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Congress has once again deferred making a decision as to whether to finally end draft registration or to expand it to include young women as well as young men. The final version of this year’s annual National Defense [sic] Authorization Act (NDAA) approved by Congress on December 14th and signed into law on December 27th by President Biden makes no change to the provisions of the Military Selective Service Act (MSSA) which authorize the president to order men, but not women, to register with the Selective Service System (SSS) for a possible military draft. This leaves the current Selective Service...

This date: We woke up to a syndicated news report aired over KSFO Radio, San Francisco, that there is a Federal Appeals Court hearing today on the Texas ruling, Feb 25, 2019, ruling the Male-Only Draft to be unconstitutional. We've been scouring the Internet for any mention of the hearing scheduled for today, but cannot find one item. Any Freepers with info on this? Thanks so much!

By now, every political commentator has offered a suggestion for how Donald Trump ended up as president of these United States. Few have missed their targets as badly as Damon Linker's most recent offering, which suggests that we could have avoided President Trump if only the government had remained committed, for the past 40-plus years, to a policy that forced young Americans to die in foreign wars. Linker, a senior correspondent at The Week, suggests that historians will ultimately trace the rise of Trump to the decline in social cohesion that began, yes, with the abolition of military conscription in...

Integrating women into combat will eventually force lawmakers to have an "emotional discussion and debate" about whether women should also be part of the draft, the Army secretary said Monday. John McHugh said it's still too early to discuss whether women should have to sign up for the Selective Service as men have. But, as the military drives toward a Jan. 1 deadline to open some or all combat positions to women, McHugh acknowledged the country will need to have the conversation if women have the same opportunities in the military as men. "If your objective is true and pure...

Actually, this has been an ongoing debate on one level, and an episodic debate on another. Charles Rangel and other progressives have beat the drum for a military draft ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, not because it was necessary militarily, but because Rangel and his allies thought it would make America more isolationist and pacifist. They argued, and continue to argue, that military sacrifice falls disproportionately on the middle and working classes, as well as on minorities — despite the fact that the US military has been entirely volunteer since the end of the Vietnam War forty years...

Even as the U.S. confronts two long wars, neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Barack Obama believes the country should take the politically perilous step of reviving the military draft. But the two presidential candidates disagree on a key foundation of any future draft: Mr. Obama supports a requirement for both men and women to register with the Selective Service, while Mr. McCain doesn't think women should have to register. Also, Mr. Obama would consider officially opening combat positions to women. Mr. McCain would not. "Women are already serving in combat [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and the current policy should...

WASHINGTON — A New York congressman has once again proposed reinstating the draft, not just to boost the ranks of U.S. fighters but also to discourage what he sees as some politicians’ cavalier attitude toward military action. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has introduced the legislation twice before, each time with no success. Two years ago the House rejected his idea by a 402-2 vote. Rangel, a Korean War veteran who has been a critic of the war in Iraq, said he doubts the measure will make any progress this time either, but believes debate over the issue will re-emphasize the...

St. Louis (CNSNews.com) - Republicans had no sooner shot down rumors of a military draft when Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe warned a group of College Democrats on Friday that President Bush would call them up for duty if re-elected. "I know it's controversial to say it, but don't think for one second that if George Bush gets re-elected and we have another conflict in some other theater of the world, we're going to have to reinstitute the draft," McAuliffe said. "It is very controversial to say it, but it is what it is." McAuliffe spoke to about a hundred...

To: National Desk Contact: Stuart Roy or Jonathan Grella, 202-225-4000, both of the Office of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) today made the following remarks on the Democrat proposal for a military draft: "Sometimes -- not always, but sometimes -- a bill comes to the floor of this House after a long, deliberate examination of the facts surrounding a difficult issue with compelling arguments on both sides, and we can all come together and find common ground. "Sometimes, a bill is the result of hard-nosed political wrangling, and...

Debate is ongoing ...

No, we're not going -- we don't need the draft. Look, the all-volunteer Army is working. The all-volunteer Army... I know Senator McCain and I agree on this issue for certain, the all-volunteer Army works."   ~ President George W. Bush, August 10, 2004  President Bush is committed to keeping participation in the United States Armed Services voluntary.  The President’s cabinet has stated that a draft is not being considered.  Recruitment and retention rates remain strong, and the military has not had any problem maintaining a strong force.  President Bush is confident in the current state of the military and has assured...

I am a freshman in high school and would like to tell everyone in the Bush camp that among my peers the draft is the #1 issue. I know the FR community is very large, so I am hoping someone in the campaign will read this. I also understand that many college students are basing their votes for John Kerry on the draft issue alone. We need to make sure that they know that it is John Kerry, not George Bush, that is more likely to impose a draft. Do not let John Kerry's baseless charge made today go unanswered....

NOTE: President Carter used his 1980 SOTU speech to address the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the American hostages taken by Iran. He called for increasing military spending, reducing restrictions on the CIA, and revival of the selective services registration. Many on the left, like Noam Chomsky, attacked him for his response to the crisis, others, like Sen. McGovern supported him, while John Kerry offered qualified support and equivocation. ************************************************************************************************** January 25, 1980 by Richard H. Stewart Globe Staff Antiwar activists from the Vietnam era are not as united about President Jimmy Carter's tough-sounding [State of the Union] speech on...

Associated Press WASHINGTON -- Most U.S. high-school students believe the government will restart the military draft during their lifetimes, and shrinking numbers are optimistic about the country's future, a new poll finds. Among teenagers, 55 percent say young Americans will be required to serve in the military, up from 45 percent last year, according to "The State of Our Nation's Youth," an annual survey by the Horatio Alger Association. During the year between polls - May 2003 to May 2004 - U.S. casualties mounted during attacks in Iraq even after President Bush declared on May 1, 2003, that major combat...

There is no serious effort afoot to restore the draft, contrary to rumors circulating on the Internet. One Web site, bushdraft.com, claims to have "absolute proof that (President) Bush is making plans to reinstate the draft by the middle of 2005." Like most rumors, these contain enough kernels of fact to sustain, if not a feeding frenzy, then a platter of tantalizing hors d'oeuvres for conspiracy enthusiasts: Draft boards are indeed being maintained, but they have been routinely funded by Congress all along. The just-approved appropriation increases the previous year's spending on Selective Service by less than 1 percent. Upon...

My daughter-in-law has a sister in a California college. Recently, the sister attending college, said that her boyfriend had received a notice to register for the draft. I know that Congress has passed nothing to reinstate the draft and that the main two sponsors of the resolutions for draft are both Democrats ( Rangel in the House and Fritz Hollings in the Senate). Is it possible that individual states are sending notices to register for the draft? My initial thought is that there could be someone forging the draft registration notices to scare the young voters and college crowd.

I keep catching hell from folks who want to insist that a new draft is coming, and that the Bush Administration is engineering it so that "their rich kids" won't be caught up in it.Citizen Smash has done the legwork to find out exactly who is behind this push.But who is behind this movement to reinstate the draft? Let’s check the Congressional Record. In the House of Representatives:Charles Rangel, NYNeil Abercrombie, HICorrine Brown, FLDonna M. Christensen,VIWilliam Lacy Clay, MOJohn Conyers, Jr., MIElijah E. Cummings, MDAlcee L. Hastings, FLSheila Jackson-Lee, TXJohn Lewis, GAJim McDermott, WAJames P. Moran, VAEleanor Holmes Norton, DCFortney...

<p>Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday dismissed the notion of reinstating the military draft, saying that the Pentagon, if needed, can dig deeper into Reserve and National Guard forces to relieve troops deployed in the war on terrorism.</p> <p>"I don't know anyone in the executive branch of the government who believes it would be appropriate or necessary to reinstitute the draft," Mr. Rumsfeld told a Washington gathering of members of the Newspaper Association of America, the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Associated Press.</p>

Prominent lawmakers such as Rep. Charles Rangel of New York and others argue that our volunteer military is not representative of society, and that it offends fairness to have casualties in Iraq disproportionately drawn from members of America's less advantaged classes. A presidential election is shaping up in which two veterans of the Vietnam era have had to assert or defend their performance in that conflict - America's last draft-based war. To anyone under age 45, discussions of the draft must seem like discussions of the Great Depression seemed to their parents. The last time a young American male faced...

“One Thousand Killed in 5 days of Fierce Street Fighting!” read a New York Times headline on Jan 4, 1959. The fake news headline dealt with the (utterly bogus) “battle” of Santa Clara in central Cuba where Ernesto “Che” Guevara earned much of his enduring (and totally bogus) martial fame. “Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties,” continues the breathless The New York Times article. “Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men!”A year later, Che’s own diaries revealed that his forces (which actually numbered...