Lots of e-mail, as you’d expect, from my post on the provision in the House defense bill (sec. 524 of HR 2647) to bar members of “hate groups” groups from enlisting. Most e-mails asked whether Boy Scouts would be barred under the proposed policy.

Good question, especially since the original provision left it to Eric Holder to determine who would be included in the index of prohibited organizations: “Other groups or organizations that are determined by the Attorney General to be of a violent, extremist nature.”

But it’s moot for now because, according to a Hill source, the House-Senate conference report stripped out the provision after Senate conferees recognized what a landmine it represented. It was replaced with a requirement (sec. 516) that the Defense Department report to Congress on how it screens out extremists among recruits. It seems that Rep. Alcee Hastings is the one who slipped the hate-group language into the bill in the first place.