Senility comes to mind.

Ike Skelton, the 78 year old chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, opposes repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in part because if we change the military’s personnel policy, it might result in 7-year-olds hearing about gays in the news.

So let’s get this straight, as it were. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee makes national defense policy based on the preferred dinner conversation of second graders. That’s pretty pathetic. It’s also pretty homophobic and bigoted, in addition to a tad demented.

But this goes beyond Skelton being a bit too old, and too bigoted, to have such an important committee chair. Skelton is the man who joined forces with Secretary Gates to screw President Obama two months on DADT . Skelton asked Gates for a letter saying that Gates didn’t want Congress to do anything on DADT this year. They did this in order to undercut the President. And sadly, we’re not done with Skelton yet. If the DADT compromise (weak as it is) passes the Senate some time over the next month, it will then need to be conferenced. In that conference, four men will be making the decision as to what to do with DADT: Levin & McCain (Senate Armed Services), and Skelton and McKeon (House Armed Services). The only one who isn’t an avowed homophobe is Levin.

Skelton will continue to wreak havoc in our lives unless and until he’s unseated in the fall, or Speaker Pelosi tells him to cut the crap.