Kirk's Problem of Getting it Straight [UPDATE]

Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) was caught misspeaking. He claims he "misremembered it wrong." Not 1 time or 2 times but maybe 5 or 6 times. But who's counting?

The citizens of Illinois should be counting. Mark Kirk is the Republican US Senate candidate for the seat previously held by Barack Obama. His Democratic opponent is Alexi Giannoulias.

Watch Rachel Maddow set forth the evidence in, Congressman Kirk, Fabulist!

What else is Mark Kirk forgetting, misremembering or leaving in the closet?

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UPDATE: Gay activist Mike Rogers says that Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican who voted against DADT repeal, is gay.

Admiral Mike Mullen Speaks His Mind

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. Allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.”

Frank Rich made an excellent point in his article about the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell." Rich says we should "Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet."

A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark. [...]

Indeed, anti-gay animus is far more likely to repel voters than attract them. This equation was visibly eating at Orrin Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, as he vamped nervously with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC last week, trying to duck any discernible stand on Mullen’s testimony. On only one point was he crystal clear: “I just plain do not believe in prejudice of any kind.”

Now that explicit anti-gay animus is an albatross, those who oppose gay civil rights are driven to invent ever loopier rationales for denying those rights, whether in the military or in marriage. Hatch, for instance, limply suggested to Mitchell that a repeal of “don’t ask” would lead to gay demands for “special rights.” Such arguments, both preposterous and disingenuous, are mere fig leaves to disguise the phobia that can no longer dare speak its name. If gay Americans are to be granted full equality, the flimsy rhetorical camouflage must be stripped away to expose the prejudice that lies beneath. [...]

Recalcitrant Congressional Republicans will have to explain why their perennial knee-jerk deference to “whatever the commanders want” extends to Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley McChrystal on troop surges but not to Mullen, who outranks them, on civil rights.

The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won’t happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces. But there can be no doubt that Mike Mullen’s powerful act of conscience last week, just as we marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-in, pushed history forward. The revealing silence that followed from so many of the usual suspects was pretty golden too.

Pushing the "bigotry out of the closet" also shows voters the hypocrisy of the GOP's position.

Obama's Promise to Repeal 'Don't Ask Don't Tell'

Think Progress has the following information:

In January, Sandy Tsao, an army officer based out of St. Louis, MO, told her superiors that she is gay — a violation of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law. Tsao then wrote to President Obama, urging him to change the DADT policy: “I do hope, Mr. President, that you will help us to win the war against prejudice.” On May 5, Tsao received a handwritten letter from Obama with a pledge to repeal DADT at some point:

In the letter, Obama wrote that he is “committed to changing our current policy” but that “it will take some time to complete (partly because it needs Congressional action).” Yesterday, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), who has sponsored legislation repealing DADT, discussed the issue with Rachel Maddow, saying, “I’d like to see us move it by this summer, and I think we can.”

Military Ejects Gay Arabic Linguist

Via Daily Kos Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and who returned recently from Iraq, received notice today that the military is about to fire him. Why? Because he came out of the closet as a gay man on national television. And as is pointed out: ...a soon-to-be-released study by a group of experts in military law will show that “President Obama does, in fact, have stroke-of-the-pen authority to suspend gay discharges.” Get out your pen, President Obama. Also see: Obama To Fire FIrst Gay Arabic Lingust