Stephen Colbert who is broadcasting from Baghdad, Iraq this week broaches the controversial issue in front of a packed house of officers and soldiers. Watch:

It’s hard to read the applause and laughter of the audience. Was it because of Colbert “playing” gay or the absurdity of the policy? Or mixture of both? I did notice the lack of recognition in the audience when Lt. Dan Choi and Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach, both victims of DADT were mentioned. Not even a smattering of applause. Hopefully they were simply unaware of the news back home.

It would have been interesting if they had done cutaways to the audience for their reactions during the segment… It would have been doubly interesting if Colbert had polled the audience about their position on DADT. But this is a comedy show… lest we forget.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear a case on DADT gave Rachel Maddow another opportunity last night to take President Obama to task on his promise to repeal the controversial policy. Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey lends a hand, one of the original cosponsors of bill (H.R. 1283) which would overturn Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Watch:

Say it ain’t so Dorothy. Say it ain’t so!

Hundreds of people protested DADT outside the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills yesterday evening where President Barack Obama was holding a Democratic fundraiser. Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point grad and Arab linguist who was recently discharged for coming out on the Rachel Maddow Show, spoke to the crowd:

Obama failed to acknowledge the protesters, except as a throw away line at the fundraiser as reported in the NY Times:

A gaggle of sign-waving [DADT] protesters milled around outside The Beverly Hilton, the sprawling hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. They must have caught the president’s eye when he arrived at the hotel from an earlier stop in Las Vegas because he relayed one of their messages to the crowd.

“One of them said, “Obama keep your promise,’ ” the president said. “I thought that’s fair. I don’t know which promise he was talking about.”

This morning Choi also appeared on MSNBC with David Shuster discussing his discharge.