Free Republic

KABUL (Reuters) – NATO's top defense officials will examine proposals Saturday for a big troop surge to contain Afghanistan's escalating insurgency but any such move hinges on a decision by the U.S. president, NATO military officials said. The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has recommended sending at least 40,000 additional troops and trainers as part of a beefed-up counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, something being considered by the administration of President Barack Obama. Military representatives on NATO's Military Committee, who provide assessments for their political masters, met McChrystal on a three-day visit to Afghanistan that ended...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The central issue in the legal battle over Proposition 8 is whether the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage is a state constitutional amendment, which can be passed by initiative, or a constitutional revision, which can't. .. the question is whether the scope of a minority group's rights in California should be decided by the voters or the courts. The state Supreme Court may decide today whether to dismiss or grant review of six lawsuits challenging Prop. 8, approved with a 52 percent majority on Nov. 4. It's the same court that ruled 4-3 on May 15 that...

RICHMOND, Va. - With designs on the White House, Republican Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record) hoped all along his 2006 Virginia re-election campaign would draw national attention. But what he probably didn't have in mind was a stumble-marred race that is so close his party recently felt obliged to pay for $1.4 million in television ads to safeguard a seat long thought safe. Allen's attempt to hold off Democratic challenger Jim Webb is one of four races that strategists in both parties say will likely settle the overall battle for Senate control. In a reflection of the stakes,...

New Orleans Election Hinges on Race and Not RebuildingBy ADAM NOSSITER Published: April 4, 2006 NEW ORLEANS, April 3 — As the first vote since Hurricane Katrina, the April 22 mayoral primary was supposed to be about the critical choices facing this battered city — an issues-filled debate about whose reconstruction plan was best. Instead, with the city's majority-black status in doubt for the first time in decades, one dominant motif has emerged in the campaign: race, which for nearly 30 years has been merely a muted subtheme in politics here. Since 1978, New Orleans has elected black mayors, and...

You'd think the details would be scorched into a veteran's memory like a cattle brand: ducking gunfire, seeing someone die in battle, bracing against a blast's concussion. Who could forget? Yet such memories not only blurred over time in one classic psychological study of soldiers, but mutated too. Old recollections faded; new mental pictures took over. Whole new chunks of personal history materialized from the muck of memory. "People went from, `Yes, I saw one friend killed,' to `I saw no friends killed,' to `I saw two friends killed,' to `I saw three friends killed,'" said Dr. Andy Morgan, a...