Congress drops the proposed requirement that women register for the draft.

 Politico reports.

One of the people with knowledge of the move said the provision was stripped as a trade-off so Republicans would accept reforms to the military justice system....

Calls to expand the draft beyond men have grown recently, particularly after the Pentagon opened all combat roles to women in 2015....

This article isn't very informative.  I suspect that requiring women to register for the draft isn't popular, but only certain Republicans want to speak against it publicly. On an abstract level, it's about treating men and women equally, and only social conservatives want to say anything other than that. 

No one is actually drafted these days. Registering for the draft is symbolism, so why not have the symbolism of everyone registering? But why have registration at all? The government knows where to find us if it ever gets in the mood to use us against our will.

Personal note: My mother was one of the first women to join the Women's Army Corp (which began in 1941). That was a choice. My father was drafted.

"[A]n overhaul of the Army’s physical fitness training field manual... rebranded this week as the FM 7-22 Holistic Health and Fitness manual... has chapters on setting goals, visualizing success, 'spiritual readiness' and, yes, the art of the nap."

The NYT reports.

“Soldiers can use short, infrequent naps to restore wakefulness and promote performance,” the new manual advises. “When routinely available sleep time is difficult to predict, soldiers might take the longest nap possible as frequently as time is available.”...

To promote good sleep, the manual warns soldiers to avoid video games, texting and other screen activity before bed, and recommends winding down by “listening to soothing music, reading, or taking a warm shower or bath” instead. It also says to avoid alcohol before sleep....

 I didn't even know you could take a bath in the Army.  There are bathtubs?

During deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, commanders often failed to prioritize sleep. Changing schedules, long duty shifts and overnight missions led to chronic fatigue that fueled a voracious dependency on energy drinks, which left many troops feeling frazzled....

The article discusses "feeling frazzled," but not suicide and PTSD. The mental problems of military personnel obviously extend to much more serious conditions than the feeling of frazzlement, but this article is trying to be a bit light, perhaps coaxing women into trying on the Army lifestyle:

The manual also has... a section on the importance of spirituality, with entries on meditation, journaling and how the “act of serving others” helps some soldiers realize the “interconnectedness of all things and people.”

The interconnectedness of all things and people — that would include the enemy. I'd like to hear more about how the realization of the interconnectedness of all things and people makes an effective military, but I'm not going to say it doesn't. It's never been my job to be prepared to do violence to my fellow human beings.

On the subject of making the Army woman-friendly, I must add that my mother was a WAC in WWII. I never heard my mother say one word against the Army, and I myself have the highest regard for the Army. I know for a fact that I wouldn't exist if it weren't for the Army, because that's where my parents met. I do have a wistful heart-twinge for the nonexistent offspring of the 2 marriages that would have happened if my mother and father had continued their young lives where they had grown up and gone to college. And that's enough journaling for me right now.

On the subject of feeling frazzled, I wondered where the word "frazzle" comes from. Is it a real word or slang? The OED marks it as "slang or colloquial (originally dialect)." What's it slang for? It comes from "fray" — what happens to the edges of a piece of cloth. "Fray" is used metaphorically to refer to human emotions, just like "frazzle," but "frazzle" sounds more nervous — something about those Zs, like "dazzle" and "sizzle" and "fizzle" and "drizzle."

"A federal judge has ruled that a men-only draft is unconstitutional...."

Military.com reports.

"This case balances on the tension between the constitutionally enshrined power of Congress to raise armies and the constitutional mandate that no person be denied the equal protection of the law," wrote U.S. District Judge Gray Miller of the Southern District of Texas.

The lawsuit was filed in 2013 against the Selective Service System by Texas resident James Lesmeister, who later added San Diego resident Anthony Davis and the San Diego-based National Coalition for Men as additional plaintiffs....

"Forcing only males to register is an aspect of socially institutionalized male disposability and helps reinforce the stereotypes that support discrimination against men in other areas" such as divorce, child custody and domestic violence services, [Coalition attorney Marc] Angelucci said. "Women are now allowed in combat, so this decision is long overdue," he added. "After decades of sex discrimination against men in the Selective Service, the courts have finally found it unconstitutional to force only men to register."...

The judge... disagreed with the government's position that drafting women would be an administrative burden and that far more women than men will be found physically unfit for service after being drafted. Congress has expressed few concerns about female physical ability, but did focus more on societal consequences of drafting young mothers to go off to war, Miller said.

This goes against the Supreme Court case Rostker v. Goldberg, which I taught many times in Conlaw class. I've often thought about the specific, important physical difference between men and women — that only women can bear children. In an existential military predicament, we might care very much about maintaining the population. Quite aside from that, I think it would be hard to institute a draft if it meant forcing women into military service. But it would be hard to institute a draft and to give all women and no men the right to say yes or no about what happens to their bodies.

But the fact is we don't have the draft. We just have this registration for the draft — the theater of the potential draft. And what's showing in the government's theater matters not because of the reality of military service but because of the message. That's why the lawyer spoke in terms of reinforcing stereotypes.

Full disclosure: My mother was one of the first WACs, and my parents met in the Army, and I know for a fact that I only exist because of women in the military.

"But while my feminist sensibilities make me wary of suggesting that Ginni Thomas should not be completely free to embrace her causes and live her life..."

"... there’s something troublesome about the unbounded nature of her public advocacy, at least for those of us who still care about the Supreme Court.... As a Supreme Court spouse, Ginni Thomas has always been different. In November 1991, weeks after her husband’s apocalyptic confirmation hearing, she gave an interview to People magazine, appearing on the cover in her husband’s embrace with the headline, 'How We Survived.' The disappearing act of other Supreme Court spouses is not for Ms. Thomas. Justice Stephen Breyer’s wife, Joanna, a psychotherapist who works with children with cancer, stayed in Cambridge, Mass., to continue her career while her husband commuted from Washington on weekends. Martin Ginsburg gave up law practice when his wife first became a judge, embarking on a new career as a law professor....  [Ginni Thomas has] broken no rules except the rules of good taste. What she’s violated are longstanding norms of behavior. And in an age when nearly every norm is being shredded, that makes her the perfect Supreme Court spouse for our time."

That's Linda Greenhouse in "Family Ties at the Supreme Court/Do the political activities of Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife cross a line?" (NYT).

What did Ginni Thomas do exactly? Greenhouse links to "Trump Meets With Hard-Right Group Led by Ginni Thomas" by Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni (NYT). Excerpt:

President Trump met last week with a delegation of hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, listening quietly as members of the group denounced transgender people and women serving in the military, according to three people with direct knowledge of the events....

It is unusual for the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice to have such a meeting with a president, and some close to Mr. Trump said it was inappropriate for Ms. Thomas to have asked to meet with the head of a different branch of government....

I'm skeptical about whether these "members of the group" actually "denounced transgender people and women serving in the military." It seems much more likely that they denounced some policies relating to these groups, not the human beings themselves. One could think transgenders shouldn't be in the military and women shouldn't be in combat without being hostile to these individuals. Indeed, one could hate heterosexual men and believe they absolutely do belong in the frontlines of military duty.

"The idea of putting women in there is not setting them up for success... "

"It would only be someone who never crossed the line of departure into close quarters fighting that would ever even promote such an idea.... Some of us aren’t so old that we’ve forgotten that at times it was like heaven on earth just to hold a certain girl’s hand...."

Said James Mattis (in 2014), quoted in The Hill in "Mattis's views on women in combat takes [sic] center stage."

"We need to remove arbitrary barriers to service by women in our armed forces... There is no draft in today's military..."

"... but it is difficult to say we have true equality if we continue with a Selective Service system that only requires compulsory service from men."

Said Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The chair of the committee is John McCain, and he had no comment yesterday, as a spokesman said President Obama supports requiring women to register for the draft.

Registering for the draft is a symbolic ritual... until the draft becomes real. Is the symbolism of equality worth it? The government, if it ever reinstates the draft, can opt only to call up the males on the list. So why not go for equality in the symbolism? Perhaps the better question is: Why put young people through this symbolic ritual? Or: Why discriminate against men, subjecting only them to the ritual?

As for an actual draft, compelling men and women into service, I have never been able to picture Americans accepting forcing their daughters into combat. But if you allow women in combat and you force women into service, would we tolerate a system in which, when it comes to combat, women have a choice and men do not?

(I've thought about these questions a lot, because Rostker v. Goldberg comes up in Conlaw2. That's the 1981 case that said males-only registration doesn't violate the Equal Protection Clause. And for the record: My mother was a WAC in WW2.)

Obama confronted with some terrible facts about female Marines in combat.

At last night's "Military and The Commander and Chief" town hall with President Obama, Captain Lauren Serrano asked a question about women in combat:

CAPTAIN LAUREN SERRANO: A study by the Marine Corps revealed that mixed gender combat units performed notably worse and that women suffered staggeringly higher rates of injury. Just one of those statistics showed that mixed gender units took up to 159 percent longer to evacuate a casualty than all-male units. As the wife of a Marine who deploys to combat often, that added time can mean the difference between my husband living or dying. Why were these tangible negative consequences disregarded and how does the integration of women positively enhance the infantry mission and make me and my husband safer?

Obama says:

I don't think any of - any studies are going to be disregarded. I think that what we have to do is to take a look at the particular deployments, the particular situations.... [I]f you can't do the job, if there is a problem with performance, then that has to be taken into account. But keep in mind that there are a lot of jobs that are considered combat that don't necessarily involve you being on the front lines going door-to-door in Fallujah.... [T]here may be situations in which [women] could do the best job. It may not involve physical strength or how many pull-ups you can do, it may involve the precision with which you can operate and you being able to keep your cool you being able to carry out a task with a low error rate. And it may be that in those situations, a woman can perform better than a man.

Did the Marine Corps study show that there were some things women did better? Or is the idea that individuals who can do these "precision" tasks best will be assigned to them, and some women will fit this group? And then there are physical-strength tasks that just aren't that dangerous, but are technically "combat," and that's also a place where female Marines can be assigned. There really aren't that many female Marines — only 6.8 % of Marines are female — so the point seems to be: Use them properly and the problem is taken care of without the blunt exclusion from combat.

The inclusion is not, Obama says, just "political correctness" or "some symbolic issue." The idea is to use everyone to the extent that they are useful. Except he doesn't say "use." He speaks in terms of giving "opportunities."

I don't want the presumption to be that a woman can't do the job, because I'm looking at you right now and I'm pretty sure that you're in better shape than I am and you can do a lot of stuff I couldn't do. And I don't want you not to have that opportunity.

I agree with you that we can't just out of some ideological notion make it more dangerous for your husband. But I don't want to - I don't want a military, an institution that starts with the premise that women can't do something. If it turns out they can't do something, then we'll deal with that specific situation. But I don't want to start off with that assumption.

"Despite her delicate features and voice, Disney expects us to believe that Mulan’s ingenuity and courage were enough to carry her to military success on an equal basis with her cloddish cohorts."

"Obviously, this is Walt Disney’s attempt to add childhood expectation to the cultural debate over the role of women in the military. "

Wrote Mike Pence, back in 1999. I'm reading this out loud to Meade....

I suspect that some mischievous liberal at Disney assumes that Mulan’s story will cause a quiet change in the next generation’s attitude about women in combat and they just might be right. (Just think about how often we think of Bambi every time the subject of deer hunting comes into the mainstream media debate.)

At which point Meade says: "I'm bored." And I said: "That goes without saying. It's Mike Pence."

But let's continue:

"Senate Votes to Require Women to Register for the Draft."

The NYT reports.

The shift, while fiercely opposed by some conservative lawmakers and interest groups, had surprisingly broad support among Republican leaders and women in both parties....

On the other side, there was Ted Cruz:

“The idea that we should forcibly conscript young girls in combat to my mind makes little sense at all,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the father of two young daughters, said on the Senate floor last week.

After voting against the bill on Tuesday, Mr. Cruz said in a prepared statement: “I could not in good conscience vote to draft our daughters into the military, sending them off to war and forcing them into combat.”

What would it take to reinstate the draft? It's hard to imagine the situation, but if it happened, it would require new legislation, and the question would still arise whether to include women. There's no forcing women into combat yet, and I still find it hard to conceive of, especially in the calamity that would be required to return us to the draft. Whether men fight better than women or not, there is one thing that only women can do, they need to stay out of battle to do it, and I'm picturing a disastrous population culling that would make it more important than ever.

Donald Trump calls a woman "sweetie" and — accepting her kiss — gives a return air kiss.

Because of the content of the previous post,  I'm calling attention to what happens at the end of this clip:



The details of what's going on there are described, by Dylan Byers at CNN, in "Behind Trump's 'job interview' with Alicia Watkins."

Identifying herself as a 9/11 survivor and Afghanistan/Iraq war veteran, [Alicia] Watkins asked Trump if his new hotel in Washington would include a veterans employment program. Trump said it would, and asked her to come to the podium for a job interview.

"What are you looking for? What kind of a position? Come up here, you look so smart and good," Trump said. "Do you mind if I do a job interview right now?"

Oh! He commented on her looks: You look so smart and good.

Watkins, who came to the stage wearing a media credential, told Trump that she did "design," "briefs" and "all kinds of decorations." Trump then passed her along to one of his aides, and told the crowd: "If we can make a good deal on a salary she's probably going to have a job."...

Trump himself was asked about his exchange with Watkins after Monday's press conference.... "I felt good about her," Trump responded "I looked at and I have a gut instinct. We're allowed to have that. I looked at her. She asked a positive question.... She seemed like a good person to me."

I wonder if the whole thing wasn't planned and staged. In this C-SPAN clip of her talking to reporters afterwards, at 3:58 — for what it's worth — she says it wasn't planned.

"Men should protect women. They should not shelter behind mothers and daughters."

"Indeed, we see this reality every time there is a mass shooting. Boyfriends throw themselves over girlfriends, and even strangers and acquaintances often give themselves up to save the woman closest to them. Who can forget the story of 45-year-old Shannon Johnson wrapping his arms around 27-year-old Denise Peraza and declaring 'I got you' before falling to the San Bernardino shooters’ bullets?"

From "Only a Barbaric Nation Drafts Its Mothers and Daughters into Combat," an editorial in The National Review.

This is a traditionalist view of the female role, but it is deeply connected to physical and emotional differences that hold true for many (though not all) males and females. It's one thing to open the military to woman who, knowing themselves, choose to volunteer. But the many women who feel drawn to the caring, nurturing role should be allowed to hold their place back home, preserving the reality of home — a place with children and old people — and the idea of home — which must live in the minds of those who go far away to fight.

The idea that the government would forcibly put young women in a foxhole with a 220-pound psychopath trying to kill them doesn’t make any sense at all to Ted Cruz.

"I have to admit, as I was sitting there listening to that conversation, my reaction was, ‘Are you guys nuts?’... Listen, we have had enough with political correctness, especially in the military. Political correctness is dangerous. And the idea that we would draft our daughters to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in close combat, I think is wrong, it is immoral, and if I am president, we ain’t doing it.... But the idea that their government would forcibly put them in a foxhole with a 220-pound psychopath trying to kill them doesn’t make any sense at all."

Said Ted Cruz.

The "conversation" he was listening to was a segment of Saturday night's GOP debate, which I detailed in a post yesterday. I've been surprised how far public opinion has shifted toward the acceptance of drafting women. The poll I took yesterday shows that:



It was nice to see somebody — Ted Cruz — holding down the traditional position. It's one thing, I think, to allow women to volunteer for the military. (My mother volunteered for the Women's Army Corps in World War II, and I owe my existence to that.) But the idea of forcing women into combat is something I have long believed the American people would not accept. (And this is an idea I've been talking about annually in conlaw classes for many years.)

How hard was it, really, to answer the question, asked at last night's debate, whether young women should have to register for the military draft?

Here's the transcript.

Martha Raddatz noted that Army and Marine Corps leaders just said they thought women, like men, should have to register for the draft — the nonexistent draft. Shouldn't we ask why we impose ritual form-filing on anyone?

Raddatz prefaced her question to the candidates with: "Many of you have young daughters." I find that offensive, but maybe you think it properly pokes at the conscience or moral feeling. Why shouldn't the prod be "Many of you have young sons"? Why are sons burdened with something that daughters get to ignore? Do we even remember the traditional answer? Young men's bodies are expendable. Women's bodies are needed to produce the next generation of expendable males and baby-making females.

Raddatz aims first at Rubio. Does he think "young women [should] be required to sign up for Selective Service in case of a national emergency?" Rubio begins with the recognition that woman do now serve in combat and that he supports it "so long as the minimum requirements necessary to do the job are not compromised." Fine, but those are volunteers. What about exposing women to some future draft? He says: "Selective Service should be opened up for both men and women...." Opened up? Isn't that odd? We're talking about imposing a requirement, not creating options. He quickly moves on to a military topic where he's got talking points to dump — rebuilding our too-small Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Raddatz moves on to Jeb Bush, who completely fails to answer the question. He babbles about not imposing a "political agenda" on the military, the right (not the requirement) of women to serve in combat if they can meet "minimum requirements," and how we shouldn't be "weak militarily" and just "talk about red lines, and ISIS being the J.V. team, and reset buttons and all this." Raddatz tries to pull him back to the question, and he responds with the assertion that the draft won't be reinstituted. There's quite a bit more pushing by Raddatz to get him onto the question, and though at one point he reveals he knows what the question is — "You — you asked a question not about the draft, you asked about registering" — he never gives one word of an answer.

At this point, Chris Christie breaks in: "Martha? Can I — can I be really — can I be really clear on this, because I am the father of two daughters?" Demanding to go next? Playing the I-have-2-daughters card? He gets away with this, and he'd better answer the actual question.

What my wife and I have taught our daughters right from the beginning, that their sense of self-worth, their sense of value, their sense of what they want to do with their life comes not from the outside, but comes from within. And if a young woman in this country wants to go and fight to defend their country, she should be permitted to do so.

I get that he wants women to think of him as the one who cares about women, but permission to serve if you want is exactly not what registering for the draft is about. But he moves to the right subject:

Part of that also needs to be part of a greater effort in this country, and so there’s no reason why one — young women should be discriminated against from registering for the selective service. 

Let's just pretend it's the women who are being discriminated against. Do viewers not see that the current discrimination is against men and that the proposal is not to increase but to limit the options open to women?

The fact is, we need to be a party and a people that makes sure that our women in this country understand anything they can dream, anything that they want to aspire to, they can do. That’s the way we raised our daughters and that’s what we should aspire to as president for all of the women in our country.

Back to the old cheerleading for women and the treacle about dreams. They say you can "be all that you can be" in the Army as they encourage you to volunteer, but there is at least one very obvious thing that you cannot be in the Army. You can't be a person who is not in the Army.

So Christie got away with interrupting to take the opportunity to promote himself as a champion of feminine fulfillment, and he only answered the question in the form of pretending it meant close to the opposite of what it means.

Now, Ben Carson decides to butt in:

CARSON: Can I say something...

RADDATZ: We just covered — wait one second, Dr. Carson.

CARSON: Something about the draft. Very quickly.

RADDATZ: Very quickly.

He talks about the decrease in volunteers but not the draft as a solution. He wants to treat veterans better, helping them with health care and "integrating them back into society." And then "we won’t have to ever worry about a draft again." So, like Jeb, his only point is there shouldn't need to be a draft. Not a word about the real subject: whether men alone or men and women or nobody should — in a country with no draft — have to register for the draft.

How incredibly annoying! It's a difficult question, one I've discussed many time in constitutional law classes, and no one engaged on the level that would get any credit at all on a law school exam. That is, they're not even showing that they understand the question. But you understand the question, I trust. So take this poll and discuss it in the comments.

Here's the Supreme Court case that said it's not a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to require men but not women to register for the draft. That's from 1981, but if you think that's wrong, you should be disturbed that we're still following it. Congress is free to end the discrimination either because disagrees with the Court or because it prefers a stricter standard of formal equality. That stricter formal equality is achievable either by ending registration for the draft or by including women along with men. The alternative that we have now can be defended as a substantive — as opposed to formal — equality, in which the physical differences between male and female bodies justify the different treatment.

In times of dire military emergency, when a draft would be needed, government overcomes the individual's freedom, and in that awful situation, it may see males as expendable and females as necessary to rebuild the population. But so what? If everyone is registered, the government will know who's male and who's females, and if the draft comes, it can restrict the draft to males if it wants. I don't expect any political candidate to talk about this on the level that would satisfy me, but I am criticizing them for failing to answer the question Raddatz asked.

While there is no draft, who should be required to register for the draft?

No one, but if anyone, only men.

No one, but if anyone, both men and women.

Only men.

Men and women.

 

pollcode.com free polls

There's a name for this argument Debbie Wasserman Schultz is making about Hillary Clinton's story of trying to enlist in the Marines.

It's "fake but accurate."

Watch the video of Andrea Mitchell pushing for an explanation for why Hillary is going around making this claim that's quite unlikely to be true and that WaPo's fact checker has given 2 Pinocchios. DWS begins by impugning the very asking of the question: "Why on earth are we talking about this?" Mitchell stands her ground. Obviously, we're talking about it because Hillary Clinton is using her personal story in her current campaigning for President. DWS shifts to presenting the story as illustrating something that is true (that women have struggled over the years with acceptance into the military). In that light, the details of whether the story is real doesn't matter as long as it works to understand a problem that is real.

ADDED: Here's the WaPo fact checker piece. It not only shows the fakeness of Hillary's story, but it also undermines the "fake but accurate" presentation, because it doesn't even illustrate the general problem accurately. Excerpt:

Women have been part of the Marines since 1918, and were deployed to Korea in the 1950s. “By the height of the Vietnam war... about 2,700 women Marines served... both stateside and overseas,” according to the Women Marines Association. “By 1975, the Corps approved the assignment of women to all occupational fields except infantry, artillery, armor and pilot/air crew.”

And: "A former Marine lawyer, who was actively recruiting for the JAG at the time, says it is 'ludicrous' to suggest someone with Clinton’s skills would have been rejected. Since the draft had ended, 'we were frantic for lawyers,' he said, declining to be identified. Neither age nor eyesight would have been issue, he added. Many of the newly recruited lawyers were at least 26 years old and eyesight was only an issue for pilots, he said."

"I am an American Airman in the most powerful Air Force in the world, and you made me into a helpless whore.”

"You made me untouchable, and by doing that you made me a target... You are the reason I room alone when I deploy. You are the reason that wives are terrified that their husbands are cheating on them when they leave, and I leave with them. When I walk into a room and people are laughing and having a good time, you are the reason they take one look at me and either stop talking or leave. They’re afraid. They’re afraid of me, and it’s because of you. They are afraid that with all of this 'power' I have, I can destroy them. They will never respect me or the power and the authority I have as a person, or the power I have as an Airman, because I am nothing more than a victim. That I as a victim, somehow I control their fate. With one sentence, I can destroy the rest of their lives..."

A letter published under a pseudonym that is allegedly from a female Airman. "Kayce Hagen" is critical of the Sexual Assault Response Coordination program.

This reminded me of that story from a couple days ago — in The National Journal — "Why Some Male Members of Congress Won’t Be Alone with Female Staffers/Numerous women who work on the Hill say they've been excluded from solo meetings and evening events, a practice that could be illegal."

Male staffers said they'd also seen some female aides barred from solo meetings with the boss, and that they benefited in some instances from the exclusion of their female colleagues in high-level meetings, at receptions with major Washington powerbrokers, and just in earning a little more face time with their bosses.

And to go way back to WWII and the Women's Army Corp — which I did last Sunday as I was thinking about my mother, who was one of the earliest WACs — it reminded me of the 1943 slander campaign:

In 1943 the recruiting momentum stopped and went into reverse as a massive slander campaign on the home front challenged the WACs as sexually immoral. Many soldiers ferociously opposed allowing women in uniform, warning their sisters and friends they would be seen as lesbians or prostitutes. Their lewd humor and snide comments betrayed a fear that if women became soldiers they would no longer serve in a masculine preserve and their masculinity would be devalued.... Critics outside the military included religious fanatics with wild imaginations, reactionaries who wanted to prevent social change, and right-wing critics of Roosevelt's social programs. Other sources were from other women — servicemen's and officer's wives' idle gossip, local women who disliked the newcomers taking over "their town", female civilian employees resenting the competition (for both jobs and men), charity and volunteer organizations who resented the extra attention the WAACs received, and complaints and slander spread by disgruntled or discharged WAACs. All investigations showed the rumors were false, but they had originated with American soldiers, not with enemy agents.

The Marines Corps quietly puts off the requirement that female Marines perform 3 pullups.

A Marine spokesperson cites the need to "ensure all female Marines are given the best opportunity to succeed." Only 45% of female recruits could meet the standard, which 99% of male recruits meet.

Robert Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, says the delay shows that women just can't meet the same standards.

"Young women, in spite of all the training and all the best intentions, are not going to be the equal of young men in terms of upper body strength," Maginnis says. "You've got to have a lot of upper body strength to lift the stuff. Been there, done that."

Maginnis just wrote a book called Deadly Consequences: How Cowards are Pushing Women into Combat. He says the issue has more to do with politics than protecting the nation.

But 45% of the women did it. Depending on how you look at it, that's a surprisingly high percentage.

Col. Lynette Arnhart steps down "to protect the integrity of the ongoing work on gender integration in the Army."

After Politico publishes the kind of internal memo that looks just awful to the general public.

She wrote:

"There is a general tendency to select nice looking women when we select a photo to go with an article (where the article does not reference a specific person). It might behoove us to select more average looking women for our comms strategy.... In general, ugly women are perceived as competent while pretty women are perceived as having used their looks to get ahead."

Maybe she really didn't deserve responsibility for PR, since she drew bad PR onto herself, but it's sad that such innocuous casual talk has so much effect these days.

By the way, I question the validity of the statement "ugly women are perceived as competent." I thought studies had shown that attractive people are perceived as competent. From Psychology Today:

A large number of experiments over the years have shown that, when asked to rate the intelligence or competence of unknown others, people tend to rate attractive others as more intelligent and competent than unattractive others.

"The First Four Women To Complete Marine Infantry Training Took A Celebratory Selfie Together."

"Harlee 'Rambo' Bradford (in the middle) snapped this selfie after her and the three other women in the photo were the first of 15 to complete a Marine Corps pilot course."

Infantry training for Bradford’s group required the women to to meet the same standards as any other Marine.

Including a 12 1/2 mile march in combat gear that lasted almost 5 hours, running at a 4 mph pace carrying 90-pounds of gear.

An update on women training for military combat.

Last month, 81 male and female Marines took the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course. 65 males passed. There were 4 women, all of whom failed.

Women began reporting to IOC on a voluntary basis last year. Counting the latest class, 10 women have attempted IOC, and none has passed. 

Meanwhile, in the Marines Delta Company, Infantry Training Battalion:

"The stories of young men sexually assaulting young women seem never to stop... and there are times when I find myself darkly wondering if there’s some ineradicable predatory streak in the male subset of our species."

Writes Frank Bruni, beginning his NYT column, which proceeds to tell us about a psychology professor who blames the culture and is in the business of fixing the culture. The military uses him to teach and advise on the prevention of sexual violence, so it's in his economic interest to promote the theory that it's the culture and not the innate biology. On the other hand, even if a tendency toward violence is inborn, we demand that people overcome destructive urges and channel their energy in a positive way.

Reading the line quoted above, what I found myself wondering — darkly wondering? — is whether Bruni should have noted that he is gay and thus not susceptible to the "ineradicable predatory streak" that he imagines leads to the sexual assault of young women. Is it wrong to write something like that about men and not address his own exclusion from the category he's derogating? Maybe. There's added authority in running down one's own kind.

A more serious omission here, however, is that sexual assault in the military happens to men even more than to women. If homosexual encounters are a big part of the problem, then Bruni is protecting his own kind, and the eclipsing of his exclusion from the heterosexual group he insults becomes much more problematic.