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National Stories
Days after President Lyndon B. Johnson’s election to his first full term, an administration official asked a subordinate to explain the policy on firing gays. In particular, he wondered whether someone with a history of gay liaisons could, through years of marriage, be “rehabilitated” into a trustworthy civil servant. The response came quickly, and in language that would be shocking by today’s standards. Technically, rehabilitated gays could keep their jobs. But John W. Steele, a staff member of the Civil Service Commission, which handled personnel matters for the government, said that seldom happened. “Some feel that ‘once a homo, always a homo,’ ” Mr. Steele wrote. He added, “Our tendency to ‘lean over backwards’ to rule against a homosexual is simply a manifestation of the revulsion which homosexuality inspires in the normal person.”
New York Times
The Obama administration has signaled it will publicly reveal a memo explaining its legal justification for using drones to kill American citizens overseas, a U.S. government official confirmed to Fox News Tuesday. The official said the Justice Department has decided not to appeal a Court of Appeals ruling requiring disclosure of a redacted version of the memo under the Freedom of Information Act.
Fox News
The sergeant-at-arms office in the North Carolina Senate confiscated a reporter’s recorder after a senator requested any such devices “be approved,” Mark Binker reports for WRAL. Rosemary Hoban, a reporter for North Carolina Health News, was covering a committee meeting when she “noticed that her recorder, which she had placed on a side table, was missing,” Binker writes. The senator, Rick Gunn, “could not cite a building rule or law that would have justified his announcement,” which Binker says violates the state’s open-meetings law. Gunn “walked away” when asked a follow-up question. Hoban “had to leave the meeting to retrieve her recorder,” Binker reports.
Poynter |