Don't Ask, Don't Tell Undone by Judge

Judge Virginia Phillips, a federal district court judge sitting in California's central district in Riverside, ruled Tuesday that she will not reverse a decision she ordered last week barring the U.S. military from enforcing the 1993 law signed by President Clinton known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

The Pentagon has told recruiters that for now they must comply. The Obama Administration says it will appeal. (Hopefully not with much gusto.) But once again an "activist" judge has moved the civil rights agenda forward. Thank God for activist judges who think that racial and sexual discrimination violate constitutional protections.

Mark Thompson at Time.com's political blog notes that Phillips was appointed by Clinton:

And that's just one of the strange twists about the coming collapse of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." While the ban was a compromise Clinton didn't want to make, it was a judge he appointed who apparently finally has undone it. And she did it in response to a lawsuit filed by a group calling itself the Log Cabin Republicans. Not only did Republicans file the suit that's likely to end in the law's demise, the organization itself was created following a successful 1978 effort by gay California conservatives to defeat a ban on gay teachers in the state's public schools. Their most important ally in that fight? A former governor named Ronald Reagan.