Moloch

A very long time ago, there was a god called Moloch that required a particularly stiff kind of payment for his putative services. In exchange for the usual things a god provides (fertility, good luck, destroying people who piss you off, etc.), Moloch demanded that children be fed into the fires that surrounded his likeness.

Spiffy. Gotta love religion.

Moloch is still around, but we've very cleverly changed his name and wrapped him up in red, white and blue bunting. And the current High Priest of Moloch (a.k.a. Secretary of Defense Donald "Donny the Jowl" Rumsfeld) is looking for your kids.

High schools that accept Federal money under the Every Child Left Behind Act will have to pour names, Social Security numbers, and addresses of students into a recruiting database so that the Merry Minions of the Military-Industrial Complex can chat them up about how wonderful it would be to enlist. Based on recent stories of recruiters lying and basically stalking kids, it's going to be a hardsell.

Now, parents who don't want their kids recruited can opt out of the system, by filling in the blanks in another database. Uh huh. And I have some prime real estate in Afghanistan to sell you ...

Many people see this for what it is - an easy way to set up a draft. It's a sneaky way, assuredly, because we have Donny the Jowl and everyone else in Washington swearing black, blue and puce that there'll never be a draft.

Meanwhile, Moloch's getting peckish.