Free Republic

Paramilitary tactics may be necessary in California to prepare for, or head off, an apocalyptic future with flooded coastal communities, scorched central valleys and rampant wildfires in the Sierras. That was the advice and prediction from one of the experts at a recent hearing on climate change adaptation by the state watchdog agency the Little Hoover Commission. Said Robert Verchick, an environmental law professor at Loyola University, New Orleans: “The way that you build resilience and robustness is to think about everything at once and then move forward in some kind of regimented, maybe paramilitary, way. Because it’s essential. It’s...

BILOXI, Miss. With drywall, two-by-fours and a patient faith in a sometimes-exasperating God, Burke resident Bart Tucker is trying to raise a small neighborhood from the dead. But in this Gulf Coast City of 50,000, a slender thumb of land smashed by the winds and waters of Hurricane Katrina, nothing comes easy -- least of all miracles. Since arriving in Biloxi with a convoy of supplies and volunteers from his fairfax County church, Lord of Life Lutheran, shortly after Labor Day, Tucker hs spent a total of eight weeks here. He goes home only to raise more money and recruit...

I have posted this at my website (link above). "The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity." --George Washington There have been several people, from politicians to pundits, that have opined about how to--or whether to-- rebuild the city of New Orleans. Right here and now, I will take a stand: REBUILD THE CITY. In the wake of a natural disaster of epic proportions, we also now have an opportunity of epic proportions. Not since the era of the Great Depression...