a national draft?

[mylittleredgirl]

Yo -- this is for all my more politically-minded friends. Which is... probably everyone, since I have a hard time coming up with someone *less* politically knowledgeable than me about American current affairs, even those of you who don't live in this country. But yes. All you smart people who watch The West Wing and know things:

I've received a bunch of email forwards recently telling me that congress is trying to quietly pass universal draft legislation.

So, like the good little citizen of a democratic nation that I am, I looked up the bills online at thomas.loc.gov -- H.R. 163 and S.89. (which I assume are just the same bill, with HR standing for house-of-representatives and S for senate... right?)

Neither of them have had any official action posted since January/February 2003. Does that mean the people sending these forwards are late to the party and panicking for no reason? Or am I looking in the wrong place? Or are you all going to laugh at me for this being the first time I've heard of this?

The text of the bill(s) is here if you feel like reading bullet points, and because I like posting links to things.

Apologies for spamming your LJ friends' pages a lot... but them's the breaks when I no longer live with keenween...

Comments

[alliesings.livejournal.com]

I heard it on very good authority last week that the President doesn't have any intention of ever instituting a draft. Even if all of the above mentioned unlikely things happened and it passed, he would almost certainly veto it.