Free Republic

CAMP PENDLETON — A surf contest pitting top area surfers from several branches of the armed forces against surfers from the British Army is set for May 24 at Camp Pendleton. This is the fourth year Red Bull is holding the Rivals Surf Competition on base, but the first year that the contest has international participants. The U.S. team’s 12 active-duty military surfers were picked based on performance at last month’stryouts at the base’s Del Mar Beach. Teams compete at the Del Mar Jetty in a modified version of the National Surf League’s game format. The one-day contest is similar...

The Coast Guard Auxiliary offers the following suggestions for recreational boaters in meeting this worthwhile resolution. "I will always wear a life jacket while underway." "I will get a vessel safety check prior to the start of boating season." "I will take a boating safety course to enhance my knowledge of safe boating practices." "I will not operate a vessel when impaired by drugs or alcohol." "I will not dump waste in area lakes and rivers while boating." "I will not transport invasive species from one body of water to another." "If going offshore, I will have a working VHF...

Maryland state police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department’s Federal Air Marshal Service. Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland’s Coast Guard service, took her private notes and government documents that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act during a predawn raid of her family home on Aug. 6. The documents, some which chronicled her sources and her work at the Times...

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter. A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates...

The Obama administration has turned bureaucrats at environmental agencies into armed SWAT teams to conduct unprecedented raids on small mining operations for what used to be simple reviews of clean water permits. That’s according to Colorado Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, chairman of the House Natural Resources subcommittee on energy and mineral resources, who held a hearing Thursday that examined the August raid of armed federal officials including the Environmental Protection Agency in Chicken, Alaska. Lamborn said the “EPA SWAT team of heavily armed and armored agents conducted paperwork inspections on small mining operations, in what appears nothing more than an...

The United States Coast Guard was established August 4, 1790.United States Coast Guard Tribute "Semper Paratus"US Coast Guard home page

The night-vision image in the rescue helicopter showed a downed pilot in a life raft bobbing 35 miles from the Atlantic shoreline, but when Brian Fogle got ready to plunge down to him, the midnight sky and sea melded into inky blackness. “The hard part was not being able to see anything,” Fogle said. And then he stepped out that door and slid down a line into the rolling dark ocean. The signal had come to the Coast Guard 20 to 30 minutes before 11 p.m. Thursday: A D.C. Air National Guard F-16C was down in the Atlantic after touching...

After spending four days stranded on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, Amber Burkett is home. The 16-year-old Bridge City resident, whom Coast Guard rescuers found Wednesday 60 miles away from the Honduras island she and eight friends were trying to reach, cried and laughed, sometimes simultaneously, Saturday evening while exchanging hugs with more than a dozen friends and family members who had gathered to greet her.

MIAMI, FL – Drugs, weapons, illegal aliens all are welcome under a new directive. There is an ongoing, emergency situation with the U.S. Coast Guard, which is now an agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “By directive, starting last Monday, 29 April 2013 (barring emergency calls) Coast Guard District 7, which stretches from the Carolinas to Alabama to Florida, has been restricted from activity. There will be no enforcement patrols of large or small craft allowed in U.S. territorial seas, district-wide,” according to a WDW confidential source.

Oh, and the cruise line is exempt from paying a ton of taxes As if excrement-coated floors weren't outrageous enough, Quartz takes a look at another of Carnival Cruise's dirty secrets: Though it's exempt from a slew of taxes thanks to the fact that it's incorporated in Panama, it's gotten millions of dollars of assistance from the US Coast Guard in recent years. Sen. Jay Rockefeller last week sent a letter to Carnival's CEO in which he expressed his "serious concerns" about February's "nightmarish" Triumph stranding, and outlined how the Coast Guard and American taxpayer have continually had to...

KETCHIKAN, Alaska — Two Wrangell mariners are safe with the help of a Good Samaritan vessel. The Coast Guard says the wooden-hull trawler Carrie Arlene sent out a distress report . ... The Coast Guard and Wrangell Search and Rescue tried to reach the vessel but were turned back by foul weather.

The Mexican drug cartels once again have taken deadly aim against U.S. law enforcement. This time the narco terrorists intentionally rammed their smuggling panga boat against an approaching Coast Guard inflatable which resulted in the death of Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III and the injury of another guardsman after they fell into the sea off the southern California coast as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Two suspects have been detained. The narco insurgents from Mexico increasingly are targeting U.S. officials on both sides of the border: last August two CIA officials were injured in a shooting ambush against...

PORT OF HUENEME, Calif. (KABC) -- A member of the U.S. Coast Guard was killed in the line of duty when his boat was rammed by a drug smuggler's craft. Law enforcement sources told ABC News that the Coast Guard intercepted two boats - a pleasure craft and a small panga boat - near San Clemente Island in Santa Barbara County at about 1 a.m. Sunday. The panga, which was operated by Mexican Nationals, was carrying marijuana. According to initial reports, the Coast Guard took the pleasure craft into custody and detained two people on board. Then, the Coast Guard...

The Coast Guard rescued 14 people from life rafts in the Atlantic Ocean approximately 90 miles southeast of Hatteras, N.C., Monday, Oct. 29, and two people remain missing. The first MH-60 Jayhawk crew arrived on scene at approximately 6:30 a.m. and hoisted five people into the aircraft, and a second helicopter arrived and rescued nine people and all were taken to Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C., with no life-threatening conditions. U.S. Coast Guard video by Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, N.C.

Nearly a year after Occupy Buffalo protesters camped out in Niagara Square, they have discovered that the Coast Guard was monitoring their activities, according to documents obtained last week through a Freedom of Information request. "Everybody thinks FBI, CIA, but no one thinks Coast Guard," said Michael Kuzma, a lawyer who has worked with the organization. The Coast Guard, aware of the unrest in December in Oakland, Calif., where Occupy protesters targeted ports, was monitoring public websites for planned activities but found low or negligible threats to its interests, the documents show. "Our concern was ensuring safety, ensuring the integrity...

The United States Coast Guard was established August 4, 1790.United States Coast Guard Tribute "Semper Paratus"US Coast Guard home page

ERWIN, TN — Unicoi County Sheriff Mike Hensley said the outcome of arrest could have been much worse for a Roan Mountain man taken into custody earlier this week after he allegedly picked the wrong group of hikers to attempt to take hostage. Marcus F. Birchfield, 40, 962 Hampton Creek Road, Roan Mountain, was arrested by the Unicoi County Sheriff’s Department and charged with four counts of aggravated kidnapping, impersonating a police officer, going armed, possession of a schedule II drug and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Proposed US Military buildup under a conservative U.S. Administration circa 2012-2024 CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE The following plan is based on a major US economic turnaround based on sound Free Market principles geared to US interests, energy independendece, a balanced budget, stabilization of Social Security & Medicare & eliminating unessary and wasteful entitlements & entire federal agencies. It is also based,under a conservative leadership in Washington, on adopting lower corporate and individual income taxes so the revenue to the treasury expands and increases significantly which will fuel the buildup necessary to remain technologically superior by two generations...

WASHINGTON -- When a boat springs a leak, it's often the Coast Guard to the rescue. But who rescues the Coast Guard when one its new ships does the same thing? Capt. Charles Cashin, who commands the Coast Guard's newest national security cutter, the Stratton, said he called in engineers last month when his crew discovered a trio of "pinholes" and a fourth hole "slightly smaller than a golf ball" in the ship's hull.

The Coast Guard needs to call more attention to its undersized fleet, according to Congressional Research Service expert Ron O’Rourke. While the sea service has publicized its requirement list, “the other part [of the discussion] is the extent to which that program of record will permit the Coast Guard to perform its projected missions. That’s the part that doesn’t get talked about generally,” O’Rourke explained at the 2012 Sea-Air-Space convention in Washington, D.C.