Obama Looks for Advice
on DADT

President Barack Obama has started consulting with advisers as to how the federal government may overturn the ban on service by openly gay people in the military.

Administration officials will not reveal how it may happen or how soon , but some Democrats have suggested that a team of experts may be commissioned to investigate a proper reversal of the policy, according to the Associated Press.

Obama has been consulting with Defense secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Michael Mullen "so that this change is done in a sensible way that strengthens our armed forces and our national security," Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said in an e-mail this week.

The reversal of the law is part of a campaign promise made by Obama.

California congresswoman Ellen Tauscher reintroduced legislation to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Tauscher's bill garnered 143 cosponsors when it was introduced in 2008, but it never reached a floor vote.

Tauscher mentioned at an event Monday for the Center for American Progress Action Fund that 26 other countries, mostly allies like the United Kingdom and Germany, no longer have such bans on the books. She also said that if Colin Powell, who was once the "physical embodiment" of opposition to openly gay service members, could change his mind now, it's time to make a change.

"Seventy-five percent of the American people believe that this is the wrong policy," she said, adding that "we have a lot of people behind us."