By Jason Howe, Director of Communications
Did you hear on the news about the mass exodus of a half-million troops from the U.S. military?

No? Well then, you must have heard about gay soldiers causing their comrades to desert their units just as an attack was most imminent.
No? You know what? I didn’t either.
A year to the day after the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) followed the Gatling gun, the trebuchet and the cavalry charge into the military history books, nothing has changed -- nothing, that is, other than soldiers taking partners to military dances, tearful same-sex reunions, and other images of lesbian and gay troops serving their country openly and proudly.
According to a study released today by the Palm Institute, “the repeal of DADT has had no overall negative impact on military readiness or its component dimensions, including cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment or morale.”
No overall negative impact. Service members report no drop in unit cohesion or military readiness, the repeal has had no effect on recruitment, and that mass exodus of troops? It never happened.
Not that any of this is deterring those who opposed the repeal in the first place, among them Sen. John McCain, Michelle Bachman and the Family Research Council. The report says that as news spread that the earth had not yawned open to swallow the Pentagon, opponents “have adjusted their forecasts by emphasizing the possibility of long-term damage that will only become apparent in the future.” Disgraced former Marine and Fox News host Oliver North said that repealing the policy was akin to treating troops like “rats in a radical social experiment.” GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney last year said during a Republican debate that “I believe that "don't ask/don't tell" should have been kept in place until conflict was over.”
That’s why the battle won’t stay won if we don’t stay vigilant. Even though the repeal isn’t an issue for most Americans and -- more importantly -- isn’t an issue for troops themselves, opponents of LGBT equality remain entrenched. That’s because they remember the last time the military became a front in the fight for civil rights -- following World War Two, when African Americans finally could serve alongside whites -- and the social barriers that fell in the decades that followed. They know that once you’ve risked your life alongside someone, it’s difficult to deny him or her basic civil rights.

By Hector Villagra, Executive Director
John Morton, the director of U.S. Immigrations and Enforcement (ICE), has suggested that policies that restrict compliance with immigration detainers "may" violate federal law. If he thinks this is true of the TRUST Act, a bill that now sits on Governor Brown's desk, all I can say is this: Yes, and pigs "may" fly.
Morton points to a single federal statute that detainer policies like the TRUST Act "may" conflict with -- 8 U.S.C. 1373(a). This statute is exceedingly simple. It provides that a state or local government cannot prohibit or restrict any government agency or official from sending to or receiving from ICE information about the immigration status of a person. It covers communication with ICE - nothing more, nothing less.
I would agree that if the TRUST Act prohibited or restricted a sheriff's deputy from communicating with ICE about the immigration status of an individual held in county jail, it would impermissibly conflict with federal law.
But this is not what the TRUST Act does. It merely clarifies the discretion of that sheriff's deputy to honor a detainer request -- a voluntary request from ICE to local law enforcement to detain or hold an individual in a local jail beyond when he or she would otherwise be eligible for release. Under the TRUST Act, the request would be honored only if the individual were charged with, or had previously been convicted of, a serious or violent crime.
The TRUST Act does not even relate to communication with ICE, much less prohibit or restrict it in any way. Consistent with federal law, the TRUST Act permits information to flow freely between local law enforcement and ICE.
Morton may not like that under the TRUST Act some of his agency's requests won't be honored, but California's law enforcement officers have no obligation to follow the preferences of Morton or any other federal official. In fact, any federal policy requiring local law enforcement officers to comply with ICE's detainer requests would violate the Tenth Amendment, which prevents the federal government from commandeering state or local resources in this way.
What's more, California has an obligation to use its limited resources in the most effective way, and the Legislature has determined that it would be best to focus those resources on individuals who pose the greatest risk to public safety. Ironically, this is how the federal government is supposed to be using its resources under Secure Communities.
Morton has called the program "the future of immigration enforcement" because it "focuses our resources on identifying and removing the most serious criminal offenders first and foremost." Unfortunately, this statement has little connection to reality: the vast majority of people swept up in Secure Communities have committed no crime or nothing more serious than, for instance, a traffic offense.
Jose Ucelo Gonzalez is a case in point: a day laborer, he faces deportation because police arrested him after his employer filed false charges against him to avoid paying him wages; even though the charges have been dropped, and he has no criminal record, the police did not release him; instead, they transferred him to ICE custody.
The TRUST Act is completely free of any conflict with federal law and therefore completely lawful. I can say this unequivocally, unlike director Morton -- who "may" be trying to scare Governor Brown into vetoing a perfectly lawful bill that he simply does not like.

When is the Veterans Affairs Department going to meet its responsibility to house chronically homeless veterans in Los Angeles on the large tract of government-owned land that should have been put to this use long ago?

Maybe sometime in 2014, according to the department’s estimates, or halfway through President Obama’s second term, if he is re-elected. For a president who has made eloquent promises about the nation’s duty to veterans, that is a dismal expectation.
The problem predates Mr. Obama, of course. The sprawling 400-acre property in Los Angeles was deeded to the federal government in 1888 expressly for use as a home for disabled soldiers and sailors. But the Veterans Affairs Department long ago strayed from that mission. No long-term housing exists there anymore, though a large V.A. hospital with short-term treatment beds occupies part of that land.
Over the years, the property has been turned over to uses completely unrelated to the department’s mission, like athletic fields, a nine-hole public golf course, theater stages, hotel laundries, rental-car and bus storage, even oil wells and a dog park. Yet it’s unclear how much rent the department has collected from various businesses like Marriott Hotels or where that money has gone.
A class-action lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California was filed last year on behalf of disabled homeless veterans, charging that the veterans are entitled by law to effective mental health care but cannot possibly get it if they have no place to live.
The Veterans Affairs Department would not comment, given the lawsuit. But a reporter for National Public Radio, using Freedom of Information requests, estimated that in the last 12 years, rental agreements have earned the department at least $28 million and maybe more than $40 million.
The property has been studied, scrutinized and fought over for more than 20 years. It has been misused for a long time, and now it’s the responsibility of Mr. Obama, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki and members of Congress, including Representative Henry Waxman, to get to the bottom of this debacle. Mr. Waxman’s office said he had pressed Mr. Shinseki into finding the $20 million in July 2010 to renovate one building for long-term supportive housing. But nothing else has happened yet, and the July 2014 completion estimate is evidence of a department that is slow and unresponsive to its mission.
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/opinion/veterans-in-los-angeles-still-in-the-cold.html