Another e-mail fraud

I spoke about this latest scare tactic that MSNBC pushed last week, now there's an e-mail making the rounds that's trying the same thing:

There is pending legislation in the House and Senate, S89 and HR 163,to reinstate mandatory draft for boys and girls (ages18-26) starting June 15, 2005. This plan includes women in the draft, eliminates higher education as a shelter, and makes it difficult to cross into Canada.

But what the e-mail does not tell you is who is sponsoring it. So let me repeat it again:

Bill Summary & Status for the 108th Congress S.89. Hollings (D-SC) sponsored it. It has no other sponsors. The Republicans have kept it bottled up in committee for nearly two years.

Bill Summary & Status for the 108th Congress H.R.163. Sponsored by Rangel (D-NY). All the co-sponsors are Democrats. Not one Republican. It's been held up since March 2003.

Michelle Malkin is on this too.

Here's a reality check from military.com. Excerpt:

"A draft? It's just not going to happen," said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., a member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee, agreed: "There is very little support in Congress for reinstating the draft."

MISLEADING E-MAIL

Perhaps those comments will help steady the nerves of many Americans apparently rattled by an e-mail that is circulating nationwide. It says that legislation is pending in Congress that would reinstitute the draft for the first time since 1973, starting as early as next spring. It also says that the administration is "quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections."

There is a kernel of truth to the allegation -- there is a bill pending that would restart the draft. But the Bush administration opposes it, as do Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican parties in Congress. Everyone remotely in a position to know is quite sure that the bill is going nowhere.

"I don't know anyone in the executive branch of the government who believes that it would be appropriate or necessary to reinstitute the draft," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in April.

The bill's primary sponsor is Rep. Charles Rangel, a liberal Democrat from New York who represents Harlem. Even he admitted that his bill won't pass. He said he introduced it to get people to discuss who is doing the fighting in Iraq...

So tell the kids to wipe their noses and stop worrying about getting drafted.

Not. Gonna. Happen.