Free Republic

Don Hall was sitting in his living room watching TV with his girlfriend about 9:30 p.m. earlier this year when he was startled by flashing police car lights in his driveway. Hall met the Oneida County sheriff's deputies in the driveway, worried that they were bringing bad news about a family member. Instead, the deputies produced an official document demanding that Hall, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran who is a retired pipefitter, turn over his guns to them on the spot. On the document Hall said he was described as "mentally defective." When Hall told police he'd never had any mental...

Theatre goers watching the premiere of “Dunkirk” at Calgary’s Westhills Cinemas on Friday night got a surprise encounter with a 97-year -old man who was at the battle in 1940. The Battle of Dunkirk took place during the Second World War between the Allies and Nazi Germany in Dunkirk, France. Calgarian Ken Sturdy, dressed in a jacket adorned with medals, viewed the movie and was impressed by what he saw...

NEW BRAVOS, TX (WCMH) – An Army veteran in Arizona with a terminal illness has a unique final wish. Lee Hernandez is currently in hospice care in his home. According to the Arizona Republic, he has continuous strokes that affect his vision and cognitive abilities. Doctors can do nothing more for him except make him comfortable. Lee served more than 18 years in the Army, including a tour in Iraq. Earlier this week, he asked his wife to let him hold his phone, “in case someone calls,” according to a post on the Arizona Veterans Forum.

House lawmakers will introduce legislation Thursday to secure college aid for reservists and reimburse veterans whose schools unexpectedly close, as well as do away with a 15-year time limit for veterans to use education benefits – changes that together create the largest expansion of veterans’ education benefits since the Post-9/11 GI Bill was created nearly a decade ago. The legislation represents an initial deal reached between House Republicans and Democrats, encouraged by veterans organizations that acted behind-the-scenes the past several weeks to reignite support for it. Details were obtained by Stars and Stripes ahead of the Thursday rollout. Ending the...

HANNIBAL, Mo. -- An older gentleman stands outside of Lydia's Cabinet of Curiosities on the corner of North and Bird with his dog, waiting for his wife, who is shopping inside the colorful antique store filled with skulls, maps, paintings and enticing oddities. He is dressed in an orange T-shirt with a red, white and blue Talladega "Sparks will fly" logo on the left pocket and sporting a black ball cap with the words "ARMY" and "VIETNAM VETERAN" and five stars stitched across the front in gold, along with three service ribbon designators. The screen door of the shop is...

USMC Vet: Employer Won't Let Me Come to Work With PTSD Service Dog A United States Marine Corps veteran who suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder said his employer won't let him come to work with his service dog. Yauncey Long said Cincinnati Bell, a Midwest telecomm company, refused to let him work in the company of his service dog, C4. Long said he's gotten pushback from the company, including "unsatisfactory" responses from management, after he applied for reasonable accommodations. He said he was sent home every day for a week without pay after he came to work with C4. Long...

Department of Veterans Affairs officials have fired more than 500 misbehaving employees since January, according to data posted online Friday. VA Secretary David Shulkin touted his agency's decision to publish its efforts to hold VA employees accountable, unveiling new requirements for updating the public on personnel actions. "Veterans and taxpayers have a right to know what we're doing to hold our employees accountable and make our personnel actions transparent," Shulkin said in a statement. "Posting this information online for all to see, and updating it weekly, will do just that."

You tube video link: Trump’s Speech to Veterans

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President Donald J. Trump to Join Pastor Robert Jeffress in Honoring Veterans at the Kennedy Center for the ‘Celebrate Freedom’ Concert This Saturday Trump is spending the weekend at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, but plans to travel back to Washington on Saturday night for the "Celebrate Freedom Rally" at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.... A news release says that Trump will: "deliver a powerful address honoring our veterans, hundreds of whom will be coming from D.C. area to attend the event, including wounded warriors who are patients at the Walter Reed Medical Center."

Judicial Watch Sues VA Again for Docs About Misuse of a Veterans’ Facility Judicial Watch Sues for Info on Obama’s War on Coal EPA Breaks Law on Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda? Judicial Watch to Trump Administration: End Congress’s Obamacare Exemption! Judicial Watch Sues VA Again for Docs About Misuse of a Veterans’ Facility As you may know, Judicial Watch has taken the lead in trying to highlight the government’s misconduct and misuse of a 388-acre parcel of land in Los Angeles, originally intended to serve the needs of veterans. In fact, we just filed a second Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)...

President Trump on Friday signed Veterans Affairs reform legislation meant to protect whistleblowers while making it easier to fire problematic employees at the department. The Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act passed by Congress earlier this month streamlines the process to remove, demote, or suspend VA employees for poor performance or misconduct. In addition, it authorizes the VA secretary to recoup any bonuses awarded to employees who have acted improperly. “Veterans have fulfilled their duty to this nation and now, we must fulfill our duty to them,” Trump said. “So to every veteran who is here with...

AFGE: Millions of veterans, low-income Americans could lose health care coverage WASHINGTON – American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox Sr. released the following statement in response to the Senate’s draft legislation dismantling the Affordable Care Act:“The Senate’s bill follows the same failed approach as the House-passed bill. It would deny health care coverage to millions of Americans in order to lavish huge tax cuts on corporations and the wealthiest 1 percent.“The Senate bill would cut Medicaid even deeper than the House bill, and both bills could leave millions of veterans unable to afford health insurance...

The crippled and corrupted Department of Veterans Affairs is the ultimate evidence of why government-run healthcare will never work. The Republican-held House of Representatives passed the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017 on Tuesday 386 to 55. This is a breath of fresh air during these divisive days in that poor performing and incompetent government workers are going to be held accountable, assuming President Trump signs the bill into law. The Senate passed the bill on June 6th and Trump is expected to sign it into law, tweeting last week that “we can’t tolerate substandard...

We are losing World War II veterans at an alarming rate. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an average of more than 370 World War II veterans die every day. But, 17-year-old Andy Fancher is dedicated to keeping their legacy alive and he's racing against life's clock to tell their stories. "I would see this man just sitting in his wheelchair with no one to talk to," Fancher recalled. He was only 12-years-old when he met that gentleman, and it was then that he realized someone had to record the story of those veterans. He decided to use his...

Koran Addo, chief of staff for St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, says they will not allow anyone to take total ownership of the monument without allowing the city a say in how it's displayed in future. "We need to make sure that the monument will never be displayed in a way that celebrates the Confederacy." Addo said.

Phoenix mayor plans to rename a street that is named after Robert E. Lee. Residents do not want to see the name of their street changed. 75 percent of people living on a Phoenix street need to approve of a name change before it's made. But the council will vote on changing that, giving the elected officials the power to make changes without residential approval.

Gov. Charlie Baker indicated he would support ridding Massachusetts...of its only such (Confederate) memorial. A modest stone marker was placed on Georges Island in Boston Harbor by the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1963. It commemorates the Confederate soldiers imprisoned in Fort Warren on the island during the Civil War (and lists the names of those who died as POWs).

The day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, an 18-year-old sailor named Fred “Earl” Smith, quite a baseball player, took the infield for two intra-Navy games. Smith and his shipmates from the battleship USS Tennessee took on the team from the Arizona, then from the West Virginia. The first game was close, the future Santa Rosa Junior College instructor recalled in an interview in 2015, until he hit a home run. “It won the game against the Arizona,” Smith told Hawaii Public Radio. “The West Virginia, we stomped ‘em.” The Navy baseball players partied that Saturday night...

VETERANS: At Oversight Hearing, Sen. Murray Urges VA Secretary to Reject Trump Administration’s Efforts to Move VA Toward Privatization While VA works on a long-term plan to reduce wait times and improve veteran care, the Trump Administration is pushing provisions that would weaken the entire VA systemSen. Murray: “These moves show a disturbing trend toward downsizing and dismantling this VA, rather than strengthening the system to better serve millions of veterans in communities in Washington state and across the country” (Washington, D.C.) –  Today in a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) questioned Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Dr....