I hit enlistment age in the early 1970’s. If the Pentagon keeps extending its recruiting reach into middle age — it’s at 40 and rising — I may hit it again in the not too distant future. Absent some dramatic changes, it seems likely to me that we’ll see the return of the draft before the end of Bush’s term, assuming there is an end.

Oh, well, there’s always the nuclear option. It will definitely silence my critics, and I will ultimately get my way, one way or the other.

Coretta Scott King died on Monday January 30, 2006. Having lived a meaningful life, fighting for racial inconsequence, she died at the ripe age of 78.

On Wednesday February 1, 2006, Donovan McNabb, the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback, took offense at being overshot in comparison to one of American Football’s great quarterbacks, Bret Favre, on account of Favre’s skin color! McNabb described the offense as “black-on-black crime,” referring to Terrel Owens who made the comment of how the Eagles would have been better served by Favre instead of McNabb.

McNabb would have preferred a comparison to another black quarterback: “Michael Vick or Daunte Culpepper or Steve McNair or Byron Leftwich”.

US intelligence czar John Negroponte opened a second front in the rhetorical war on Iran last Thursday when he appeared to suggest that the Iraq insurgency has expanded to include Shia militants armed and trained by Iran. This isn’t the first time the administration has accused Iran of supporting Iraq’s insurgents, but it does mark the first time any administration official has accused Shia groups, who are at philosophical, religious and political odds with the Sunni fundamentalists and Baathists associated with the insurgency and who are well-represented in Iraq’s governing coalition, of participating in the war against the government and the US army of occupation.

Perhaps the most maddening element to the administration’s assumption of the national security mantle is that some people, including some elected Democratic officials, still accept it. Reporters routinely report with straight faces about the Republican political advantage on national security issues, which, while it does exist, is due in large part to the uncritical press acceptance of the Republican claim that they’re strong on national security. We’ve visited this topic before, and at greater length, but it’s worth revisiting in light of recent events.

Florida Congressman Connie Mack is exercised by an alliance between Venezuela’s state-run Telesur television network and Al Jazeera, the largest Arab language television network. The deal to share content and expertise, says Mack, “has the effect of creating a global television network for terrorists and other enemies of freedom.” Both Al Jazeera and Telesur are frequently and vocally critical of US foreign policy, and Mack wants to create a counter-propaganda network to broadcast US-friendly messages into Venezuela.

You can add one more distinction to the modern GOP: they’re pleased that Dick Cheney shotgunned a hunting companion.

The transcript of a conference call with reporters, Joel Kaplan of the Office of Management and Budget and Pentagon comptroller Tina Jonas — and what exactly happened with Dov Zackheim, her predecessor, anyway? — demonstrates just how difficult it is to get a handle on what exactly we’re spending in Iraq.

Actually it isn’t BTC News that needs your support, but its proprietor: me. As noted above, I’m trying to raise about $1200 over the next ten or so days. This is primarily to cover expenses that aren’t blog related, but are pressing and have some bearing on my ability to continue the effort with any degree of consistency. If you read the blog regularly and like it and can afford a few dollars to help keep me in a position to continue and expand upon what I’m doing, please consider making a donation through the PayPal link above. I’ll be adding advertising to the site with the next site update (in three weeks if all goes well), but at the moment and for the indefinite future the donations are my sole source of income; anything you can spare will be greatly appreciated, as has all the moral and financial support many readers have offered in the past.

Former Time Magazine White House correspondent John Dickerson, now a Slate columnist, offers up an early warning of an emerging narrative we’ll see more of as the mid-term elections near: Republican critics of Bush, who are increasing in number, are courageous rebels, while Democratic and liberal critics are “Bush haters. “

For previous episodes in the continuing saga of the worst national security administration ever, click here and here. The gist is that through action, inaction and rhetoric, the Bush administration have seized nearly every opportunity to erode our nation’s national security. The current outstanding example is, of course, the decision to provide Dubai’s royal familywith operational control of major US seaports.

Iran-Contra kingpin John Poindexter was retired from his Bush administration position at DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, when details of his Total Information Awareness (TIA) data mining prototype scared the bejeebers out of even a quiescent Bush era Congress. Most people assumed that the program lived on under less aggressive monikers even after Poindexter’s precipitous departure, and some people speculated that the NSA’s warrantless eavesdropping was in fact a data mining operation along Poindexteresque lines.

In January of 2004, Slate editor Jacob Weisberg presided over a colloqy on the virtues of the Iraq war between what he described as liberal hawks. Participating were Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Fred Kaplan, George Packer, Kenneth M. Pollack, and Fareed Zakaria. These people were, said Weisberg, charter members of New York Times editor Bill Keller’s “I-Can’t-Believe-I’m-a-Hawk Club.”

Rush Limbaugh announced yesterday that New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is the “foreign policy guru” of the left. Limbaugh’s assessment was occasioned by an interview Friedman about Iraq gave to ABC’s “Good Morning America” yesterday morning and brought to my attention by a reader.

The Christian Science Monitor has a story up today about the increasing number of working families turning to food banks to feed their families. The story says that “Second Harvest, the nation’s largest charitable food distribution network, is now providing help to more than 25 million people, an 8 percent increase over 2001, the last time the organization did a major survey of its more than 200 food banks in all 50 states.”

A friend of mine recently began writing a “three-dot” column, one of those exercises in stringing together otherwise unrelated items of gossip, celebrity spotting and local news. Washington Post reporter/columnist/man about town Dana Milbank has recently taken up a three-dot column at Slate, although he has so far refused to acknowledge the inherent dottiness of it. It occurs to me that this ethereal and short-attention-span format lends itself to coverage of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress as no other can, which is probably why the institutional press have covertly adopted it.

For about the lifespan of a firefly, the 2006 defense budget bill included a provision illuminating the Pentagon-defense contractor revolving door. It’s gone now.