Tilting at Windmills.

• Author: PETERS, CHARLES

SAT Tutors * Deadbeat Dads * Protecting Pedestrians * Mitch McConnell's Maker's Mark * Why Sally Hemings Upsets Conservatives

One of the more amusing aspects of the Lewinsky affair is the way people on each side call Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp liars on some issues yet hail them an inspired tellers of truth on others. If you're Ken Starr or Henry Hyde, you love most of Tripp's testimony, but don't like it when she says Kathleen Willey not only encouraged the president's advances but was delighted when they happened. And with Lewinsky, of course, her testimony that no one asked her to lie is as devastating to Starr's case as her account of the details of physical intimacy is to Bill Clinton's.

How does Senator Mitch McConnell get free bottles of Maker's Mark, his favorite bourbon, from the Distilled Spirits Council? Aren't there supposed to be rules prohibiting such freebies for our law makers? The explanation, as you've probably guessed, lies in loopholes. An exception is made for products from the legislator's home state. So if you happen to be a senator from Kentucky who likes bourbon whiskey, you're in hog heaven. But you don't have to be from Kentucky. Other loopholes allow the free booze to flow. Senator Don Nickles got his free because it was, reports The Washington Post's Bill McAllister, "for a fund-raiser for his political action committee and therefore acceptable under the rules."

Last year the Navy fell 7,000 short of its recruiting goal. In just the final quarter of the year, the Army fell 2,300 short of reaching its goal. Maybe it's time to resurrect an old Monthly cause--a draft that would restore World War II-like democracy to the military. For most of us who were in the military between 1940, when the democratic draft began, and 1964, when it effectively ended, the service was a place we got to know people of every background. Along with jury duty and the public schools of that era, the military was the common ground where we all met and acquired or reinforced a belief in democracy that was rooted in the reality of personal experience. It was also a chance to serve our country, to repay our debt to society.

In recent years, a draft has seemed an unlikely goal to pursue because the military has been getting enough recruits without it. Now that it isn't, a draft may have a better chance of being adopted.

So I propose a lottery. (The personnel need is not nearly great enough to require a universal draft.) In order to get the kind of people who have not been volunteering in proportionate numbers we could confine the lottery to 18 year-olds with family income of more than $100,000 or SAT scores above 1400. In recent years, the meritocratic and financial elite have not been notable for their eagerness to serve. They need to be reminded of their duty.

There's no reason why a civilian service option should not be included so that a draftee would have the choice of say 18 months in the military or 24 in AmeriCorps. There should be a longer term for civilian service to recognize the greater rigor of military life.

Two of the more curious causes to stir the souls of conservatives are the case of the paternity of Sally Hemings' children and the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) about teenagers' view of oral sex. Apparently conservatives dislike William Jefferson Clinton so intensely that they don't want to admit that the other Jefferson may have strayed, and thereby matched or even excused Clinton's behavior. For similar reasons, they don't like having teenagers endorse the president's belief that oral sex is not sex. They have even gone so far get an excellent editor of JAMA fired, which demonstrates that they are not only jerks but stupid as well. It would have been smarter to say, "This authoritative study proves just what we have said all along: Bill Clinton is an adolescent at heart."

Good news for the campaign to get deadbeat dads to pay for child support. The Department...