Word on the street is that Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) is getting married Saturday July 2nd, and that Vice President Joe Biden, among other heavy hitters, will be in attendance. Why not? He is the Chairman of the US Senate Finance Committee after all. Baucus is engaged to one of his former staffers, Melodee Hanes, who he at one point had nominated for US Attorney. Emails to several Baucus staffers seeking confirmation have not been returned, and none of the press secretaries are answering their phones. As for location, that is only speculation at this point, although the Sieben Ranch north of Helena is a likely pick.
Meanwhile, Sen. Baucus’ former Chief of Staff, Jim Messina, is being pointed out as the source of a leaked study providing misleading results over the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” to The Washington Post.
American Spectator has this:
A 30-page report from the inspector general for the Department of Defense names President Obama’s re-election campaign manager as one of the White House officials briefed on a confidential Pentagon task force survey about repealing the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, the day before a Washington Post story leaked a misleading description of the survey results.
Jim Messina, then the president’s deputy chief of staff, was one of five Obama administration staffers who attended a Nov. 9, 2010, meeting at the White House where two Pentagon officials discussed a draft report of the Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) study on DADT. A version of the report’s results was included in a Nov. 11 Washington Post story (which first appeared on the Post’s Web site at 9:50 p.m. on Nov. 10) with the headline: “Sources: Pentagon group finds there is minimal risk to lifting gay ban during war.”
WorldNetDaily added:
The report revealed that one of the White House officials was James Messina, Obama’s primary liaison to the homosexual activists, who just before the Washington Post story based on skewed results had been criticized “for not doing enough to repeal the 1993 law.”
While the repeal failed earlier, when the Senate voted for repeal following the release of the skewed results, “Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese praised Messina as ‘one of the great unsung heroes’ of the gays-in-the-military campaign,” Donnelly reported.
The actual results, she noted, “found that about 60 percent of Army land combat troops and 67 percent of combat Marines said that repeal would undermine military effectiveness. Significant numbers of military personnel said they would decline re-enlistment if Congress repeated the 1993 law.”