Go Ahead: Tell Us Again There Won't Be a Draft

Something very disturbing is going on that fits perfectly the term "back-door draft," which we take to be one more step toward an actual front-door call-up:

In the recent past, when soldiers have enlisted, they've typically agreed to an eight-year commitment. But they've also typically been allowed to end their active duty obligations earlier by signing on with the Reserves or the National Guard. We all know how El Presidente and his Pentagon has relied heavily on those pools of soldiers to pursue his policy of preemption.

But there's another group we haven't heard so much about ... the "Individual Ready Reserve," "a pool of former soldiers seldom ordered back to work. Ordinarily, these former soldiers do not get military pay, nor do they train. They receive points toward a military retirement and an address form to update once a year."

In the past year, the Army has called back to active duty over 4,000 members of this Individual Ready Reserve, and there's another 110,000 of these poor schlimazels just waiting for the axe to fall.

Rick Howell from Tuscaloosa, Ala., is pretty typical of these ex-soldiers: "I consider myself a civilian," said Howell, who said he thought he had left the Army behind in 1997 after more than a decade flying helicopters. "I've done my time. I've got a brand new baby and a wife, and I haven't touched the controls of an aircraft in seven years. I'm 47 years old. How could they be calling me? How could they even want me?"

Come on, Rick, surely you know the answer to that question. El Presidente needs cannon fodder. He's promised he won't draft anybody. Technically, he isn't actually drafting you ... just following the small print in the agreement you signed when you got out.

But the Army is encountering uncomfortable resistance from guys exactly like Rick. According to this a.m.'s NYTimes, some 2,000 Individual Ready Reservists are saying in effect, "Hell no! We won't go!" Some are suing and winning. So far the Army has been unwilling apparently to aggressively oppose these law suits, since it's tiptoeing around bad publicity. Even worse, "of about 2,500 who were due to arrive on military bases for refresher training by Nov. 7th, some 733 had not shown up." That's another way to deal with a backdoor draft: Ignore it. "Come and get me, sucka!"

With the Army often caving when challenged on its right to call up these old guys, additional pressure will mount to call up more of those 110,000 other Individual Ready Reserves who haven't been called yet. And when the public actually becomes aware of what's going on, the resistance will mount, and well it should! The Times speculates that no one really knows how many recalled Individual Ready Reservists actually have already gone to Iraq, meekly accepting what they might well have challenged and got out of.

But everyone knows you can't continue to fight a ground war with aging reservists. It takes young guys to kick in doors day after day.

Frankly, we don't exactly understand why the Christian Right isn't volunteering its strong and clean-living young sons to get themselves on over there and win this holy battle against the evil-doers. We had thought that their "mandate" given to El Presidente on November 2nd might apply here to their personal service in the interests of spreading Christian "freedom" throughout the Moslem world.

N.C. Commission to Study Balloting Problems

Under the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA), North Carolina was required to set up a standing study commission to examine the reliability of voting machines, but it took the loss of 4,500 ballots in Carteret County to wake the state legislature up and actually kick start that commission into action by appointing legislative members to it. That was done last week, and the commission should begin meeting immediately to examine the disconcerting hodgepodge of voting systems and devices in use across N.C.'s 100 counties, along with the various computer glitches like the Carteret County screwup.

The Carteret County machine, made by UniLect of California, reached its capacity with about 3,000 votes, but county elections officials said they had been assured its capacity was 10,000. "You have to wonder what kind of bonehead would design a computer system that would hit capacity, then continue to take votes and just throw them away," Stanford University computer science professor David Dill said. (Thanks to Alice for sending the N&O story.)

Currently, there's a state-wide recount under way that must be finished by tomorrow ... called for by the Republican candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction and by the Democratic Agriculture Secretary Britt Cobb. Both were losing by slim margins in the first returns two weeks ago.

And no decision has been reached about what to do about those lost ballots in Carteret.

UPDATE: "State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird of Carrboro and state Rep. Verla Insko of Chapel Hill want a law they say could prevent another machine problem like Carteret's. They propose that a legislative study commission look at requiring voting machines to produce a paper record, something like a receipt, for voters after they cast their ballots." Amen to that! (Additional N&O coverage here.)

N.C. Balloting Problems Compiled

Thanks to JayDubb for sending this very important site, which has compiled all the known balloting problems and irregularities from all the states of the union. If you click on the link above, you'll be taken directly to the list of North Carolina glitches, with convenient links to all the press accounts about those glitches, among other information. This becomes extremely important in what must become our grassroots movement to petition our local Board of Election & County Commissioners to change course away from voting devices that offer no verifiable paper trail.

Monday A.M. Potpourri

We fervently believe that the American people, having (supposedly) chosen a right-wing ideology to occupy all (or most of) the seats of national and local power ... well, the people should GET what they ask for. So we totally support Mullah James Dobson's call for the ouster of Senator Arlen Specter from the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The people should GET the full measure of what El Presidente's backers want us to have.

We missed the Sunday morning gasbags yesterday, since we were on the road from secret meetings of our cabal, but evidently Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pointedly refused to endorse Specter. He said he was deeply disturbed by remarks Specter made on election night, which would seem to indicate that Frist, like most of the avatars of the Right, is deeply disturbed by common reality: "Mr. Specter said just after he won re-election that Supreme Court nominees who wanted to undo abortion rights would face tough confirmation fights in the Senate." That's just the simple truth of the matter, IF (big, big IF) the 45 remaining Democrats don't get the vapors and faint onto the nearest couch.

Specter hasn't stood up for abortion rights through the first Shrub term. Why would he now? Mullah Dobson wants him OUT merely because Specter has said in the past that he is "pro-choice," not that Specter ever acts on that belief. To the new power brokers, labels are as good as deeds for condemning someone to hell.

Minutes ago, Colin Powell announced that he was OUT as Secretary of State. There was a time we would have regretted his going, since he seemed to be the only sane one up there, but he chose to run with the neo-cons, and he ran right over the cliff chasing their lies. Fare-thee-well, Colin. We won't miss you. But you're SO going to get a fat book deal out of your four excruciating years of holding the coats of warmongers.

And then we see this a.m., on a Watauga County roadway, a political sign, "Ray Halle for Sheriff." That would be Republican Ray Halle, who ran in the primary two years ago against Mark Shook. Should we take this as a sign that the local Republican mullahs have decided to purge the Sheriff because he supported the new Democratic County Commissioners? We of course want to encourage good Republicans in this internecine warfare. When the people don't voluntarily opt for their medicine, then they need to be FORCED. Clearly.

Disarry at Spook Palace

George Tenet got ousted from the C.I.A. because El Presidente needed a scapegoat for the Iraq War debacle. The new C.I.A. director, former Representative Porter Goss, has been in office seven weeks now, and things don't appear to be going all that well.

The NYTimes this morning headlined a story about a virtual rebellion in the ranks of veteran spies against the new director and the political appointees Goss has installed to run daily operations: "many career C.I.A. officers do not know whether to regard Mr. Goss as someone dispatched by the White House to punish the agency for past failures, or to rebuild its capabilities to make it stronger."

"Among those at the center of the storm ... are Steven R. Kappes, who as deputy director of operations is the most senior official still in place from the team at the agency before George J. Tenet resigned as director, and Patrick Murray, a former House Republican aide who is Mr. Goss's new chief of staff."

Translation: you got a political operative, weened on Republican Congressional ideologies and tactics, trying to order around a bunch of professionals with a low threshold for fools.

There are those who believe that "Goss really needs to go in there and clean house," but house-cleaning can also become house-wrecking almost instantly. Goss's critics "said that his failure to forge alliances among career officials and to enlist them in setting a new direction for the agency had been highly detrimental. 'You can make changes and cast them in the right way, and people will salute and go along with you,' one former C.I.A. official said. 'It doesn't look like that is happening.' "

Bottomline: look for more damaging leaks about El Presidente's masterplan to make war on Iraq well before there was any believeable rationale to make war on Iraq.

UPDATE. THE WASHINGTON POST has an even more interesting article also out today saying that Goss is "isolating" himself in the agency and that his inexperienced new aides are deeply resented: "Agency officials have criticized as inexperienced the four former Hill staff members Goss brought with him. Goss's first choice for executive director -- the agency's third-ranking official -- withdrew his name after The Washington Post reported that he left the agency 20 years ago after having been arrested for shoplifting."

Frist Declares, "Filibusters Verboten!"

The only tool that Democratic senators have left is the filibuster. But the Republican majority leader in the Senate, Bill Frist, is fed up in advance and darkly warned Democrats yesterday not to stand in the way of God's power on earth:

Frist said "that the newly strengthened Republican majority would not allow filibusters to block action on judicial nominees in President Bush's second term. 'One way or another, the filibuster of judicial nominees must end,' Dr. Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group. 'The Senate must do what is good, what is right, what is reasonable and what is honorable.' "

"One way or another..." What might that mean, Senator? A few Bradley Fighting Vehicles blocking some intersections in D.C.? "The Senate must do what is good..." Oh we KNOW what that means, Billy Boy. Doing what's good is doing the will of the Republican majority, since God never would have put you guys in charge of all life on this planet if He didn't intend "your will be done."

"With the possibility of multiple vacancies on the Supreme Court in coming months, the comments suggest that Republicans intend to take a harder line with Democrats...."

We hold The Cross up against this tide:

"He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. 'Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, "God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get." But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, "God, be merciful to me a sinner!" I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.' " Luke 18:9-14.

First the USA; Then Women's Bodies

If you don't think an early chill is descending over the land of the free, consider the unilateral action of Chapel Hill's PBS station WUNC. The station manager has decided that the phrase "reproductive rights" must be banned from their air-space as potentially reflecting a political position on abortion.

Ipas, an international women's rights and health organization, was told to replace "reproductive rights" with "reproductive health" in their on-air messages.

According to WRAL, "WUNC's general manager said the station made the change to avoid trouble with the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC prohibits public radio stations from airing underwriting announcements that advocate political, social or religious causes."

Gosh, it's like someone actually thinks that El Presidente's FCC might use its power to squelch opinions that its masters in Focus on the Family don't like.

" 'Reproductive rights' is not a euphemism for abortion," a spokeswoman for Ipas said. "Among other things, it means the right to infertility treatments, the right to contraception, the right to information, the right to live free of rape and violence. In global forums, those meanings are universally understood. And 'reproductive health' doesn't convey all of that. It's important to say that our work is about rights as well as health."

We read about WUNC's craven fear on the same morning that additional word arrives of El Presidente's war on women. From Karen Tumulty in Time magazine:

"A quiet battle is raging over the Bush Administration's plan to appoint a scantily credentialed doctor, whose writings include a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now, to head an influential Food and Drug Administration (FDA) panel on women's health policy. Sources tell Time that the agency's choice for the advisory panel is Dr. W. David Hager, an obstetrician-gynecologist who also wrote, with his wife Linda, Stress and the Woman's Body, which puts 'an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life" and recommends specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome. Though his resume describes Hager as a University of Kentucky professor, a university official says Hager's appointment is part time and voluntary and involves working with interns at Lexington's Central Baptist Hospital, not the university itself. In his private practice, two sources familiar with it say, Hager refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Hager did not return several calls for comment."

Foxx-Hunt: "Stand & Deliver" Edition

At a post-election celebratory gathering in Raleigh of NCFREE, the pro-business lobbying group, Fifth District Congresswoman-elect Virginia Foxx told a funny:

"Foxx said she asked her political consultant, Jack Hawke, what she should tell the business leaders. His suggestion, Foxx said: 'For all of you who didn't contribute because you didn't think I could win -- it's not too late." (N&O coverage here)

Tee-hee. (Methinks she ain't kiddin'.)

A Remarkably Fine Mess

The irretrievable loss of some 4,438 votes, swallowed whole by a diabolical "touch-screen" ballot device in North Carolina's Carteret County, is very much a factor in what happens next in a couple of Council of State races that are still undecided.

In the final statewide county election canvass reports (including the provisional ballots ruled acceptable), Democrat June S. Atkinson is leading Republican Bill Fletcher for the Superintendent of Public Instruction by 7,979 votes.

Democratic incumbent Agriculture Secretary Britt Cobb is trailing Republican challenger Steve Troxler by 3,870 votes.

Both Republican Fletcher and Democrat Cobb are already calling for recounts, which they are entitled to under N.C. law. The recount will have to be completed by Wednesday, Nov. 17.

If the recounted tallies in either race give the victor a winning margin of under 4,438 votes, N.C. law would also allow the State Board of Elections to order a new election ... because of those lost Carteret ballots.

State Election Director Gary Bartlett said that state law allows for a new election "in certain circumstances" and that "it was unclear" whether a new vote would occur statewide or only in counties with irregularities. That's vagueness piled on vagueness. Since "early voting" across North Carolina tended to favor Democratic candidates by a wide margin, and since the ballots lost in Carteret were "early voting" ballots, Britt Cobb'd have to be half-cracked not to insist on a do-over election in Carteret.

But more to the point, and despite who ultimately wins, Republicans and Democrats both should be raising their collective voices to protest the use of voting machinery which produces no record, no permanent verifiable paper trail, and which is subject to the machinations of unseen and unknown hands.