GI Rights Hotline

The telephone number is:

1-800-394-9544

I found out about this hotline by reading an article by Marjorie Cohn at Truthout entitled The Creeping Draft.

Enlistees are given a date to report within 365 days of the day they sign up. This is called the Delayed Entry Program (DEP). If, for any reason, they change their mind within that time, they don't have to go. A counselor with the San Diego Military Counseling Project told me that recruiters lie. They do underhanded things to circumvent the DEP. A recruiter might show up at the recruit's job and tell his boss he isn't patriotic and get the recruit fired. On the day before the recruit is due to report, the recruiter will tell him to come down to the office to complete some paperwork. The recruit will then be kept there overnight and sent directly to boot camp the next day. This is kidnapping.

Hell of an article to come across on the eve the Fourth of July weekend.

Then again, maybe it's most timely.

Surprise!

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has resigned.

I was thinking we might not have a mudfest to observe this summer. Not now.

I'm still reading SCOTUS. This paragraph:

If that happens, the dispute that would follow in the Senate may well make pale, by comparison, the fight in 1987 over replacing Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. -- who, like O'Connor -- held the balance of power on the Court. The controversy that arose over nominee Robert Bork, ultimately leading to his defeat as Powell's successor, was about nothing less than the future of the Court. That could be at stake all over again.

is what I've been mulling over for a couple of months.

See also SCTNomination, which has a list of potential nominees.