Senior Airman Lenyatta Tinnelle, court-martialed at Naval Air Station Keflavik in Iceland, has been sentenced to a month's hard labor, two months of restricted activities, and a reduction in rank, the Associated Press reports. Tinnelle had written dozens of bad checks to sustain a compulsive year-long gambling binge that cost her $ 28,000.
No word yet on what will happen to the bookmaking operation (the Pentagon) that got Airman Tinnelle hooked and then took all her money. According to the AP, uniformed personnel and civilian Pentagon employees dropped $ 1.2 billion worth of their paychecks into 8,000 slot machines at 94 U.S. military installations around the world in 1999. THE SCRAPBOOK figures it will be both conservative and compassionate for our new president to wipe out this vice on military bases for good.