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Former CBS Moscow bureau chief Beth Knobel has passed along a piece by Gregory Papadatos, an army medic. Papadatos, a sergeant, is in New York between tours; he has served in Iraq and will soon be deploying to Afghanistan.

Papadatos writes about a close friend, an active duty Army medic now in Iraq whose tour has just been extended for three months. "She got there in October of 2006 and was expecting to leave in October of '07," he writes. "Now she will be there until January of '08...unless she gets hurt before then."

Here's a little more information about Papadatos' friend:

She joined the Army with a high school diploma and no college. We left the Army's Combat Medic Course just under three years ago, and since then she has spent a year in Korea, a year and a half in Texas, and six months in Iraq. In those three years, she has earned an Associate's Degree, taking classes at night and on the weekends (and, in Iraq, online, in her spare time). She had planned to go to college - a REAL college - full-time starting in January of '08. Now she won't be back in time for the first semester of the year, so she'll have to wait for the summer or fall of '08. And - oh yes! - she enlisted, in the summer of 2003, for FOUR years, but the "Stop-Loss" policy keeps her in uniform until further notice.

Continues Papadatos:

Now, keeping all of this in mind, somebody please tell me why a deejay with a reputation for irreverence calling a basketball player a "nappy-headed ho" should leave that woman "scarred for life" (which is a direct quote from one of the Rutgers basketball players, in Wednesday's newspapers). After that, somebody please tell me why I should care about it. And THEN somebody please tell me why that one incident, which caused no bleeding or dying, is getting more radio air time than the fact that MY little buddy - along with about 100,000 of her closest friends and colleagues - has just been told she has to spend three extra months in a combat zone.

You can read more about Papadatos and other soldiers here.

‘Tis a banner day for the endless reading of election tea leaves, and plenty of the usual analysts are offering their perspectives – particularly with regard to the most recent little surprises that the last week has brought.

This past weekend was ushered in with news that National Association of Evangelicals’ spokesman Ted Haggard was resigning his post following accusations from a male prostitute who claimed to have had numerous meth-fueled trysts with the pastor. Haggard later admitted to buying meth and receiving a massage from the prostitute, and then on Sunday told members of his church that he was guilty of “sexual immorality.”

The predictions of how this might affect Republicans at the polls are, predictably, mixed. One “conservative activist who describes himself as a former homosexual,” Stephen Bennett, told the Kansas City Star: "Will this affect the elections next Tuesday? ... You better believe it. The more and more hypocrisy I see each day, the more I realize next Tuesday we are going to get exactly what we deserve." In a shocking twist, a Republican pollster disagreed, arguing that conservatives are indeed put off by such news, but not that much: "Are they so discouraged they're going to participate in any movement to have Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi run the country? No."

If Haggard’s woes are affecting your vote, John Dickerson suggests that you e-mail him explaining why (slatepolitics@slate.com) because, writes Dickerson: “I don't think you really exist or exist in large enough numbers to change much on Tuesday.” So take that.

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