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Distressed by the high cost of college and the high unemployment of college graduates, Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) recommended “a major revision of how we educate people for the public good. I have heard so many stories of graduates facing crushing debt loads and no prospects of a job that I think it’s time we remake the whole system.” “First of all, why should a student have to pay for college?” Rangel asked. “We don’t make them pay for elementary or high school. If a college degree is needed for the role a person is to play in our society...

The small Scandinavian nation said it would be the first nation in NATO to draft females into military service after decades of confining its conscription activities to men. "We are sending a signal that, once again, Norway's thinking ahead when it comes to equality, Norway's foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide said in an interview Sunday, two days after the parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new law mandating the drafting of women. About 10% of Norway's military is currently female, but the goal is to take the number to 20% by 2020. Norway has long considered itself a forerunner...

Minister of Finance Yair Lapid today sent a conciliatory message to the haredim (ultra-orthodox), whom he called "brother", telling them that the equal sharing of the burden law would benefit them and give them a sense of participation and dignity in Israel. Earlier today, the Perry Committee on drafting haredim approved its recommendations, including criminal penalties for haredi draft dodgers. "In recent years, this committee has brought down coalitions and ended careers," said Lapid about the Perry Committee. "The fact that we have resulted in that, in three years, 70% will be drafted is a badge of honor for the...

That's what Karl Eikenberry and David Kennedy ask in this New York Times op-ed today. Eikenberry's a retired Army lieutenant general and was the United States commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007 and the ambassador there from 2009 to 2011. He is a fellow at Stanford, where David M. Kennedy is an emeritus professor of history. They argue that the greatest challenge to our military is not from a foreign enemy but the widening gap between the American people and their armed forces. They cite three developments widening this gap, the first being ending conscription and moving to a...

The real war against women is the announced plan of the Obama administration, using outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta as the fall guy, to assign women for the first time in American history to fight our nation’s enemies in military ground combat. That’s real war, with real guns, real bullets and real deaths. This war doesn’t involve only women who have volunteered to serve in our military. It’s a real war against all 18-year-old American girls, because for the first time in our nation’s history they will be required to sign up for the draft and be ready for...

Two lawmakers are waging a little-noticed campaign to abolish the Selective Service System, the independent federal agency that manages draft registration. They say the millions of dollars the agency spends each year preparing for the possibility of a military draft is a waste of money. Reps. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., and Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., say the Pentagon has no interest in returning to conscription due to the success of the all-volunteer force. The Selective Service has a budget of $24 million and a full-time staff of 130...

Military draft registration could be coming to an end as two lawmakers are on a campaign to abolish the Selective Service System. Rep. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, and Rep. Mike Coffman, a Republican from Colorado, are the ones leading the charge to end military draft registration. They say the agency wastes millions of dollars each year preparing for the possibility of a military draft, The Associated Press noted.

This one’s long but stick with it. The good stuff doesn’t start happening until after we’re treated to the thousandth iteration of Charlie Rangel’s master plan to end war as we know it by reinstituting a military draft which virtually no one supports and which Congress will never again feel safe voting for. A draft which, incidentally, he thinks should now include women: “Now that women can serve in combat they should register for the Selective Service alongside their male counterparts,” Rangel said in a statement. “Reinstating the draft and requiring women to register for the Selective Service would compel...

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) on Friday said he plans to introduce legislation that would bring back the military draft and extend it to women for the first time. Rangel, who has pushed for years to bring back the draft, said the Pentagon’s decision to allow women to serve in combat means that they too should register for the Selective Service.

(CNN) -- On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the Defense Department would lift the ban on women serving in combat, marking another significant milestone for equality in our nation. Taking this critical step forward to include women in combat strengthens our military by reducing the burden of the disproportionate number of soldiers who are making sacrifices. I sincerely hope that this will spark a national debate about who is fighting our wars and whether all of America can say that we're sharing the sacrifice. Since January 2003, at the height of the debate on the possible unilateral strike against...

Unless Congress acts, March 1 will trigger a $55 billion-per-year ($45 billion in 2013, as the fiscal cliff deal delayed the cuts for two months) cut in national defense, known as sequestration, which will weaken the United States’s ability to defend itself. But this does not have to happen; Congress should cut other spending to prevent the debilitating cuts to defense. National defense, unlike most other discretionary programs, is a central constitutional duty and today represents only 17 percent of the budget. Yet nearly half of the Congress-mandated sequestration cuts—$492 billion—would come from defense. These across-the-board cuts threaten our...

Yes, women in combat. Women, who can’t figure out how to go to the Target pharmacy and $9/month birth control, will be gunning down terrorists. Women, who think that telling them to buy their own birth control, cupcake, is a “war on women,” will be seeing actual combat. Women who complain about a “rape culture” want girls out into the front lines as rape-bait if captured by the enemy (and those front lines will be six thousand miles away from the nearest Planned Parenthood clinic). The same people who think that it’s a right wing nutjob idea for women teachers...

General Stanley McChrystal is still making the rounds plugging his new book, as well as talking about any old issue of the day the media cares to toss his way. He sat down on Face the Nation this morning and hit a few of the standard questions on Afghanistan, gun control and Chuck Hagel, before Bob Schieffer decided to ask him whether or not it was time to bring back the draft. (H/T NRO) When asked about his thoughts on implementing a draft on CBS’s Face the Nation, General Stanley A. McChrystal said national service would have a positive impact...

An Egyptian panel rushed through a draft constitution seen as undermining basic freedoms on Friday, resulting in mass protests in Cairo. AFP reported that tens of thousands of protesters rallied as the opposition piled pressure on President Mohammed Morsi. "Down with the constitutional assembly," vast crowds armed with megaphones chanted as they filed into Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the uprising that overthrew Hosni Mubarak in early 2011. Banners condemned "dictatorial Morsi" while protesters shouted "down with the rule of the Guide," a reference to the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, through whose ranks Morsi rose before becoming president....

President Obama won re-election last night because women voters had his back. A majority of women supported Obama’s re-election, more than countering Romney’s lead among men, exit polls showed yesterday. The president garnered 54 percent of the female vote compared with 44 percent for Romney. Historically, more women vote than men.

The IDF will begin to draft hareidi-religious 16 to 19-year-olds, but "will wait till after elections" for 20 to 28 year olds, says Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The IDF will send out the orders within the next few weeks, summoning about 15,000 hareidi-religious Jews for interviews at induction centers, Barak said at a Knesset committee hearing on Monday. The IDF's Netzach Yehuda combat battalion and the Shachar high-tech training unit were two of the hareidi service programs Barak said would be expanded to meet the increased recruitment of hareidi-religious Israelis. But many 19-year-old hareidi-religious young men have already received draft...

Whatever one thinks of the morality of the draft, I believe that the war will continue to drag on as long as upscale Americans see it as an abstract issue that has little relevance to their day-to-day lives. Unless their toilet overflows, these denizens of the Nike and Chablis milieu of our society seldom have any meaningful contact with, or concern for, the strata that furnishes the bodies to be killed or mutilated in our military crusades.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former top commander of international forces in Afghanistan, said this week that the United States should bring back the draft if it ever goes to war again. "I think we ought to have a draft. I think if a nation goes to war, it shouldn't be solely be represented by a professional force, because it gets to be unrepresentative of the population," McChrystal said at a late-night event June 29 at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. "I think if a nation goes to war, every town, every city needs to be at risk. You make that...

On a stage crowded with war heroes, Mitt Romney recently praised the sacrifice "of the great men and women of every generation who serve in our armed services." It is a sacrifice the Republican presidential candidate did not make. Though an early supporter of the Vietnam War, Romney avoided military service at the height of the fighting after high school by seeking and receiving four draft deferments, according to Selective Service records. They included college deferments and a 31-month stretch as a "minister of religion" in France, a classification for Mormon missionaries that the church at the time feared was...

Rush Limbaugh, the nation’s top-rated radio talk-show host, briefly brought up the issue of Barack Obama’s potentially criminal use of a Connecticut-based Social Security Number, since the president has never lived in the Constitution State. While speaking with a caller named Rob about Obama’s alleged deception of citizens, Limbaugh tossed out the question: “What are your thoughts on the fact Obama’s Social Security Number is from Connecticut and he’s never been there?” Rob responded, “That’s what you call a red flag. A red flag is also, ‘First of all, I don’t need to give you my birth certificate,’ and then...