"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message hlink.net...
"Fred the Red Shirt" wrote in message
om...

Consider, if you will:

1) Being AWOL is a crime. Nothing you allege about Clinton,
with the possible exception of burning his draft card, was
or is a crime and I'm doubtful that a law prohibiting one
from burning one's own draft card would pass Constitutional
muster.


Hell, the draft didn't pass Constitutional muster!

Yes it did. Though my guess is you're no more than half serious:

Have you ever heard the saying that the First Amendment does not
protect a man's right shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater? There
are variations on that, but the original, or at least the most
famous appears in the majority decision written by Chief Justice
of the USSC, Oliver Wendel Holmes in a ruling which upheld the
treason conviction of man who agued that Conscription was
unconstitutional, and advocated draft resistance, even after
the draft was ruled to be not unconstitutional by the USSC.

Inasmuch as the best basis for holding the draft to be unconstitutional
is the 13th amendment, which was passed during the Reconstruction
of a Union that had survived in no small measure due to the
institution of conscription, it seems likely that the ruling was
consistent with the original intent of the Constitution and its
amendments, regardless of the specifics of the wording. The
draft is indisputedly involuntary and I daresay that few who
have been drafted would argue that the subsequent experience
is anything other than servitude. However the term, 'involuntary
servitude' had been used as a euphemism for slavery for some
time before the Civil War and was never specifically applied to
military service by draftees so it seems the USSC was on solid
ground.

--

FF