Federal Judge Rejects Tobacco Companies' Effort to Block Key Provisions of New Law

A federal judge in Kentucky has rejected a motion by tobacco companies to block key provisions of the new law giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the power to regulate tobacco products. Specifically, the decision strongly supports the government's authority to prevent the industry from making health claims about its products without FDA approval, according to an anti-smoking advocacy organization.

At issue are provisions contained within the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which President Obama signed into law in June. The landmark legislation gave the federal government sweeping new authority to control tobacco products.

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, killing more than 400,000 people and costing $96 billion in health care costs annually. The FDA established its Center for Tobacco Products to oversee enforcement of the law. Just this week, the FDA particularly warned cigarette makers about provisions within the law that ban cigarettes that contain certain flavors.

Eleven public health and consumer advocacy groups joined in the legal effort to thwart the industry's challenge to the law based on the claim that its First Amendment rights were violated.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph McKinley denied a request from R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies to keep the FDA from implementing the law, saying they have "little likelihood" in proving that their free speech rights have been harmed. Judge McKinley forcefully backed the government's interest in protecting consumers from misleading claims about tobacco products with supposedly reduced health risks.

The judge agreed with the key argument that "given the significant health risks associated with the use of tobacco products and the history of marketing 'low tar' and 'light' cigarettes," the government "has a substantial interest in protecting consumers from misleading tobacco industry claims about allegedly reduced risk tobacco products."

The court's ruling supports the portion of the FDA law that requires tobacco companies to submit for the agency's review any claims of reduced risk. The FDA is empowered to determine if the claim is scientifically justified and benefits public health. McKinley cited a pivotal ruling in the Department of Justice's racketeering lawsuit against the tobacco companies, noting that tobacco companies have a "history of advancing their bottom line by misleading consumers about the health risks associated with their products."

The groups who joined the government in supporting the FDA law are: The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Cancer Society, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Legacy Foundation, American Lung Association, American Medical Association, American Public Health Association, Kentucky Medical Association, Oncology Nursing Society and Public Citizen.

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Think Again: This Fish Rots from the Head Down

By Eric Alterman

Republican Representative Michelle Bachmann issued a call last week for a “house call” and a big party out on the National Mall next week, saying, “we’re going to tell Congress what they can do with their health care bill.” She went on to say that, “The American people realize this is it. Just like that brand new Michael Jackson movie came out, ‘This Is It.’ This is it for freedom. If you believe in liberty, and if you’re rejecting tyranny, this is it. Dr. Mark Levin wrote a seminal book that really swept this country called Liberty and Tyranny. And that’s what this debate is about next week. Liberty and tyranny.”

Leave aside that Ms. Bachmann likens her cause to that of a film glorifying an entertainer famous for dangling his children outside hotel windows and who is also repeatedly accused of child molestation. Such confusion on the part of Bachmann is nothing new for a woman who believes Barack Obama represents “really the final leap to socialism.”

To be fair, she’s not all that detail-oriented. Remember Bachmann's “interesting” (her word) observation “that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter.” Actually, Gerald Ford was president during the last outbreak of the virus, but never mind that. Bachmann has also been known to complain about the disastrous “Hoot-Smalley Tariff,” which she says led Franklin Delano Roosevelt to turn the “recession into a depression.” Alas, the Smoot-Hawley Act was passed and signed during the administration of Republican President Herbert Hoover. The United States had already been in a depression for over a year.

I re-raise these incidents now because a couple of Sundays ago, George F. Will, America’s most distinguished conservative commentator—in light of the death of William Safire—recently wrote a column in which admired Bachmann as a “petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked.”

And yet he found “admirable” her complaints of a “gangster government” and praises her as “an authentic representative of the Republican base” (at least I think it was praise).

This would be shocking were it not for the fact that Will has proven himself a crank of late in other, perhaps more significant ways. As Danielle Ivory and I wrote in this space not so long ago, Will has repeatedly attacked the alleged “Chicken Littles” of “eco-pessimism” who, of late, have been concerning themselves with the potentially dangerous effects of rising global temperatures.

And when we say “repeatedly” we meant it. Will is undoubtedly the only columnist who, in four separate columns since 1992, has quoted a Christian Science Monitor piece on global cooling from 1974, saying that “armadillos had left Nebraska, retreating south, and heat-loving snails had retreated from central European forests,” and that “Glaciers had ‘begun to advance.’”

Will was repudiated by his own newspaper’s newsroom, whose reporters, Juliet Eilperin and Mary Beth Sheridan, noted satellite data showing that the average multiyear wintertime sea ice cover in the Arctic in 2005 had declined, which “contradicts data cited in widely circulated reports by Washington Post columnist George F. Will that sea ice in the Arctic has not significantly declined since 1979.” So too did Andrew Freeman, at the Post’s weather blog, who noted: “George Will’s recent columns demonstrate a very troubling pattern of misrepresentation of climate science. They raise some interesting questions about journalism, specifically concerning the editing process.”

We spend a great deal of time in this space mocking the idiocies put forth by the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity. I would not be honest if I did not hear mentions of mock shock from friends and colleagues who demand to know whether “Eric, are you really saying conservative commentators on cable talk radio do not always tell the truth?”

“If it has never before occurred to you that conservative polemicists might sometimes be dishonest or hypocritical, then this book will offer a good remedial education,” was the way an unfriendly New York Times Book Review writer characterized the widely recognized chef d’ouvre, Why We’re Liberals.

So now we’re asking a different question: What about George Will? Is he a Limbaugh-like entertainer who refuses to take responsibility for the content of his screeds? Or is he the conservative who has built a reputation over the past three decades for being the most intellectually scrupulous of all right-leaning pundits? And if this multifaceted embrace of crank politicians and crank scientists is not indicative a generalized intellectual decline on the part of conservative writers and thinkers, then who or what would be?

Just asking …

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He is also a Nation columnist and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His seventh book, Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Most Important Ideals, was recently published in paperback. He occasionally blogs at http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation and is a regular contributor to The Daily Beast.

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

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House Health Reform Bill Picks Up Big Support

House Democrats picked up big support for their version of comprehensive healthcare reform, legislation that includes a public option.

Two big lobbying groups in the healthcare arena -- the American Medical Association (AMA) and AARP -- signaled their support for the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962). AMA is the largest physician association, while AARP is the hugely influential organization lobbying on behalf of U.S. senior citizens. The strength of these huge lobbying shops could well give the Democrats' reform plans added momentum in the face of fierce and united Republican opposition.

Although AARP has long supported healthcare reform principles, and conducted extensive advertising and awareness campaigns on behalf of healthcare reform, today's announcement is the first time the organization put its weight behind specific legislation.

"We started this debate more than two years ago with the twin goals of making coverage affordable to our younger members and protecting Medicare for seniors," says Jim Wordelman, state director for AARP in Idaho. "We've read the Affordable Health Care for America Act and we can say with confidence that it meets those goals with improved benefits for people in Medicare and needed health insurance market reforms to help ensure every American can purchase affordable health coverage."

Both AARP and AMA frame their support for the health reform measure as a pair with the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 3961) to reform the formula by which physician receive payment for services they perform for Medicare beneficiaries.

"The time to make health system reform a reality is now," says J. James Rohack, AMA president. "These two bills were introduced together, and they need to be passed together. Both are essential to achieving meaningful health system reform this year."

"On balance, H.R. 3962, The Affordable Health Care for America Act, is consistent with our principles of pluralism, freedom of choice, freedom of physician practice and universal access. It will significantly expand health insurance coverage to Americans to empower patient and physician decision making; institute meaningful insurance market reforms; make substantial investments in quality; institute prevention and wellness initiatives; provide incentives to states that adopt certificate of merit and/or early offer liability reforms, and reduce administrative burdens."

"H.R. 3962 is not the perfect bill, and we will continue to advocate for changes, but it goes a long way toward expanding access to high-quality affordable health coverage for all Americans, and it would make the system better for patients and physicians," Dr. Rohack says. "This is not the last step but the next step toward health system reform. We will remain actively engaged with patients, physicians, Congress and the administration to ensure that the final bill results in marked improvements to our health system."

The House healthcare reform package soon will go to a vote on the House floor, as will a Senate version put together by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Each version contains a different flavor of public, federally run health coverage option. If approved, the two versions of the legislation will be reconciled by a House-Senate conference committee, to create a final bill lawmakers would have to approve to send on to President Obama to be signed into law.

AARP's Wordelman adds: "We cannot continue to let insurers price older Americans out of the market, just as we cannot stand idle while millions of seniors are forced to choose between their groceries and their prescriptions. AARP is proud to endorse the Affordable Health Care for America Act and the Medicare Physician Payment Reform Act, and we urge members of the House to pass this critical package in the coming days to help fix our broken health care system."

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Stimulus for Cotton Candy, Tango and a Fish Orchestra? Wacky, or Actually Worthy?

by Michael Grabell, ProPublica

Breakfast at Fuddruckers: $19.24.

Snow cone and cotton candy machine: $146.89.

Six extra preview performances of “Little House on the Prairie – the Musical”: $50,000.
Benefit to the economy? According to the recipients of this stimulus money: Priceless.

Last week, the federal government released the first comprehensive tally of the nearly $800 billion economic stimulus package. And while the White House has heralded marquee projects like road construction and solar panel factories, the stimulus package is also made up of hundreds of smaller purchases like office supplies, gasoline and lab rats.

Some of the more unusual purchases are bristling stimulus critics.

“This was not what people had in mind when they were talking about job creation,” said Leslie Paige, spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste. “It was a gigantic pork barrel project from the first day out of the box, and it has proven itself to be every bit as swinish as we thought it would be.”

Waste, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.

Among the 150,000 stimulus expenditures released last week are dozens of iPods, toilets and trips to resort hotels. But, according to the reports, those seemingly questionable purchases are being used to enhance technology in the classroom, make bathrooms accessible to the disabled and train special education teachers.

“If you build a bridge to nowhere, that might be a bridge that you’re going to use that I’m not going to use,” said Ed Pound, spokesman for the government board charged with investigating waste and fraud in the stimulus package. “That’s not a call we’re going to make.”

The White House provided some insight on what types of projects don’t meet the administration’s standards when it announced last month that it had stopped and altered 170 proposals so far. On the list were projects to straighten headstones, freeze fish sperm and steam-clean bird droppings from buildings.

But when the stimulus oversight board released its report last week, other stimulus recipients had funded the exact same types of projects to reset headstones, freeze fish sperm and power-wash bird droppings from bridges.

The administration’s list last month of red-flagged projects included nine to renovate athletic facilities such as basketball and tennis courts. But last week’s report of projects going forward included at least six basketball courts and two tennis courts.

The White House said it shot down an Agriculture Department proposal to buy Taser stun guns for sheriff’s deputies. But law enforcement agencies around the country have used stimulus money to buy hundreds of Tasers.

“The point of posting all Recovery Act spending online was to enable the press and public to find potential dubious expenditures and call them to our attention,” Liz Oxhorn, the White House stimulus spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “We will look at these projects to see if they meet our standards and are consistent with sound use of Recovery Act funds.”

The administration hasn’t explained why the 170 projects it flagged were troublesome and provided vague details about who even proposed them. Oxhorn said Wednesday that publishing the list was an effort to open up the decision-making process – not to expose waste.

The Electric Fish Orchestra

The award for most unusual stimulus project could perhaps go to Malcolm MacIver, a neurobiology and engineering professor at Northwestern University.

MacIver received a $1.25 million grant to use electric fish from the Amazon to study how animals take in sensory information to move quickly in any direction. (See video.) The research could help in the development of underwater robots to find the source of toxic leaks.

Further in the future, it could lead to new, far more agile prosthetics.

For public outreach – a component of most National Science Foundation grants – MacIver has proposed an interactive art exhibit. Sixteen species of electric fish will be arranged in sculpted fish tanks. The tanks will be connected to an amplifier that can convert the different frequencies that the fish emit into sound. Using a hacked controller from the Nintendo Wii video game system, visitors will be able to turn the amplifiers on and off, essentially conducting an orchestra.

The fish even have names that sound like rock bands: Black Ghost Knifefish, Glass Knifefish and Aba Aba.

MacIver said the innovative approach will be much more powerful and engaging than traditional outreach efforts, such as giving a lecture to a high school class.

“It’s a competitive necessity for our country to increase the level of science literacy,” he said. “To help crack the nut of disinterest in science, it helps to engage people with material which they can relate to and which they find interesting and fun.”

The Show Must Go On

Funding for the arts has always been a flashpoint in the debate over government spending. And the stimulus reports provide a sampling of the eclectic tastes of America’s arts community.

Thanks to the stimulus package, the Lincoln Center in New York City will be able to bring in jazz musician Pablo Aslan for a “tango salon.” According to the data released last week, the stimulus saved the jobs of three actors in Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s performance of “Richard III” and the designer of the Cezanne exhibit at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey.

Nearby at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., the city-owned theater was able to add six preview performances of “Little House on the Prairie – the Musical,” which starred an actress from the TV series, Melissa Gilbert. (She was TV’s Laura Ingalls). The stimulus money, along with a private donation, allowed the theater to pay for an additional week of the cast’s salaries and fine-tune the production based on the audience’s feedback.

Paper Mill’s executive director, Mark Jones, said the grant had an enormous economic effect. Many of the 4,000 to 5,000 people who saw the preview performances also went out to dinner, got their hair done and shopped, he said. The actors had extra spending money for rent and food.

“I think everybody’s taken a hit” in the recession, Jones told us. “Whether it’s a manufacturing job or an artist’s job or a teacher or a science researcher, they all add value to our cultural fabric.”

Cotton Candy for a Health Center

Last week’s stimulus reports are sometimes brimming with so much detail from construction firms that you could practically build the road yourself. Other times, they’re lacking even basic information.

For example, what does a $31 purchase at the Oriental Garden Chinese restaurant in Banks, Ore., have to do with providing a better education for children with disabilities?

“We kicked the year off with providing some in-service training,” said Shelley Mitchell, student services director for Banks School District 13, which received $107,000 for special education. “We bought some appetizers.”

The workshop for eight employees took place after school but before dinner and involved planning to help handicapped students transition into the adult world. The rural district about 25 miles outside Portland didn’t have enough space for the team meeting.

“It’s the only restaurant in town,” Mitchell said. “Well, we do have a Subway.”

Thousands of dollars in stimulus money has been spent on food. The breakfast at Fuddruckers was an expense for two officers of a Texas business attending a National Science Foundation meeting in Washington, D.C. Somebody else spent $5.74 at a Carl’s Jr.

Another purchase with scant detail comes from Northeastern Oklahoma Community Health Centers, which in June opened a new clinic in a low-income area where many workers don’t have insurance.

The item: “snow cone and cotton candy machine for open house picnic.”

According to Dr. Sharon Zang, the health centers’ chief executive, the machine was paid for with private donations. But it was listed in the stimulus report because the purchase was from the same bank account used for the stimulus grant.

The machine – along with hamburgers, hot dogs and balloons – was used to market the clinic and entertain children while their parents learned about the services available.

“We did tours through the clinic,” Zang said. “We told them about [our] sliding fee. We told them about Medicaid and Medicare. A lot of people don’t think they can get to a doctor because of their health insurance.”

Many of the people who attended the picnic have since come to the clinic for care, she said.
“The community has really supported this,” she said. “It’s really a wonderful story.”

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

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Cooperation Is the Key: Proposal for U.S.-China Collaboration on Climate Technology

By John Podesta, Andrew Light, Julian L. Wong

The United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen is less than 35 days away. Nations will negotiate a framework for a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Any successful outcome at Copenhagen will require a commitment from the world’s major economies, not least of which are China and the United States, the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases and two largest consumers of energy. The Center for American Progress launches today a new report with the Asia Society, “A Roadmap for U.S.-China Collaboration on Carbon Capture and Sequestration,” which sets out a detailed plan for how these two countries can mutually benefit from working together to achieve greater emissions reductions than they can alone.

Recent history makes clear the importance of these two countries working together. The past decade of unprecedented economic expansion has helped China lift millions out of poverty, but not without consequence to its environment and emissions profile. The past eight years in the United States have been marked by the conspicuous absence of climate policy at the federal level and a lack of participation in any international climate agreement. Both countries are also representative of the antagonism that still dominates much of the current discussion over forging a new U.N. climate treaty. The U.S. Senate has previously expressed its opposition to joining any agreement that does not include major developing countries such as China; China has insisted that Western countries take responsibility for a problem that they caused and provide assistance for developing countries in the form of finance and technology to move them toward a low-carbon pathway.

Yet both countries have an unprecedented opportunity to move beyond this impasse. There has been a sea change in Chinese leadership on climate change during the past few years. China is now embarking on some of the world’s most aggressive energy efficiency, renewable energy, and forestry projects. The recent change in presidential leadership in the United States has heralded a fundamental shift in climate policy, with President Barack Obama laying the foundation for a domestic transition to a clean energy economy in his initial economic stimulus package. This was quickly followed by passage of the first comprehensive climate and energy legislation in the House of Representatives. Both countries have emerged as active and productive participants in the international negotiating process in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and leaders in smaller rounds of negotiations in the G-8, G-20, and Major Economies Forum.

A series of recent developments have raised the prospects of more concrete U.S.-China cooperation on climate change, including U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s visit to China that resulted in the announcement of a joint U.S.-China clean energy research center, declarations at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate after the last G-8 summit in Italy in July, and a Memorandum of Understanding on energy and climate signed later in the month at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, D.C.

President Obama is preparing to leave next week for the U.S.-China summit in Beijing, and the time has never been more ripe for the launch of a commitment between both countries to embark on a collaboration on clean energy that will not only benefit China and the United States, but also have a galvanizing effect for the rest of the world to move towards a successful outcome in Copenhagen.

The July Memorandum of Understanding from the Strategic and Economic Dialogue identifies 10 specific areas for cooperation between the United States and China on low-carbon technology and climate change, including energy efficiency, electric cars, and carbon capture and sequestration. General declarations of goodwill are a necessary step for cooperation, but the upcoming summit must put meat on these bones and focus on specific proposals for collaboration. Our aim in this new report is to provide just such a proposal for discussion and as the basis for action.

All of the areas for low-carbon and clean-energy cooperation identified in the July U.S.-China MOU must be pursued. Nothing in our report should be interpreted as suggesting that any one of these is more important than any other. There is a compelling argument, however, that neither country can achieve the emissions reductions it needs to make without addressing its heavy reliance on coal. For this reason, Secretary Chu issued on October 12 a “call to action” on CCS, advocating widespread, affordable deployment of this technology.

CCS is a process that separates and captures carbon dioxide from large point sources such as coal power plants and stores it away from the atmosphere by several means, including underground sequestration in geological formations. Our proposal for U.S.-China collaboration on CCS technology answers this call by helping to prove, or not, the feasibility of this technology as part of the solution to climate change.

We identify three areas of collaboration for the United States and China in the development of CCS technologies in the short, medium, and long-term, navigating potential political, technological, financial, and regulatory hurdles.

1. Cooperation on sequestration pure CO2 streams from existing Chinese
industrial plants. There are now approximately 100 facilities throughout China
producing pure streams of CO2 for various industrial purposes. This climate
pollution is vented unabated into the atmosphere where it contributes to global
warming. China also has a large documented geological storage capacity, consisting mostly of deep saline formations. A first step to mitigate these emissions can be to jointly fund five geological sequestration projects that can easily capture this source of carbon and store 2 million to 3 million tons of CO2 per year. Each project would cost $50 million to 100 million, with of the United States contributing $20 million
to 40 million. Together these sites could sequester 10 million to 15 million tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to taking 1.7 million to 2.5 million cars off the road.

2. Invest in research and development for retrofitting existing power plants. Much attention has been placed in both countries on producing a new generation of integrated coal-fired electricity plants which combine power production, capture of CO2 and sequestration. But both countries will have to maintain huge fleets of traditional plants in the short- to medium-term that will have to be retrofitted later for capture and sequestration. China and the United States should therefore develop a strategy for research, development and deployment of a series of pilot facilities for CCS retrofits for existing coal power plants under the auspices of the already planned U.S.-China joint clean energy research center.

3. Catalyze markets for CCS. China and the United States will have to mobilize private capital to fund the plants envisioned in step two by investing public funds and stimulating public-private partnerships. This focuses on developing financial incentives for companies to invest in cooperation initially through government-backed public finance structures that serve as a bridge to market mechanisms such as a carbon offset regime that includes proven CCS facilities and the creation of a global market for carbon abatement.

Cooperation in these three areas could accelerate CCS deployment in the United States by five to 10 years. This would deliver immense gains for U.S. job creation and consumer savings and more than compensate for American investment in this roadmap. Under a business-as-usual scenario, a proven CCS sector would create 127,000 jobs in the United States by 2022, including jobs in equipment manufacturing and infrastructure construction. A five-year acceleration of CCS deployment as a result of U.S.-China collaboration increases that figure to 430,000. A 10-year acceleration in deployment could create as many as 940,000 new U.S. jobs by 2022.

Collaboration will also quickly help lower the cost of CSS, and such savings will be passed along to electricity consumers. A five-year acceleration of CCS deployment in the United States would lead to $5 billion in savings, and a 10-year acceleration would lead to $18 billion in savings.

Cooperation between the United States and China on this roadmap would also serve as an example of a specific bilateral step that the two countries could take together on climate change for mutual benefit. Our hope is that the recommendations contained here have the potential to contribute to—in the words of Presidents Hu and Obama—a “positive, cooperative and comprehensive” Sino-American relationship for the 21st century. Such a relationship could become the cornerstone for a new era of greater cooperation between developed and developing countries overall on finding solutions to climate change by setting an example that could be emulated and duplicated many times over.

Report: A Roadmap for U.S.-China Collaboration on Carbon Capture and Sequestration (pdf) (Chinese version)

Fact sheet: Roadmap summary

This article was published by the Center for American Progress.

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Taxpayers Lose $2.3 Billion with CIT Bankruptcy

by Paul Kiel, ProPublica

CIT filed for bankruptcy protection on Sunday, and part of its plan to heal itself is wiping out the taxpayers’ $2.33 billion stake in the company.

CIT, which specializes in lending to small and midsize businesses, got bailout money last December, a vote of confidence from regulators and the Treasury that CIT could survive and use the money to boost lending. But by the summer, the company was flirting with bankruptcy.

The Treasury’s investment was made in the form of preferred shares, as it was in almost all of the 600 other banks it approved for taxpayer investment through its TARP program for “healthy” banks. Preferred and common shareholders will be wiped out, the company has said.

The Treasury does stand a chance to recoup something. But that recovery “will be minimal” said a Treasury spokesperson.

CIT is not the only foundering TARP recipient. We reported a couple of weeks ago that three others were struggling to survive.

A little later in the week, we’ll post our monthly accounting for the bailouts to give you an overview of spending, how much has come back, and how much won’t.

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Marine Commandant Appears to Resist White House on Repeal Of Gay Ban

Marine Corps Commandant General James Conway is opposing President Obama's pledge to repeal "don't ask, don't tell," the Washington Times is reporting today. Citing a former senior Pentagon official, the Times says that Conway "has emerged in internal Pentagon deliberations as the most outspoken opponent of permitting gay men and women to serve openly in the U.S. military."

According to the Times, the official "has been privy to private conversations on the matter," and says that "Conway has gone further than others in stating his opposition to a change in policy."

Military personnel currently serve under a policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which allows gays and lesbians to serve only if they don't disclose their sexual orientation. As a candidate last year, Obama promised to end the policy so as to allow members of the armed services to serve openly regardless of their sexuality. As president, Obama thus far has not acted to change the current policy, however.

Today, there are at least 65,000 gay Americans serving on active duty and 1 million gay veterans in the United States, according to one estimate. More than 13,500 service members have been fired under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" since 1994.

The Times asked Conway to comment, and his spokesman, Major David Nevers, responded with the following statement: "Our Marines are currently engaged in two fights, and our focus should not be drawn away from those priorities. When the time is right, we have full confidence that we will be asked to provide the best military advice concerning the readiness of the Corps as it relates to this issue."

According to Aaron Belkin, director of a think that specializes in issues around gays in the military, Conway's apparent comments may foreshadow arguments that will be emphasized in congressional hearings, namely that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan preclude the military from focusing on repeal.

"It does appear that these comments are a warning shot to proponents, including the White House," says Belkin.

Others expressed concern that Conway's opposition could raise thorny questions of civilian control over the military. "The President has declared which way policy is heading," says Diane Mazur, a researcher and supporter of allowing gays to serve openly in the U.S. military. Mazur is professor of law at the University of Florida and an expert on civil-military relations.

"There is no faster way for a Commander-in-Chief to lose the respect of those serving under him than to allow his Service Chiefs to march in an opposite direction."

According to tired Air Force Colonel Dick Klass, similar issues emerged 16 years ago when President Bill Clinton tried to repeal the gay ban.

"Clinton's mistake was to call the Chiefs into the Oval Office and ask them what they thought about gays in the military," says Klass. "What Clinton should have done, and what Obama should do, is call the Chiefs in, explain that repealing the ban is a matter of national security, and tell them that if they are uncomfortable with that, they should resign."

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