Desperate times call for desperate measures. The dashing Mark Mazzetti — in his swan song for the L.A. Times, before decamping for the New York Times — brings us this report, about the Army casting a wider net in its recruiting:

The Army has a message for the growing legions of flamboyantly tattooed American teens: Uncle Sam even wants you. Facing one of the worst recruiting climates in the allvolunteer military’s history, the Army has decided to relax standards that dictate which parts of a soldier can be festooned with body art. Specifically, the service will accept recruits with tattoos on their neck and hands.

The service long had prohibited soldiers from having tattoos on places not covered by a dress uniform. But after missing Army recruiting goals last year, commanders are looking for every way possible to expand the pool of candidates.

But don’t think that they’ll let just anyone in. True, the Army has started to admit recruits “who score poorly on mental aptitude tests and who don’t have high school diplomas,” as well as “candidates with criminal records and histories of drug abuse.” With respect to body art, however, the Army still has some standards:

The directive still prohibits any tattoos that are “extremist, indecent, sexist or racist.” And, in true Army fashion, there are strict guidelines about where on the neck the tattoo may be located. Neck tattoos are allowed only on the back of the neck, defined by the Army as the area “under the ear lobe and across the back of the head.”

With the tattoo ban lifted, maybe now they’ll let Rep. Bill Thomas enlist!

For the curious among you, additional Army guidance about what tattoos pass muster appears after the jump.

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Representative Bill Thomas (R-CA) is, we assume, a cultured man-of-the-world type, so there’s no reason to be too surprised that he’s taken a few lobbyist-funded trips hither and thither. As we see on PoliticalMoneyLine, he gets around. Keep in mind, of course, that the gentleman is the head of the Ways and Means committee — and, due to Republican committee term limits, he has decided to retire from office so that he won’t have to suffer the indignity of a seat in the House with slightly less power and influence. From his trip disclosure info, a couple things stand out.

The first is the cost of his all-expenses paid trip to Colorado for an AEI forum:

(Note: Screenshot edited for size and clarity)

Uh, Bill… you’re gonna have to do a better job of hiding that kind of stuff. Spread it out or something! But hey, that’s just par-for-the-course corruption. Mostly harmless. You know, you see one big lobbyist cash gift, you seen ‘em all. It was in Bill’s trip to Scotland where we got a little more interested. The results of our investigation, after the jump.

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