"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Monday, November 21, 2011

Via Box Turtle Bulletin, this story from AP on Capt. Steven Hill, the soldier who asked Rick Santorum about reinstating DADT and got boos from some of the audience for his audacity.

Santorum's response is typical of the man, and shows starkly why he's not fit to be commander in chief or anything that remotely resembles president of the United States:
Santorum replied that he would reinstitute the ban on open service by gay troops because "any type of sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military."

"What we are doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now. That's tragic," he continued. "Leave it alone. Keep it to yourself whether you are heterosexual or homosexual."

The "social experimentation" line is laughable. The military has always been a social experiment -- it's not like civilian life at all.

And of course, Santorum's obsessed with sex. But we knew that.

What's heartening is the response from Hill's commander:

At breakfast later that morning, the segment was playing on the chow hall television. Hill immediately tracked down his commander, who told him she had no problem with what he'd done but that she would need to run it up the chain of command. She later relayed the response.

"She said, 'What the military's most concerned with is that you are OK, because it's a lot of pressure on you and we want to make sure if there is anything we can do to help,'" he recalled.

There's hope.

Not so much for the members of the audience and all the presidential wannabes who just sat there and said nothing as a member of our armed forces was booed.

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