Obama seems to be losing friends from all sides. But how do you feel about what seems to be Obama just turning his back on a group who has supported him? Even if he opposes DADT, it seems that he is leaving it to a difficult Congress to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And even when he continues to say that he is against it, he has defended the law. Has Obama suddenly reverted to exactly what the past administration has done? What do you think?

At the very same time that the Department of Justice was issuing its request to the court, President Obama was asked pointedly during his MTV town hall, why he does not just overturn “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” by executive order, as President Harry Truman had desegregated the military in 1948. Obama replied that the situation was not analogous because in this case Congress had actually passed a law imposing the discriminatory rule, and so only Congress can repeal it. (Obama did promise that repeal would happen on his watch.)
But is it true that Obama has to wait for Congress to act? Most legal experts agree that a president cannot simply change a law by fiat. “Obama is correct in the most general terms,” says Diane Mazur, a former Air Force officer who teaches law at the University of Florida. “Federal law can go away in one of two ways: Congress can repeal it or a court can find it unconstitutional.” And it would seem hypocritical for liberals, who complained during the Bush administration that the executive branch was arrogating too much power to itself, to decide suddenly that they like the unitary executive when their side controls it. “I would be unhappy to hear Obama reading his commander-in-chief power to ignore Congress,” says Robert Burt, a professor at Yale Law School.

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But it seems that “The military is accepting openly gay recruits for the first time in the nation’s history, even as it tries in the courts to slow the movement to abolish its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

At least three service members discharged for being gay began the process to re-enlist after the Pentagon’s Tuesday announcement, and several others told The Associated Press they plan to try to rejoin this week .” read more here