News briefs –secrecy, tobacco druggery, Obama surge

Who’s paying for those milblogs? Your tax dollars?

That’s because the U.S. military is being advised to secretly recruit bloggers.

FDA may finally regulate tobacco as drug

All three presidential candidates support the Senate version of a bill to give the Food and Drug Administration power to regulate tobacco as a drug.

Of course, this is really half power. While the FDA could regulate advertising by tobacco companies and outside additives, i.e., ammonia, formaldehyde, etc., to tobacco, it would not get the power to regulate nicotine itself as a drug.

Obama closes gap in Pennsylvania

Barack Obama is now within 5 percentage points of Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, just two weeks after the discussion was how big of a win Clinton would have to get a political bounce by beating expectations.

Hmm, looks like she might have to “just win, baby,” to quote Al Davis.

And, what’s backfiring the most? Her cozying up with Dick Scaife? The clownish, Fox-suck-ups of Ed Rendell? Her own past history on NAFTA? Lies about Bosnia? A mix?

Short of a draft, the Army wants a few good (illegal) men

No Spanish-language “Be All You Can Be” posters are sprouting in Juarez, Tijuana or Nuevo Laredo, but, some of the people there or elsewhere on the border could find similar posters in U.S. barrios if a new immigration bill ever passes Congress.

A senior defense official expressed hope today that a provision in the stalled immigration bill that would have allowed some undocumented aliens to join the military won’t fall off the radar screen.

The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors, or DREAM, provision in the immigration bill was expected to help boost military recruiting, Bill Carr, acting deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, said today during a telephone conference with veterans’ group representatives.

The DREAM provision offered a way for high-achieving children of undocumented or illegal residents to join the military and, ultimately, become citizens, Carr explained.

“In other words, if you had come across (the border) with your parents, yet you were a minor child and have been in the U.S. school system for a number of years, then you could be eligible to enlist,” he said. “And at the end of that enlistment, then you would be eligible to become a citizen.”

Because the provision would have applied only to the “cream of the crop” of students who have demonstrated top aptitude, it would have been “very appealing” to the military, Carr said. “It would have been good for readiness,” he said.

Even with all these caveats and apparent protections, count me out.

First, I’m not sold on the present immigration bill in several ways.

Second, even if we had an immigration bill that was OK in other ways, this still strikes me as “predatory recruiting.”