Kay Steiger

THE GI VOTE. Despite the fact that historically troops’ absentee ballots have overwhelmingly gone to Republican candidates, when it comes to campaign donations, members of the military are showing a shift to the left (via Steve Benen). The amount of money soldiers contribute to Democrats has nearly doubled since the last presidential campaign cycle. Obama, […]

NEW RANKINGS. U.S. News and World Report is planning two new rankings for colleges after a controversy over colleges using questionable tactics to increase their rankings. According to WSJ‘s The Numbers Guy, U.S. News will release a list of top historically black colleges and another list of good schools that are easier to get into. […]

THE POWER OF O. Kate Sheppard points out that Obama could see a bump from the endorsement of Oprah, who is arguably one of the country’s most powerful opinion leaders. Chris Rose explained this unique power in his humorous essay (via Ezra) on how he couldn’t talk about his book on Oprah’s show: You probably […]

UNCOMFORTABLE COLEMAN. Yesterday the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Minnesota’s Republican senator, Norm Coleman, has decided to support now-retiring Republican Sen. John Warner‘s plan for troops to begin coming home by the end of the year. Coleman is a Republican in a seat some Democrats consider winnable, considering he won Paul Wellstone‘s seat five years […]

TESTING THE TROOPS. Over the weekend, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on some Minnesota National Guard troops who have elected to be part of a VA study monitoring the effects of deployment on a soldier. The study, funded by the Department of Defense, began nearly two years ago, [when researcher Melissa Polusny] and three other […]

HA! Apparently pranksters wrapped Karl Rove‘s Jaguar in plastic wrap with an “I love Barack Obama” bumper sticker while it was parked on the West Wing’s private driveway. Talk about national security. –Kay Steiger

ELITE GENERALS. Fred Kaplan has an interesting look at the officer structure in this week’s NY Times Magazine. The armed forces, like many institutions, are slow to adapt and change, and the way officers are promoted hasn’t changed much either, leaving a genuinely homogeneous pool to plan war strategy. This is a problem I’ve heard […]

BAIT AND SWITCH. Sara Mead alerted me to her Higher Ed Watch blog through the New America Foundation today, and although she wrote this post on veterans education benefits last week, it’s still good stuff. She talks about how veterans come back to find the promised benefit only pays for about 75 percent of the […]

THE FACES OF THE WOUNDED. The New York Times features an art exhibit with photographs of wounded Iraq war veterans on display at the Jen Beckman Gallery. The photos sampled by the Times are yet another reminder of the human cost of war, costs which will extend far beyond whatever day we are no longer […]