Free Republic

Obama was caught without his prepared remarks Friday afternoon, leading him shout for his aides as they frantically looked for a paper copy of his statement. Obama, who rarely goes off script during his statements, acknowledged to his San Jose, Calif., audience that he couldn’t make a speech without the prepared version in front of him. “I want to thank everybody who’s here. I think there’s only one problem, and that is that my remarks are not sitting here,” Obama said.

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md., March 17, 2006 – Tucked away on a sliver of land at this Army facility in Maryland is a cluster of ordinary-looking, tan-colored buildings encircled by a chain link fence. What goes on inside these buildings, however, is anything but ordinary. A soldier at the Joint Personal Effects Depot cleans a wounded soldier's footlocker, March 16. Photo by Steven Donald Smith  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The buildings are home to the Joint Personal Effects Depot, where all the personal belongings of servicemembers killed and wounded during the war on terrorism are meticulously processed...

Report: Alabama handled Katrina pretty well Thursday, February 16, 2006 By SEAN REILLY Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Alabama officials generally responded well to Hurricane Katrina but encountered some friction in dealing with their federal counterparts and need to focus more on providing temporary housing for future storm victims, according to a House committee's findings released Wednesday. The report notes the racial sensitivities surrounding Gov. Bob Riley's order to do criminal background checks on out-of-state evacuees housed in state parks but expresses no conclusions on whether that approach was warranted. At a committee hearing in November, Riley said he wanted to...

ZHUKOVSKY, Russia, Aug. 18, 2005 – As far as security forces troops are concerned, protecting aircraft in one location is like protecting aircraft in another. The scenery may change, but the procedures don't - unless, of course, the aircraft are in the former Soviet Union. For the 17 members of the 48th Security Forces Squadron from Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England, protocol in protecting U.S. aircraft at the Moscow International Air Show and Space Salon at Ramenskoye Airfield here is a bit different from what they're used to following. The security forces members here are not armed, as part of...