Yesterday, a group of West Point alumni came out of the closet in order to form Knights Out, an LGBT alumni organization pushing for the repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the U.S. military and hoping to serve as an “open forum” for LGBT alumni and their fellow graduates. From the group’s press release:

By publicly outing themselves, the 38 members of Knights Out ended once and for all the anonymity that has obscured from full view their service to the nation as West Point graduates. Knights Out seeks to reduce the stigma associated with sexual diversity by providing an open forum for discussion between out LGBT West Point graduates and their fellow alumni. Knights Out is well-positioned to help West Point maintain its status as the world’s premier leadership institution by swiftly and effectively adapting to the end of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which Knights Out believes is both imminent and inevitable.

The Advocate notes that Knights Out “joins similar groups formed by graduates of the U.S. Naval and Air Force academies, including the U.S. Naval Academy’s USNA Out and the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Blue Alliance.”

Reports over the weekend that bailed-out insurance giant AIG will be paying $165 million in bonuses to executives “in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year” have sparked bipartisan outrage. Even ultra-conservative Bill Kristol expressed his anger in a column yesterday, asking rhetorically, “[I]f capitalism is to survive, shouldn’t the Republican party, the party that defends democratic capitalism, be particularly vehement in denouncing its excesses? Isn’t this a pretty spectacular one?”

However, it seems that Dana Perino, former President Bush’s press secretary, didn’t receive the memo. On C-Span’s Washington Journal on Sunday, Perino defended the bonuses:

PERINO: And the people who are working there that are middle-class people, are expecting to get this bonus. If they do not get it, maybe they won’t be motivated enough to try to help the company turn around and getting the company to turn around and be more profitable is important for all of us.

Perino then chastised the “rhetoric in Washington” that “can try to make things so black and white, and make things sound so easy — demonize people when I don’t think that that’s fair.” Watch it:

It appears that Perino either doesn’t know who is set to receive the bonuses or is unaware what it means to be “middle class” (i.e. those American households that generally make between $40,000 and $70,000 per year). In fact, while as of Sunday, it was unclear what the salary range is for the executives who are set to get the bonuses, as The New York Times reported at the time, some of them will receive more than $3 million in bonuses alone.

A new Wonk Room analysis notes that under Bush’s tax system, these AIG executives will collectively take home $7.5 million more dollars more than they would have in the 1990s. But President Obama’s budget would effectively eliminate the Bush tax bonuses, allow middle class families to save as much as $800 per year, and invest in health care, renewable energy and education.

Earlier today, Reps. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) and Leonard Lance (R-NJ) introduced legislation that would direct Treasury Secretary Geithner to “recover AIG executive bonuses, increase transparency in bailout funds, and detail for taxpayers the communications between the Administration and AIG.” While Republican Leader John Boehner touted the legislation as the “two-pronged House GOP response to AIG revelations,” it seems to be a rehash of what President Obama is already doing to address the issue. As Obama explained yesterday:

In the last six months, AIG has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury. And I’ve asked Secretary Geithner to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole. I want everybody to be clear that Secretary Geithner has been on the case.

Greg Sargent writes that the legislation appears to be “an effort to position the Republicans as the ones who are leading a populist rebellion against AIG and are trying to wrest those bonuses back.” In reality, it appears that the House Republicans are just playing catch up.

This afternoon on CNN, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) pretended as though he had favored capping the salaries of bankers whose firms accepted TARP funds, claiming that his position has been that bailed-out companies “are going to have to operate in a different sort of way.” When host Wolf Blitzer asked whether Congress should have passed salary caps on bailout recipients, McConnell acts as though he had been in favor of such a proposal:

BLITZER: Should the Congress — and you are the leader of the Republicans in the Senate — have passed salary caps on these bailed out companies?

McCONNELL: We certainly had a chance with the amendment by Senator Snowe to prevent this kind of bonuses from being paid. But look, the day-to-day responsibility of oversight of TARP funds is at the Treasury Department.

Watch it:

McConnell is certainly right: Congress did have a chance to pass salary caps. However, he opposed such a move at the time, telling ABC News, “I really don’t want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do. … We have to resist the temptation to basically dictate to these businesses how to run every aspect of their operation.” On CNN today, McConnell accused AIG of “trying to have it both ways.” Pot, meet kettle.