In their write-up of the SLDN – Lady Gaga rally in Maine, the NYT posts responses from the two senators (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins) which the rally, which took place in Portland, meant to pressure:
In an e-mail message, Kevin Kelley, a spokesman for Ms. Collins, said she was the only Republican on the Armed Forces committee to vote for a repeal and “She believes that our Armed Forces should welcome the service of any qualified individual who is willing and capable to serve our country.” However, she is calling for an open debate and allowing members to offer amendments.
In a statement, Ms. Snowe said the law is due "for a thorough review," but wants a comprehensive review complete before a vote is taken.
Here's Snowe's full statement.
The White House offered a lame statement.
If you haven't called your senator, now is the time.
According to Alex Nicholson at Servicemembers United, here's what's happening tomorrow on DADT:
Tomorrow the Senate will vote at 2:15pm on cloture for the motion to proceed to debate on NDAA. All that means is that we need 60 votes tomorrow to move forward.
The good news is that we had the 60 votes lined up (a few more than 60, in fact) and we were ready to move forward as NDAA normally does. The bad news is that Senator Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, just changed the terms of the debate to slight even the moderate Republicans who were lined up to vote with us to break the filibuster.
So now, this is where we are… either Senator Reid needs to change his mind and let at least some Republicans have an amendment or two of their own, or one or two Republicans need to vote to break the filibuster without the ability to offer any of their own amendments to other areas of NDAA.
So there are two things you can do:
1. You can call Senator Reid's office and tell him to return to the original terms of amendments and debate for NDAA (the orginal terms that had us the 60 votes locked down).
and/or
2. You can call the 5 Republicans who were either going to or likely to vote to break the filibuster under the original terms of debate for NDAA (Susan Collins, Dick Lugar, George Voinovich, Olympia Snowe, and Scott Brown) and ask them to vote to break the filibuster anyway.
My suggestion is that we all do BOTH! No one can be let off the hook here. Please call these senate offices today and tomorrow. Numbers are below.
Alex Nicholson
Executive Director
Servicemembers United
Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)
Senate Majority Leader
(202) 224-3542
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
(202) 224-2523
Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN)
(202) 224-4814
Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH)
(202) 224-3353
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
(202) 224-5344
Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)
(202) 224-4543
Here's the Washington Post's look at tomorrow's vote:
"The vote is expected to be close but is almost certain to pass if Democrats can break a Republican-led filibuster. The House passed a similar measure in May, and a House-Senate compromise version is expected to pass both chambers after the November midterm elections. But even if Tuesday's vote succeeds, Senate aides said Republicans may introduce an amendment this week that would remove the repeal from the defense bill."
