Free Republic

Two teenage girls were posing for selfies when they were killed by a plane in Mexico earlier this week, according to media reports. El Diario de Chihuahua said Monday that Nitzia Mendoza Corral, 18, and Clarissa Morquecho Miranda, 17, were hit while standing on the plane's landing strip after leaving a horse race March 26 in Chínipas, Chihuahua. The publication reported that the pair could not hear the plane coming because nearby horse races were so loud. The teens were hit in the head by one of the plane's wings, according to the outlet. On Facebook, a woman who appears...

Attorneys: Navy arguments, findings 'divorced from reality' By BILL SANDIFER Staff Writer Attorneys suing the Navy to stop construction of an outlying landing field in Washington County contend the Navy's account of environmental studies outlined in its last federal court brief is "divorced from reality." Law teams representing the Charlotte-based firm of Kennedy Covington and the Chapel Hill Southern Environmental Law Center office responded Dec. 20 with a brief discounting Navy contentions that it had "fully complied" with National Environmental Policy Act requirements. "(T)he Navy paints a different -- but highly sanitized -- version of the process it followed," argues...

WDN News Analysis: OLF, chicken or egg? By BILL SANDIFER, Staff Writer The Pentagon has frequently cited the "fog of war" to describe confusion that can scramble the best-laid battle strategies. That same phenomenon may now beset circumstances surrounding the evolving decisions that led to the Navy's selection of Washington County for its preferred outlying landing field site. Just what came when -- and in what order -- now befuddles many who have followed the process since its inception. And the very record that reflects that evolution now appears subject to different interpretations by the Navy and OLF opponents. One...

Navy top gun calls the shots By BILL SANDIFER, Staff Writer As the Navy skated on the thinning ice surrounding its justification for a Washington County outlying landing field, a former Tiger Team member, Navy Cmdr. John Robusto, penned a document titled, "OLF justification verbiage." That paper was circulated among Tiger Team members who had been polishing the language to pass muster with high-level Navy officials. That account is gleaned from a court brief summarizing more than 200,000 Navy documents turned over to OLF opponents' attorneys under court order. Those documents form the backbone of the latest brief filed by...