Dumpster Diving with the Defense Department

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Ah, the Friday document dump, where governmental bad news goes to die.

You have to love the hubris behind the federal assumption that, because it’s Friday at 5 pm in Washington, DC, all the politerati have gone home for the weekend, abandoning their listservs and laptops for—what, the beach?

For those of you who don’t already subscribe to all 20-plus Pentagon email alerts, here are three of this afternoon’s offerings:

—A 29-page report on “Sexual Assault in the Military,” conducted by the Defense Manpower Data Center, which found that “34 percent of active duty women and 6 percent of active duty men indicated experiencing sexual harassment, while 6.8 percent of women and 1.8 percent of men indicated experiencing unwanted sexual contact.” Download the PDF here.

—A video of today’s House Armed Services committee Mental Health hearing “to look into how the military is dealing with stress on the force.” Watch the hearing here.

—An announcement that “approximately 3,500 U.S. servicemembers will be deploying to Afghanistan this summer.”

Happy diving.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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