It's late on a Friday and I really don't want to do this. But a nagging question just won't go away, and I don't think it should be allowed to go away.

There has been a great deal of speculation in the blogosphere about John Kerry's oddly dated discharge. There's also been some reporting in the Main Stream Media, like this report in the New York Sun:

An official Navy document on Senator Kerry's campaign Web site listed as Mr. Kerry's "Honorable Discharge from the Reserves" opens a door on a well kept secret about his military service.

The document is a form cover letter in the name of the Carter administration's secretary of the Navy, W. Graham Claytor. It describes Mr. Kerry's discharge as being subsequent to the review of "a board of officers." This in it self is unusual. There is nothing about an ordinary honorable discharge action in the Navy that requires a review by a board of officers.

According to the secretary of the Navy's document, the "authority of reference" this board was using in considering Mr. Kerry's record was "Title 10, U.S. Code Section 1162 and 1163. "This section refers to the grounds for involuntary separation from the service. What was being reviewed, then, was Mr. Kerry's involuntary separation from the service. And it couldn't have been an honorable discharge, or there would have been no point in any review at all. The review was likely held to improve Mr. Kerry's status of discharge from a less than honorable discharge to an honorable discharge.

A Kerry campaign spokesman, David Wade, was asked whether Mr. Kerry had ever been a victim of an attempt to deny him an honorable discharge. There has been no response to that inquiry.

Does the blogosphere have to do everything?

BeldarBlog has done a great deal of research, and so have Tom Maguire, PoliPundit, QandO, and Ed Morrisey.

I've left comments to some of these entries because I think the speculation might be easily cleared up by simply looking at Kerry's Massachusetts Bar records. Why not simply ask the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners and/or the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers for Kerry's records? These public records are supposed to be available to anyone who wants to see them.

Kerry became a Massachusetts attorney in 1976, and I know from experience that applications to practice law or take the bar exam typically ask for detailed information (and documentation) about nearly every aspect of your life. For example, when I applied to the California Bar, I had to disclose and fully explain all the details of a misdemeanor conviction from 1975 -- despite the fact that this had long been "expunged" from my record. What matters to the state bar is not so much whether there's dirt in your past (many people have led less than perfect lives), but whether you're trying to hide it. It's the old principle that the coverup is almost always worse than what's being covered up.

So, had Kerry's discharge been less than honorable, this would not necessarily have stopped him from becoming an attorney. But he would have had to disclose it. Hence, I would think that reviewing Kerry's bar records in Massachusetts might shed a good deal of light on this controversy, which may be a tempest in a teapot.

Here is the 1978 discharge as it is posted at the Kerry website. Without getting into whether it makes sense that he served that long, the fact is that in simple logic, either he was discharged before 1978 or he was not. This means that what Kerry told the bar in 1976 may be highly relevant.

I live too far from Boston to check the records myself, but I did telephone the Board of Bar Examiners and I was told that while the records are not available online, all applications are kept on file here:

Clerk's Office
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
One Beacon Street, 4th Floor
Boston, MA 02152
617-557-1050

What bothers me about this is that if this stuff is so easy to clear up, why hasn't it been? It's getting a bit late in the election season for this sort of nonsense. Questions about matters so basic as a presidential candidate's military discharge should not be swept under the rug -- or ignored and dismissed without explanation.

(Sorry but "no response to that inquiry" is just not acceptable!)

Once again I find myself asking whether Kerry has ever been properly vetted.

MORE: Via Mudville Gazette, I found this document (which claims to be a "compilation"), which is puzzling. It shows that Kerry was apparently placed on Standby Reserve - Inactive status on July 1, 1972, and was discharged on February 16, 1978. (Why does the "8" in "1978" look like a "3" whereas all the other 8s are normal? Why does it say "discharged for U.S. Naval Reserve?) What the hell happened between 1972 and 1978? The Standby Reserve Inactive category is temporary -- up to three years:

Officers transferred to Standby Reserve-Inactive (USNR-S2) status may remain in that status for up to 3 years before they are screened for discharge.

Personnel in Standby Reserve-Inactive (USNR-S2) status are not considered for promotion and are ineligible to participate in the Naval Reserve program. However, the years spent in USNR-S2 status still count toward total years of commissioned service.

And according to this document, Kerry was transfered to Reserve - Inactive in 1970. Which means he was inactive but still in the Reserves for a full eight years. Why? if there's a simple explanation, I'm all ears.

MORE: Hugh Hewitt is skeptical, and opines:

those not persuaded by Christmas-Eve-not-in-Cambodia aren't going to budge because of a complicated conjecture.

What irritates the hell out of me is that people knowledgeable about the facts are remaining silent, forcing the blogosphere to speculate unnecessarily. While I wish this could be cleared up, the whole thing illustrates the irreparably broken nature of the system entrusted to keep people "informed."