Must-Reads

Rep. Jan Schakowsky at In These Times.

If we are serious about getting rid of George W. Bush in 17 months, then we have to make some decisions and some commitments. During the war, a couple of nuns came to see me in my Chicago office. They were on their way to jail to serve a three-month sentence for an aggravated misdemeanor for protesting the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. They crossed a line in the road and now they were going to prison. Think of it. Anyway, on their way to jail, they had been arrested on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago in an antiwar protest. The police got a bit carried away even though the City Council had passed a strong antiwar resolution.

The nuns wanted to know what could be done to change the state of affairs. I said I thought someone needed to take voter registration forms to every meeting and demonstration and get people fired up to vote. They said that would be hard. Why? Because people were fed up with the Democrats. I said, then they are going to have to get over it, and you are going to have to help them. Because like it or not, either George W. Bush or the Democratic nominee, whoever he may be, will be our next president.

All of you know who I'm talking about; I may be talking about you. We should, by all means, be working to promote a progressive agenda with each and every candidate and to make the nominee as progressive as possible.

But in the end, we are going to have to dedicate ourselves to electing the Democrat. To do otherwise is a luxury we cannot afford. I look forward to our campaign for a universal health care plan or a real education bill or labor law reform. We cannot even have that conversation now. We are trying to hang on by our fingernails to what we have now. And we are losing.

"Other Priorities" at The Likely Story.

Cheney refused to serve in Vietnam. He received four 2-S draft deferments -- granted to students -- from 1963 through 1965 while he was a student at the University of Wyoming. He married Lynne in 1964, and was thus banned from the draft.

But in October 1965, the Selective Service announced that married men without children could then be drafted. Exactly nine months and two days later -- on July 28, 1966 -- his first child was born. Cheney hadn't waited until her birth before he sought a 3-A deferment classification -- given to those with dependents. He did so when Lynne was only 10 weeks pregnant.

Cheney said to a reporter in 1989, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."