As conservatives in the United States try to argue that repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) would lead to all sorts of horrors like an increase in “body art,” natural disasters, and a reinstatement of the draft, British citizens are serving comfortably alongside openly gay men and women. Yesterday at a reception at Number 10 Downing Street to celebrate February’s LGBT History Month, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown underscored the country’s more progressive position:

Brown singled out the lesbians, gays and bisexuals from the Army, Navy and Air Force who attended the event in uniform.

He told them: “You are the pride of our country and we thank you very much. We know this debate continues in America today. I would say to people who still favour ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, look at our experience in Britain.”

Brown also hosted a reception for LGBT History Month last year, when he slammed California’s Prop. 8 as “unacceptable.”

A recent report by the Palm Center backed up Brown’s statements on gay men and women serving openly in the military. The study found that foreign militaries have been able to quickly and successfully integrate:

Other key conclusions of the new study are that preliminary findings that open gays do not disrupt military effectiveness hold over time, including in Britain, whose policy of non-discrimination marked its ten-year anniversary last month; that successful transitions did not involve creating separate facilities or distinct rules for gays or straights; and that the U.S. has a long tradition of turning to foreign armed forces as relevant sources of information about effective military policy.

Yesterday on the House floor, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) read a letter from an active duty soldier in Afghanistan who had “learned that a fellow soldier was also gay, only after he was killed by an IED in Iraq.” The deceased soldier’s partner also “wrote the unit to say how much the victim had loved the military; how they were the only family he had ever known.” (HT: Towleroad)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is trying to pass an extension of unemployment benefits, but is facing resistance from Republicans who are throwing up procedural hurdles and trying to use the extension as leverage to push through a tax cut for the wealthiest families in the country. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) today questioned the necessity of an extension on the grounds that “we intend to have some immediate impact on the economy through what we’re doing.” And discourse in the House isn’t any better, with Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) positing that extending unemployment benefits may be creating “hobos”:

Heller said the current economic downturn and policies may bring back the hobos of the Great Depression, people who wandered the country taking odd jobs. He said a study found that people who are out of work longer than two years have only a 50 percent chance of getting back into the workforce. “I believe there should be a federal safety net,” Heller said, but he questioned the wisdom of extending unemployment benefits yet again to a total of 24 months, which Congress is doing. “Is the government now creating hobos?” he asked.

1.1 million workers are due to have their benefits expire next month, and 5 million will see their benefits disappear by June. There are currently six unemployed workers for every job opening, and even without compensating for population increases, 350,000 jobs a month would need to be generated for two full years just to make up the jobs lost in the recession.

Today at the White House bipartisan health care summit, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tried to argue against the Democratic majority using reconciliation to pass health care reform. He first claimed to be an anti-reconciliation champion, falsely equating the “nuclear option” to pass judicial nominees (which he opposed in 2005) with reconciliation in general.

He then admitted that reconciliation has been used in the past, but “never before” for something as costly has health care and that using it now would all but ruin the U.S. Senate as an institution and “harm the future of our country”:

MCCAIN: The last time when there was a proposal that we Republicans in the majority would adopt a 51 vote majority on the issue of the confirmation of judges. There was a group of us that got together and said no that’s not the right way to go because that could deal a fatal blow to the unique aspect of the United States Senate which is a 60 vote majority. And we came to an agreement and it was brought to a halt.

If a 51 vote reconciliation is enacted on one-sixth of our gross national product. Never before has there been –- there’s been reconciliation but not at the level of an issue of this magnitude and I think I could harm the future of our country and our institution which I loved a great deal for a long, long time.

Watch it:

First, the “nuclear option” McCain referred to is not synonymous with “reconciliation” in general. It is the latest dishonest GOP talking point simply meant to derail health care reform.

Second, and most hypocritical, McCain himself has previously supported using reconciliation to pass major legislation and just last year, conceded that the GOP has no case in arguing against its use:

MCCAIN: I fully recognize that Republicans have in the past engaged in using reconciliation to further the party’s agenda. I wish it had not been done then, and I hope it will not be done now that the groundwork has been laid.

Not only has reconciliation been used on countless occasions in the past, it’s simply not true that “never before” has it been used on legislation as big as the Senate’s $900 billion health care bill. The GOP majority used reconciliation to pass President Bush’s tax cuts, which have so far cost the federal government nearly $2 trillion and continue to add to the deficit. The CBO, meanwhile, said that the Senate’s health care bill yields “a net reduction in federal deficits of $132 billion” over 10 years. PolitiFact.com noted that it’s “probably true” that Bush’s tax cuts cost more than the Senate’s health care bill.

Moreover, NPR noted recently that “for 30 years, major changes in health care laws have passed via the budget reconciliation process.”