GOOD NEWS: Marine Corps meets 142 percent of recruiting goal. “The Marine Corps far surpassed its recruiting goal last month and could eventually be more than a year ahead of schedule in its plan to grow the force to 202,000 members. All military services met or exceeded their monthly recruiting goals in April, with the Marine Corps signing 142 percent of the number it was looking for, the Pentagon said.”

The story does its best to spin this as bad news about the slowing economy — but if that’s all it is, why is the combat-oriented Marine Corps doing the best of all the services? (Via TigerHawk, who has some thoughts).

UPDATE: Reader Alex del Castillo emails: “Because, thank god (or whatever), this country still produces people who really believe in *personal* sacrifice for something greater than themselves. One reason liberal commentators are so amazed at this type of thing is that such personal motivation sails pretty close to the whole family values/religion thing, which they like to conflate with Falwell, polygamists and other bad extremes of the Christian right for politcal reasons. Fact is, while the there are no atheists in foxholes, there are an awful lot of agnostics.”