Drink up, soldier! Under age? No problem

State Rep. Mark Pettis, R-Hertel, is hell-bent on letting members of the military drink in Wisconsin, even if they are under the legal drinking age of 21.

He had proposed a bill to let service members drink at age 19, but that would mean the loss of millions of dollars in federal highway aid, so the idea has been shelved.

But he's back with another, worse idea: Don't lower the drinking age, just make the fine so low no one will worry about getting caught. Any 19- or 20-year-old member of the military, and the bartender who served him/her, would pay only $10 in fines and penalties.

My recollection is that this started out with Pettis being concerned that veterans of the Iraq war were not old enough to drink legally when they came back.

Now we're down to allowing any member of the National Guard, Reserve or active duty forces drink if he/she is 19 or older.

That's something they can't do in their own enlisted clubs on the base where they're stationed in the US, but what the hell, we make beer in Wisconsin so let 'em all drink. It should be great for business in the taverns around Fort McCoy, and probably for the ambulance service and hospitals, too.

Makes me feel a little sorry for those 18-year-old soldiers, sailors, Air Force members and Marines, who will be left out. What's so magic about 19? For that matter, what makes a 19-year-old service member more able to drink responsibly than a 19-year-old civilian? (Oh, no one said anything about responsibility. OK.) When I was a Marine, none of the people I ran with should have been allowed to drink, no matter how old we were. But that's another story.

Tom Sheehan of the LaCrosse Tribune has details.

Lest you think this is much ado about a bill that's not going anywhere, it already has been recommended for passage by an Assembly committee on a 7-2 vote