Will anyone take notice now that at least one military expert is saying the only way to sustain our protracted ground war in Iraq is to bring back the draft?

The Senate Armed Services Committee heard testimony Tuesday that increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps may not resolve severe and growing personnel problems. There was even talk of returning to the draft to fill the ranks.

....Lawrence Korb, a former senior Pentagon personnel official now affiliated with the Center for Defense Information and the Center for American Progress... [said] The all-volunteer force was never designed for a protracted ground war, but that is exactly what it faces, he said.

“If the United States is going to have a significant component of its ground forces in Iraq over the next five, 10, 15 or 30 years, then the responsible course is for the president and those supporting this open-ended and escalated presence in Iraq to call for reinstating the draft.”

There just aren't enough quality recruits the experts say to fill the need of Bush's war.

Other states have protested or complained about the Real ID Act, but Montana is the first to Just Say No to its implementation.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer said "no, nope, no way, hell no" Tuesday to national driver's licenses, signing into law a bill supporters say is one of the strongest rejections to the federal plan. The move means the state won't comply with the Real ID Act, a federal law that sets a national standard for driver's licenses and requires states to link their record-keeping systems to national databases.

Here's why:

"We also don't think that bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., ought to tell us that if we're going to get on a plane we have to carry their card, so when it's scanned through they know where you went, when you got there and when you came home," said Schweitzer, a Democrat.

TalkLeft coverage of this awful law is collected here.

Update [2007-4-18 18:51:54 by Big Tent Democrat]: Some images from NBC of the VA Tech shooter.

Update [2007-4-18 17:28:28 by Big Tent Democrat]: On Hardball, NBC reporter Jon Dienst said that the NBC Nightly News will air some of the video which the VA Tech shooter mailed to them between the first snd second shooting.

CNN reporting on TV. Will provide more when I can get it.

Also, the NYTimes is reporting that the VA Tech shooter, Cho, sent materials to NBC between the first and second shootings.

From the NYTimes:

A Virginia court document said that in 2005 a special justice in Virginia declared Mr. Cho mentally ill and an “imminent danger to others,” a CNN report said. The new information, disclosed by police in a news conference today, raises questions about whether warning signs about Mr. Cho’s behavior and problems were handled effectively by police and the university.

More to come.

The latest CNN Poll shows a trend that most reasonably intelligent persons should be able to discern:

In the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, taken April 10-12, 69 percent of Americans say things are going badly for the United States in Iraq. That's the most negative assessment yet recorded, up from 54 percent who thought things were going badly last June and 62 percent in October. (Full poll results [PDF])

Let's try it this way:

June 2006 54%
October 2006 62% +8

April 2007 69% +7

Every 4 to 6 months 7-8% of the remaining Americans who do not believe the Iraq Debacle is a debacle come to their senses. I know what you are asking, 'what does this have to do with Reid-Feingold?' Simply this.

By March 31, 2008, how many Americans will there be left who do not believe the Debacle is a debacle? Even better, how many will think it by NOVEMBER 2008? The right place to be politically is to be seen as the Party doing everything it can to END the Debacle. That means supporting Reid-Feingold NOW.

CNN, to their credit, makes this as plain as possible:

Asked which side they take in the standoff between Congress and President Bush, the result is not close: 60 percent of Americans side with the Democrats in Congress and 37 percent with the President.

Just so no one is in doubt that Rudy Giuliani either will change any position for a vote or is a dictator at heart who will trample our rights, here's his statement on today's Supreme Court decision upholding the the federal partial birth abortion ban,

“The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion,” Giuliani said in a statement on the 5–4 decision. “I agree with it.”

In 2000, during his aborted run for the Senate, he promised differently:

...he said he would not vote to restrict a woman’s right to undergo the procedure. Now, with social conservatives believed to be a major factor in the GOP primary, Giuliani joined the other top-tier Republicans in applauding the court’s ruling.

Wasn't it just a few weeks ago he wanted to leave it to the states?

More below, including John Edwards and Barack Obama's criticism of the decision.

In James v. US, a case interpreting the Armed Career Criminal Act (I confess I had no idea this law existed before today), Justice Scalia and Alito disagreed. Justice Alito, writing for the Court, opined that "attempted burglary," as defined by Florida law, is a "violent offense" under the ACCA, relevant to the sentencing of James. Three prior "violent offenses" convictions, as defined by the ACCA, mandated a 15 year sentence.

In dissent, Justice Scalia objected to Alito's opinion, arguing that Alito gave no guidance to lower courts for determining what "residual offenses" would fall under the ACCA's "violent offenses" provision, labeling Alito's approach "entirely ad hoc."

The ACLU has launched a campaign to restore habeas corpus. In addition to traditional avenues such as lobbying Congress and arguing before courts, it's trying something new.

....a new online campaign built around the search for "Mr. Habeas Corpus" - unflagging champion of justice and due process of law. He's been looking out for us for years, now he needs us to look out for him.

....On October 17, 2006, he went missing without a trace. Last seen in Washington, D.C., his current whereabouts are unknown. Where is he? We don't know. But we do know Habeas Corpus needs our help. What can you do? Get involved and help us restore Habeas Corpus to his rightful place in our Constitution!

The RSS feed is here. It provides code for a button to put on your own sites and is asking that My Space members make Mr. Habeas their friend.

There's even a TalkLeft page on the site.

Journalist, author and TalkLeft pal Dave Cullen, who is writing the definitive book on Columbine, A Lasting Impression: The Definitive Account of Columbine and Its Aftermath (to be published this year) has posted a diary on TalkLeft, The Myth of the School Schooter.

The loner myth has been going on all day. CNN was talking about it all morning--how these shooters all turn out to be outcasts and loners. No, what actually happens is that the media got the loner/outcast narrative down years ago, and always jumps to that conclusion, so the repetition convinces them that it's true. In the Virginia case it's looking like it was true--however, in Columbine, and two-thirds of the other cases, it was a wild misconception.

The larger point is that the media does the public a major disservice by trying to convince us that there is such a thing a particular profile that these shooters fit. They try to fit all these ghastly events into a single personality type that we can be afraid of, but it's just not so.

Go read the whole thing, and I hope you'll click the "recommend diary" button so more people will read it.

Of special interest in today's SCOTUS decision upholding a late term abortion ban is that the mantra "leave abortion to the States" has been utterly abandoned by the Republican Party and anti-choice forces. This is a federal ban. This line from Justice Thomas' concurrence is ironic:

I also note that whether the Act constitutes a legitimate exercise of the Congress' Commerce Power is not before the Court.

For those of you who might have thought the conservative Justices were conceding the point.

From Justice Ginsburg's dissent:

One wonders how long a line that saves no fetus will hold in the face of the Court's "moral concerns." . . . The Court's hostility to the right Casey and Roe secured is not concealed. Throughout, the opinion refers to obstetrician-gynecologists not by the title of their medical specialties, but by the pejorative label "abortion doctors."

These Senators voted to not filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court:

Akaka (D-HI) Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Allen (R-VA) Baucus (D-MT)Bennett (R-UT) Bingaman (D-NM) Bond (R-MO)Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burns (R-MT) Burr (R-NC) Byrd (D-WV) Cantwell (D-WA) Carper (D-DE) Chafee (R-RI) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN)Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Cornyn (R-TX)Craig (R-ID) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) DeWine (R-OH) Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM) Dorgan (D-ND) Enzi (R-WY) Frist (R-TN) Graham (R-SC)Grassley (R-IA) Gregg (R-NH) Hatch (R-UT)Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Inouye (D-HI) Isakson (R-GA) Johnson (D-SD) Kohl (D-WI) Kyl (R-AZ) Landrieu (D-LA) Lieberman (D-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Lott (R-MS) Lugar (R-IN) Martinez (R-FL) McCain (R-AZ) McConnell (R-KY) Murkowski (R-AK) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE)Pryor (D-AR) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Salazar (D-CO) Santorum (R-PA)Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Smith (R-OR) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (R-PA) Stevens (R-AK) Sununu (R-NH) Talent (R-MO) Thomas (R-WY) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA)

Via AdamB, the SCOTUS upheld a federal ban on late term abortions. SCOTUSBlog reports:

Dividing 5-4, the Supreme Court on Wednesday gave a sweeping -- and only barely qualified -- victory to the federal government and to other opponents of abortion, upholding the 2003 law that banned what are often called "partial-birth abortions." Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the first-ever decision by the Court to uphold a total ban on a specific abortion procedure -- prompting the dissenters to argue that the Court was walking away from the defense of abortion rights that it had made since the original Roe v. Wade.

. . . Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking out in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling "an alarming decision" that refuses "to take seriously" the Court's 1992 decisions reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.

Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said "the Court's opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health." She said the federal ban "and the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power."

Kennedy's vote with the majority; Roberts and ScAlito joined Scalia and Thomas, makes clear that those of us who fought against both the Roberts and Alito nominations were right to expect this from those nominees. Roe and Casey will not survive if this Court gets to decide the issue.