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"Whenever I’m watching a movie that hearkens back to a sepia tinted yesteryear, it isn’t the simpler times I long for so much as a return to the distant days when a man rose alongside the sunrise and was expected to give the daylight his best. Clothes were sharper, adolescence shorter, and the word man still deserving of the first spot in the word manners. Now it seems as if there is something *missing, something stripped from today’s men, besides their buttons and blazers . . ." ~ Sean Platt

If you ever ran into Nokesville dad Thomas S. Vander Woude, chances are you would also see his son Joseph. Whether Vander Woude was volunteering at church, coaching basketball or working on his farm, Joseph was often right there with him, pitching in with a smile, friends and neighbors said yesterday. When Joseph, 20, who has Down syndrome, fell into a septic tank Monday in his back yard, Vander Woude jumped in after him. He saved him. And he died where he spent so much time living: at his son's side.

Mr. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked out his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq. What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father's New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2007 – Few U.S. troops have the opportunity to deploy with their loved ones, but soldiers of 325th Combat Support Hospital, a unit from Independence, Mo., currently at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq, have two such family relationships within their unit. Maj. David Clark and his son, Sgt. Michael Clark, both natives of Manchester, Conn., deployed to Iraq together with the 325th CSH. The Clark family has a long tradition of military service stretching over three generations. This deployment will mark their second tour together, the first being a 10-month deployment to Kuwait with the 405th...

Rich mothers 'have more sons' By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 12:01am BST 08/08/2007 Rich, married and well-educated women tend to have more sons while those who are unhealthy and poorer tend to have more daughters, according to a study. Well-off women produce more sons Researchers studied 50 million people and found that mothers in 'good condition’ - those who were married, better educated and younger - bore more sons than mothers in 'poor condition’. The reason, simply put, is that women are tougher than men so according to evolutionary theory women living in poorer communities are predisposed to...

Fathers deserve a special salute for all they do http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2007/06/17/opinion/doc4675cd32b9bbf793658538.txt http://tinyurl.com/2gq4t5 Sunday, June 17, 2007 7:18 PM CDT Fathers don’t always get the respect they deserve — and we don’t just mean children ignoring their pleas to take out the garbage or mow the lawn. On television and in the movies today, the theme seems to be “Father Knows Nothing” rather than “Father Knows Best.” Instead of Ward Cleaver in “Leave It to Beaver,” we have Homer in “The Simpsons.” A larger percentage of Father’s Day greeting cards lean toward humor rather than the sentimental variety more often seen on...

If you believe popular culture, the man we're honoring today is a complete idiot. You don't have to watch much TV to believe that. The dads who populate the small screen are mostly dorks, dunderheads or dimwits. Recent ads show dad as the ineffective homework coach (who only gets in the way, to his daughter's utter contempt), as the immature moron who gloats when he beats his small daughter at pingpong, or as the klutz who falls down the stairs. And wise, gently authoritarian dads like Howard Cunningham (Happy Days ) and Cliff Huxtable (The Cosby Show) are nowhere to...

The father factor: Fathers and sons http://www.antiguasun.com/paper/?as=view&sun=281935077507132005&an=410802067106152007&ac=Opinion http://tinyurl.com/38wf8g Saturday June 16 2007 Men become biological fathers in a moment. Not much is required except the right anatomical equipment and opportunity. The father need not love the mother. The father does not need a course in parenting, nor does he need to even desire to be a parent. The father does not always even know of his progeny. Nevertheless, each child born into this world has two parents, and one of them is, by definition, the father. For many men, that is where their input begins and ends. Children need fathers....

Dennis and Stephen Henley filling sand bags together. Department of Defense photo. CAMP RAMADI -- It has been nearly four decades since Dennis Henley filled a sand bag in a war zone. In 1967, he was a Marine Corps corporal in Quang Tri, Vietnam. This September while visiting Camp Ramadi, he found himself once again holding a sand bag, but this time the chore proved to be a very special, emotional moment as the individual standing beside him with the shovel was his youngest son, Marine Corps Corporal Stephen Henley. DennisÂ’ 20-year-old son Stephen is in his final days of...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, Sept. 13, 2006 -- Staff Sgt. Mike Myers experienced one of the most frightening events of his life in Afghanistan, while the birth of his child was taking place simultaneously more than 7,000 miles away. Army Staff Sgt. Mike Myers explains what happened to him on a recent mission as he sits in the driver's seat of a Humvee he was operating when it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. The attack came Sept. 6 at almost the same time his son was being born in the U.S. Myers is a security forces member deployed...

Too late to give my son the Airfix fix http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/09/01/do0102.xml http://tinyurl.com/h8gzw By Tom Leonard (Filed: 01/09/2006) Although he is only four, it is already clear that my older son has inherited two character traits from me: a fascination with militaria — ships, planes, tanks and soldiers, especially soldiers — and an unfortunate impatience, specifically a tendency to hurl stuff across the room when things don't go right. Or glue right. For if there was one area where these two facets of my personality clashed most spectacularly, it was when I turned my hand to the fiddly task of putting together...

Family welcomes 12th Eagle Scouthttp://www.tmnews.com/articles/2006/07/16/sections/news/news74.txt http://tinyurl.com/rwvkn Sunday, July 16, 2006 Last modified: Sunday, July 16, 2006 6:46 AM CDT By Jason Mullis, Hoosier Times BEDFORD - There are 12 virtues the American Boy Scouts espouse to the youth in their charge. Similarly, when Travis Scherschel earned the highest rank of Eagle Scout Saturday, he became the 12th Scherschel to do so. "Becoming an Eagle Scout is an outstanding achievement, which requires hard work and dedication," Mark Scherschel, Travis' father, read from a letter from President George W. Bush. "Your accomplishment serves as an example of excellence and a source of...

The Problem with Boyshttp://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2006/060611_mfe_July_06_Boys_1.html http://tinyurl.com/noszs By Tom Chiarella July 2006, Volume 146, Issue 1 ...Is actually a problem with men. We've ignored all the evidence of male achievement and ambition deficits and stood aside as our sons have notched a growing record of failure and disengagement. It's time we did something about it. A call to action. ------------------ I HAVE TWO SONS. One is sixteen, the other thirteen. Like any boys, they are a little too muscular in their expectations from life. In a single evening, they can be sullen, sweet, hurtful, gentle, distant, funny, and full of grit. Tonight...

I'm always drawn to stories about dads and sons who share a hobby or passionate pursuit. A few months ago, I read a story about a couple of father-son pairs in the Dallas area who have climbed three of the seven summits – the highest peaks on each continent. Jackson, my 10-year-old son, and I have done some indoor rock climbing at our community recreation center. But like a lot of boys these days, his passion is video games. He's always asking me to play – bad as I am at it. I usually choose NBA Live 2005 because I...

IT was not so long ago that men and women voted along similar lines. Both sexes went overwhelmingly for Richard Nixon in 1972 and narrowly for Jimmy Carter in 1976. Today, though, the gender gap — that men lean right and women lean left — has become a political truism, and a series of new studies suggests that gender plays an even bigger role in politics than many believed. Having a son tends to make parents more conservative, it appears, while a daughter makes them more liberal. The parental has become the political. snip... In Germany, two-thirds of people who...

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Juue-Ann Lo Mother, Sons Serve in Afghanistan, Iraq By Sgt. Brennan Kramer 864th Engineer Combat Battalion (Heavy), Task Force Pacemaker KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Feb. 6, 2006 — U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Juue-Ann Lo, of the 298th Engineer Detachment, is currently deployed with Task Force Pacemaker in Afghanistan. The mother of six said she joined the Hawaii National Guard 18 years ago with hopes of creating a better life for herself and her children. As her five sons and daughter grew older, they came to realize that they too, wanted the opportunity to serve their country. All...

Sen. Harry Reid's famous words regarding the Abramoff scandal with Jim Lehrer's Online Hour on January 18, 2006: "Think about this, the "pay and play" program. You as a lobbyist, you pay, and we Republicans will take care of you legislatively. That's why it hasn't come to the forefront. The arrogance of power, the culture of corruption has not come to the attention of the American public as it has the past several months." And then we have this (be sure to download this, good for one day until 4pm tomorrow) that came out today produced by the Los Angeles...

Palestinian Legislative Council Candidate and Mother of Three Hamas Terrorists Umm Nidal Farhat: Israelis are Not Civilians and There are No Prohibitions on Killing Them; I Am Willing to Sacrifice My Ten Sons The following are excerpts from an interview with Umm Nidal [1], Palestinian Legislative Council Candidate and the mother of three Hamas terrorists who were killed while taking part in "martyrdom" operations. Dream2 TV aired this interview on December 21, 2005.TO VIEW THIS CLIP, VISIT: http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=980 . Interviewer: "Umm Nidal is a woman who voluntarily sacrificed her sons for the sake of resisting the occupiers. This woman...

AAMJIWNAANG FIRST NATION, Canada (Dec. 18) - Growing up with smokestacks on the horizon, Ada Lockridge never thought much about the pollution that came out of them. She never worried about the oil slicks in Talfourd Creek, the acrid odors that wafted in on the shifting winds or even the air-raid siren behind her house whose shrill wail meant "go inside and shut the windows." Now Lockridge worries all the time. A budding environmental activist, she recently made a simple but shocking discovery: There are two girls born in her small community for every boy. A sex ratio so out...

Ramon and Martha Muñoz expected to sleep soundly Saturday night for the first time in years. The nagging fear in the pit of their stomachs was gone, erased the moment they glimpsed their eldest soldier son returning from Iraq - a little more than a year after their younger son left the war-torn country. The delegation of family and friends broke into a whooping cheer Saturday afternoon when Spc. Jose Muñoz emerged at the top of the main concourse at Tucson International Airport, and continued until he made his way to the group of about a dozen people waving star-spangled...

Who's next in North Korea? By Choe Sang-Hun International Herald Tribune TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2005 SEOUL Kim Jong Il, the "Dear Leader" of North Korea, is pushing an age - 63 - when he is widely expected to designate a successor who will carry the mantle of power he inherited from his own father in the Communist world's first and only dynasty. But he has problems. His eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, 34, has not been home for years, wandering in self-imposed exile overseas and reportedly on the run from hit men hired by supporters of his stepbrothers. His second...

Bearing sons 'can shorten mother's life' By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 02/11/2005) Giving birth to and raising several sons could be bad for the long-term health of mothers but good for fathers, according to a study published today. Scientists suspect that having large families shortens a parent's lifespan, because the effects of reproduction and childcare can take their toll on health. However, in a society without good health care, sons could be especially costly for the mother for several reasons. They are, on average, born heavier and place more physical stresses on the body. They also raise levels of...

A young Chris Cartwright and his older brother John Cartwright Jr. are racing around on a tank with their father, John Cartwright, during his National Guard unit's drill weekend. They are having the time of their life, but as young boys, they're oblivious to the impression this ride will make on their lives down the road. Fast forward 20-odd years, and the boys, like their father, are serving with the National Guard in Troop F, 278th Regimental Combat Team, and are deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 3. They still ride on tanks with their father. There's...

In Nevada, Reid Is the Name to Know Members of one lawmaker's family represent nearly every major industry in their home state. And their clients rely on his goodwill. By Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper, Times Staff Writers June 23, 2003 WASHINGTON — It was the kind of legislation that slips under the radar here. The name alone made the eyes glaze over: "The Clark County Conservation of Public Land and Natural Resources Act of 2002." In a welter of technical jargon, it dealt with boundary shifts, land trades and other arcane matters — all in Nevada. As he...

The media is having a field day with Tom Delay these days. If you have seen the news or read a paper the past few days, you have heard "Delay" and "ethics violations" or "scandal" at least a dozen times. The supposed violations consist of a trip to Russia paid by business interests in 1997 and Delay's wife and daughter being paid by political action and campaign committees. What most people don't realize is that many members of Congress have family members working for political campaigns or lobbying firms. Let's look at just one prominent example: Senate Democrat Leader Harry...

Dear God, Tomorrow I go off to war Tonight I kneel in prayer I've got some things to ask you, God Because I know you care I go to fight for freedom Leaving family behind You protect so many families I pray you'll look after mine Please bless my wife with strength, Lord And confidence each day Help her see what we already know... She's always led the way Bless her with the knowledge To do the things I've always done Let her know I'll gladly do them all After the battle is won Bless my sons and bless my...

FRANKLIN, Pa. — A woman received probation for throwing a butter knife that lodged in the skull of her baby son late last year. The injury to the baby was an accident and his mother, Samantha Carla Hoffman, has shown remorse for what happened, a Venango County judge ruled yesterday. Hoffman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor simple assault

American culture grows more crass by the day. One of the most successful American TV shows is The Apprentice starring Donald Trump, a man loaded with money but bankrupt of class. The highlight of the show is when Trump humiliates potential employees by barking at them, "You're fired!" One can only grieve over a culture that promotes a coarse womanizer who has dumped a wife or two in favor of young models as its symbol of professional success. Indeed, watching people be humiliated is big business on American TV. Shows such as American Idol feature judges like Simon Cowell –...

Susan B. Anthony: Lying Victim Feminist Who's Lying to You About Early Feminism? by Art Lemasters September 13, 2003   Readers who enjoyed the last review about early feminists' racism will like this one. Women who have digested Susan B. Anthony essays or books that were sifted into pretty stories by feminist writers will be shocked. Learned anti-feminists will find new answers. Follow the links! Let's go Web surfing again.   Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda J. Gage were dishonest, man hating, victimhood feminists. Most articles, essays, books and columns about early feminism have been sanitized...

The Late and Unlamented Idi Amin, former self-styled Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes (sic) of the Sea, is dead. Anyone who received that news without a touch of sadness is morally deficient. Not sadness over Amin's death, but that he died peacefully in his bed in Saudi Arabia. Estimates of the numbers of Ugandans killed by Amin during his eight-year reign of terror in the '70s range from 300,000 to 500,000. I feel the same way about anyone who did not rejoice at the news that Uday and Qusai Hussein were on the receiving end...

Signs celebrating deaths of Saddam's sons criticized By Associated Press July 30, 2003 CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - State-hired paving contractors say they were being patriotic when they posted the words "Odai and Qusai dead - way to go 101st" on two electronic message boards. But some found the roadside messages about the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons offensive rather than inspiring. "Our soldiers are not members of a sports team to be rooted for," Roberta Halgrim of Adams told The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper. "They are not gladiators. They are our protectors, and they are willing to pay the ultimate price for peace,...

U.S. soldiers found a stash of cash and a briefcase of goodies in the mansion where Odai and Qusai Hussein were killed last week. The brothers had $100 million in U.S. dollars and Iraqi dinars, according to a report published Sunday. Based on the contents of a briefcase belonging to Odai, Saddam Hussein's elder son seemed to be preparing more for a night out than a fight. It contained pain-killers, cologne, Viagra, unopened packages of men's underwear, dress shirts, a silk tie and a condom, Newsweek reported. They also had two women's purses. Sunday, U.S. forces focused their hunt for...

The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq says a decision on the burial of the sons of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay, will be announced within the next 24 hours. The Coalition Provisional Authority says it will announce the final steps involved in burying Saddam Hussein's sons Monday. U.S. troops killed the two Tuesday in a firefight in the northern city of Mosul. A coalition spokesman, who asked not to be named, said it had to carry out a number of procedures before the bodies could be buried. Traditionally, Middle Eastern burial practices require that interment take place...

The consequences of death of Saddam Hussein's sons give rise to several questions. If the questions remain unanswered, the death of the two important figures in Iraq looks unbelievable. It is not ruled out that the liquidation of the brothers was in fact a special operation launched to cover them up. The question number one: what did the men do in one of the main Kurd cities while it is known that their father had poisoned thousands of Kurds? We may suppose they just picked out an unusual way of committing a suicide there. On the contrary, they merely decided...

Citizens of the free world justifiably hanker after reliable leadership, at a time when democratic decency is under unrelenting fire from the forces of fanaticism, intolerance, and Islamic terrorism. In a single-superpower world, the American president must meet high expectations. He did the right thing in the aftermath of September 11 and won his own nation's broad support. But of late that support has been waning. Strong leadership must be proven over and over. The successful targeted killing of Saddam's cruel sons has given George W. Bush a much-needed shot in the arm at a time of increasing pressure and...

No tears shed for Saddam's sons in the Gulf July 23 2003 at 03:57PM By Samia Nakhoul Dubai - No tears are being shed for Saddam Hussein's two slain sons but many analysts in the Gulf warned the United States on Wednesday against complacency after the surprise breakthrough. Politicians, analysts and ordinary people across the region said Washington still had a long list of political woes to address in Iraq to restore stability before claiming victory. "Americans should not consider this as a big victory. They should not bask in their glory. They should look at it as another step...

A US Official says two bodies recovered from a Mosul villa raised by US Troops bear a strong resemblance to Saddam Huseins sons and DNA tests are being carried out.Americas FOX News quoted quoted one official in the Adminstration as saying that they are '90-95%' sure that the bodies are of Saddam Husseins sons.

<p>WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told President Bush Tuesday the U.S. military might have killed Saddam Hussein's two sons during a raid in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, administration officials said.</p> <p>The initial White House reaction was cautious, though one official said confirmation the two sons, Qusay and Uday, were killed would "brighten" spirits in an administration that has been under sharp criticism recently from those who accuse the White House of exaggerating the threat posed by the former Iraqi regime.</p>

Woman Allegedly Throws Her Twin Infant Sons Into Mississippi River; One Child Still Missing The Associated Press ST. PAUL, Minn. July 6 — A woman allegedly threw her twin infant sons off a bridge into the Mississippi River, then jumped in herself, screaming incoherently as she fell 75 feet to the water, police said. Several people who were at the river's edge for the city's July Fourth fireworks display Friday jumped in after them. A man rescued one of the 11-month-old boys, then pulled the mother to safety with the help of others. By then, the second boy had disappeared,...

What Do Daddies DO? June 7, 2003 by Isaiah Flair Now playing: "Daddy Day Care"!I'm always amazed by the "Three Men and a Baby" motif of popular entertainment, which declares that men who can build a computer from scratch are somehow supposed to be befuddled by the changing of a diaper or warming of a bottle. It's silly, and to such an extreme extent that one wonders what the motivation for such ridiculous portrayals are.Physical tasks involved in childraising are fairly simplistic. Presuming one signs on to bottle-feeding as acceptable, as I and millions of others do, the day-to-day...

Mystery over Saddam as battle rages Buildings in the al-Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad lie in ruins Monday after the U.S. airstrike. It's unclear whether Saddam Hussein was killed when an American bomber dropped four bombs on a site in Baghdad. NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski reports.     NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES     April 8 —   As U.S. officials tried to determine whether Saddam Hussein survived a massive bombing in Baghdad, the battle for control of the Iraqi capital raged Tuesday with American forces blasting government targets and foiling an apparent Iraqi counterattack. A U.S. warplane dropped four...

Tensions in the palaces of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein have become unbearable as each aide suspects each other of being an American agent.Saddam suspects everybody-even one of his sons-of plotting against him..

ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani provincial official who said last week he had reports that two sons of Osama bin Laden had been wounded and possibly arrested in Afghanistan said on Sunday he had been misquoted in media reports. "Some newspapers and news agencies misquoted my comments to the international media," Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, the home minister of Pakistan's Baluchistan province, said in a statement. "In my interview, I said quite categorically that the said operation was not being conducted on Pakistani soil and that Pakistani forces were not involved. In my statement, I said only that the reports about the arrest...

Pakistan claims to have captured Bin Laden's sons By Phil Reeves, Asia Correspondent 08 March 2003 Two of Osama bin Laden's sons were arrested in southern Afghanistan yesterday in a joint operation by Pakistani and US forces, a minister for Pakistan said last night. Sanaullah Zehri, the minister in charge of security in the province of Baluchistan, said the men had been picked up near Rabat in the south-west of the country where it borders Pakistan and Iran. Seven al-Qa'ida men were killed in the operation, he said. There had been reports of US military activity in the area. The...

The latest chapter in what appears to be a police-media-Labor Party plot to defeat the Likud was revealed today - but the electronic media are not emphasizing it. The item did not even appear on Voice of Israel's 8 AM news broadcast, for instance. The item, reported this morning in Yediot Acharonot, is that some two weeks ago, Labor Party Secretary-General MK Ophir Pines hinted strongly to several Likud supporters that damaging information about Ariel Sharon would soon be publicized. He was right, of course, as the police investigation of Sharon and his sons regarding the loan from Cyril Kern...

North American Report/Fatherhood At-Home Dads Gather and Bond by Kristyn Komarnicki in Des Plaines, Illinois At a November 21 convention in suburban Chicago, 100 American men gathered to network, listen to experts, and exchange strategies for improving job performance. But any resemblance to corporate America ended there. Dress was casual, the atmosphere noncompetitive, and topics included ways to support working spouses, tips on defusing a two-year-old's temper tantrums, and the desire to see more diaper-changing tables installed in men's restrooms. Giving voice to the growing ranks of men engaged in full-time fatherhood, the third annual At-Home Dads Convention in Des...

When Eric and Jody courted during graduate school, they assumed that when the time came to raise a family, Eric would work and Jody would stay home with the kids. Six years later, things looked different. "I liked my job, but Jody loved hers," says Eric. "Jody made lots more money than I ever could have. It became clear to each of us that she should work and I should stay home. We came to this decision through a lot of prayer and by discussing it with our church friends ad nauseum."Three children later, Eric is passionate about being a...

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Furious parents of Afghan children killed by a stray mortar fired during a U.S. military training drill accused American special forces Tuesday of ignoring their desperate pleas and letting their sons bleed to death. Four boys died and three were injured in Saturday's incident at a firing range about six miles east of Kabul. The accident occurred as the U.S. 5th Battalion, 19th Special Forces Group from Fort Carson, Colo., was training Afghan soldiers in mortar and rifle fire. The U.S. military says it is investigating and denies there was any delay in helping the injured...

Wednesday, 20 November, 2002, 13:40 GMTSaddam pounces on son's newspaper Uday's media provide some relief from state fareThe Iraqi Government has suspended a newspaper run by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday. No reason was given for the one-month ban which was reported to foreign media by Iraqi Government and media sources after Babel failed to appear on news stands on Wednesday. Uday is Saddam Hussein's eldest sonBabel is known for carrying Western reports on Iraq's conflict with the United States and is said to be the most influential newspaper in the country. But it appears that attacks made on pro-American...