Virginia Phillips is quickly becoming the most powerful woman in America.
Eclipsing the power triumvirate that is Oprah, Sarah Palin and that woman in the Progressive commercials, Phillips has found herself shaking up the status quo and making front-page headlines across the country throughout the week and recent months.
In the latest national, local and international front-page story to spawn from her judicial chambers, openly gay military recruits in the U.S. cannot, for the first time, be turned away.
For now, at least.
Phillips judicially drop kicked the Pentagon on Tuesday when she emphatically denied the government’s request to delay her order to suspend the as-she-has-called-it unconstitutional Clinton-era policy.
And when this brazen judge can pull some judicially fatal Mortal Kombat action on the Department of Justice, we couldn’t be happier to see someone finally taking action on the policy Obama pledged to end on his watch.
But one of the most jarringly disturbing quotations makes us realize the fight for gay servicemen and women to be able to fight for their country is long from over. “If you come out now, it can be used against you in the future by the Pentagon,” the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network warned.
While we realize the DOJ is simply acting in accordance with adhering to legislation passed and supported by Congress, therein lies the very problem.
The fact that a ruling to end such blatant discrimination has to come from a gavel rather than the Capitol because certain Republican senators (all of them) veto legislation to end the policy is despicable.
Keep up the good work, Virginia.