Sam and Nam

Attywood has a good post on how Samuel Alito, President Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, may have used family connections to get into the Army Reserves:

[EXCEPTS] In February 1972, the service held its draft lottery for 1973 inductions -- and Alito, in essence, lost. His birthday, April 1, came up as No. 12 that year, a certain ticket to induction, or so it seemed.

In fact, the draft class of 1973 would never be called. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam was substantially winding down in 1972, to just 49,000 troops from a high in the 1960s of more than half a million. But as Richard Nixon's Christmas bombings that year showed, no one had a crystal ball to predict the final American withdrawal at the start of 1973. By then, young Sam Alito -- who was graduating Princeton on his way to Yale Law School -- was already in the Army Reserves . . .

How did he get that coveted slot? The judge's father, Sam Alito Sr., was the director of New Jersey's Office of Legislative Services in 1972, so he surely knew some powerful politicians. Did someone make a phone call? We're curious.

This is great. Now when they all get together at the ranch, Shrub, Dick and Sam can all swap avoiding-the-war stories. (Who knows? Maybe they can even invite Clinton in the name of bi-partisanship cooperation.) Don't get me wrong. I feel that it was every American's duty to avoid that war. But it's interesting to see the ranks of the chicken-hawks swell with birds of a feather.