No Child Soldier Left Behind

And while we're on the topic of cloaking surreptitious acts in legality...

J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO, Nixon's Plumbers, and Reagan's Iran/Contra dodge were all extralegal. Unlike, dare I say it, Hitler's push to guarantee "one people, one government, one dictator."

The Washington Post reports the Pentagon is using a private firm to create a national database of youth aged 16 to 18:

"The purpose of the system . . . is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service," according to the official notice of the program.

Privacy advocates said the plan appeared to be an effort to circumvent laws that restrict the government's right to collect or hold citizen information by turning to private firms to do the work.

Some information on high school students already is given to military recruiters in a separate program under provisions of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. Recruiters have been using the information to contact students at home, angering some parents and school districts around the country.

Kind of gives new meaning to No Child Left Behind and school uniforms, doesn't it?

We already have another system, run by the Selective Service Commission, which requires males between the ages of 18 and 25 to register. Not to mention this initiative, and this one, aimed at funneling our youth into uniform.

So what are those privacy advocates whining about? It's all perfectly legal.