The Not So Hidden Draft

With recruiters from the armed forces consistently missing their quotas since the inception of the Iraq War, it seems Congress has found a back door to getting more of the nation's poor to bear the burden of their hawkishness: cut financial aid for higher education.

This past week, Congress passed a budget cutting $12.7 billion dollars from student loans for the next five years, nearly one-third of the budget cuts. The cuts are the biggest in the history of the federal student loan program, and will be deepened further by an increase in interest rates on what's left of the loan money to go around.

As a good part of the student population can't afford to go to college on their own dime, this obviously strikes at the same demographic for which the military is vying for: young high school graduates. With less money available, more students are likely to turn an ear to the military recruiter. Promises of money for college after their adventures awash with high-tech weaponry, camouflage and a bad metalcore soundtrack are sure to sound better now that Congress has limited the options on the table. It will be interesting to watch the recruiting ad campaigns over the next year. I'm sure their attention to this matter will not be understated.

The Chairman and CEO of Adelphi, Steve Miller, recently told Detroit radio host Paul W. Smith that the most important thing the laid-off employees of his company should do for their children is to be sure they get a good education. Here's to the Congressional majority for making that prospect even more difficult.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

"For preventing disorders, arising in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some still observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other communities, to the great dishonor of God and offense of others: it is therefore ordered by this court and the authority thereof that whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way, upon any such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for every such offence five shilling as a fine to the county."
-From the records of the General Court, Massachusetts Bay Colony May 11, 1659

This law banning the celebration of Christmas stayed on the books for twenty-two years, and might liven up any discussion you find yourself engaged in regarding the perennial "War on Christmas" debate that crops up alongside manger scenes and in between commercials on Fox News .

Seperately, the Puritans also tried people who made too much profit in a trade deal as criminals, charging them with "usury," which often resulted in the redistribution of their ill-gotten wealth and a public shaming.

Aah, the good old days.

MK

Hey Stupider.

According to CNN, "Conservative columnist Ann Coulter cut short a speech at the University of Connecticut amid boos and jeers, and decided to hold a question-and-answer session instead." The story quotes her as telling the crowd that "I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am."

Someone as smart as she thinks she is should know that "stupider" isn't even a word.

How embarrassing.

MK

We Do Not Torture.

Today Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice told the Ukrainian press corps that the Geneva convention which bans the use of torture "extends to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the U.S. or outside the U.S." This is the most unbelievable line of bullshit I have ever heard, and I am offended as a citizen and a taxpayer that she and the adminsitration would actually have me shovel it into my mouth and swallow it.

Has not the Bush administration made torture an integral part of the "War on Terror," legitimizing it in memos signed by Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzalez himself? Pictures from Abu-Ghraib confirm it, as do memos with Donald Rumsfeld's handwriting dated in the weeks before the pictures hit the news headlines. New revelations of old Soviet prisons in Europe being used by the United States in said war certainly suggest it, as do a wave of accusations by people recently "freed" from such institutions, so why the rhetorical doublespeak by Rice?

For a gaggle of power mongers so obsessed with "truth" and "objectivity" to flatly deny facts is both troubling and promising. Troubling, in that I think they actually believe the nonsense they're trying so hard to articulate, and promising in that it seems that fewer and fewer people are viewing this administration with anything except a potent mixture of contempt and pity. Saddam Hussein currently stands trial for crimes against humanity, and his insistence that he is above the law seems pathetic from the outside looking in. As the policymakers in Washington circle the wagons, one can only wonder if similar trials await them. I hope they spend some time wondering the same thing.