THE LOW POST: Driving Miss Clinton

"General Pace has clarified his remarks, but let's not lose sight of the fact that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is not working," she said.

We are being deprived of thousands of patriotic men and women who want to serve their country who are bringing skills into the armed services that we desperately need, like translation skills. And one can argue whether it was a good idea when it was first implemented, but we now have evidence as to the fact that we are in a time of war -- when we really need as many people as we can to recruit and retain in an all-volunteer army -- we are turning people away or discharging them not because of what they've done but because of who they are.

This whole line of thinking is vaguely annoying, of course -- the idea that suddenly "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is bad policy because we need everyone we can get to fight this asinine war we're fighting. We fucked up so badly, we should even take fags now! Still, within that comment Hillary managed to call gays and lesbians "patriotic," and she also seemed to come down quite unequivocally on the right side of the nature-nurture question about homosexuality, making sure to identify homosexuality as "who you are," not "who you choose to be." With that statement alone, she basically alienates every born-again Christian in the country. Which makes it all the stranger that, when Tapper asked her if homosexuality was "immoral," she answered as follows:

"Well I'm going to leave that to others to conclude," she said. "I'm very proud of the gays and lesbians I know who perform work that is essential to our country, who want to serve their country and I want make sure they can."

Let me get this straight. Hillary Clinton wants the most powerful office in the world, but she can't make her own decision about the morality of homosexuality? She's got to "leave that to others"?

When I read this, I thought to myself: Man, this woman has been living with Bill Clinton way too long. Fifteen years after the 1992 campaign, she's trying to smoke the gay pipe (!) without inhaling. She's just said that homosexuality isn't a choice, that it's something "you are" at birth. If that's what she believes, how could she possibly believe homosexuality is immoral? And if that is what she believes, how could she possibly not answer that question forthrightly? How could she duck Tapper's question there?

There are times, of course, when a politician may be excused for not answering a sticky political question. As the flap over Barack Obama's views about Palestine proved this week, people are not always rational and/or forgiving in the face of political candor. If an Obama can't make a simple declarative factual statement about the suffering of the Palestinian people without being gored on the AIPAC trident and whaled on in a host of heated talk-show segments, it's hard to blame some politicians for keeping their mouths shut when politically controversial topics arise.