may not please everyone, I'm going to compromise somewhat on this anti-knee-jerk position. Feel free to regard that as some sort of cruel irony, if you wish (in other words: insert your own "compromise" insult here). But my initial reactions weren't so much to The Deal itself as to peripheral or microscopic aspects of it. So perhaps I'll be ready to write about The Deal itself (subtext: Was It "A Good Thing" Or "A Bad Thing?") tomorrow, but today I'm just going to dance around the edges of it, as it were. I've got two points to make from 30,000 feet (as they say), in terms of an overview of the politics of the situation, and two points to make that are quite targeted and specific. But, just to warn everyone, there will be no sweeping conclusions today. Instead, we'll start with the two Big Picture overview points, and then jump down to the microscopic level for the last two.

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