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BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, May 11, 2006 – Losing a loved one to cancer is a hardship for anyone who goes through it, but one soldier deployed to Afghanistan learned how to turn his pain into motivation. Army 1st Lt. Michael G. Clark, Task Force Muleskinner air movement officer, does routine stretches here prior to his three-mile training run for the Komen Pittsburgh Race for the Cure. Clark and his family have been volunteering time to raise money for the race since 2001. Photo by Sgt. Michael J. Taylor, USA  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The Komen Pittsburgh...

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2006 – When the premier medical centers from the Army and Navy merge into one joint facility in Bethesda, Md., in 2011, the rich heritage and world-class treatment reputation of Walter Reed Army Medical Center will continue under the same name at a different location, the hospital's commander said here April 30. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission announced the Defense Department initiative to close Walter Reed on May 13, 2005. The famed military medical facility, which is a monument to a long tradition of patient care, medical research and educational development, will continue its legacy...

The nation's economy regained momentum in the first quarter of the year as it recovered from the hurricanes of 2005, the Commerce Department reported yesterday, growing at a rate of 4.8 percent, compared with 1.7 percent in the previous quarter. It was the hottest annualized pace for the gross domestic product in 2 1/2 years, with robust spending by consumers, business and government all doing their part. "This rapid growth is another sign that our economy is on the fast track," President Bush said. But the Commerce Department report was no surprise to economists, who expected a bounce-back from the...

HEY CLINTON! (RELATIVE) SIZE DOESN'T MATTER. by Mia T, 4.27.06   "I thought of the grand size of this. Then I realized that if you go to the White House and look at all the portraits of the presidents, there are some that are so big they have to be hung in a special space down in the ground floor and if you really look at the size of the presidents' portraits, there are [sic] an inverse relationship to their importance to the country and American history. So I'm at least apprehensive about that." bill clinton National Portrait Gallery,...

What Bush fails to see at the border By Ronald F. Maxwell Published April 6, 2006 Dear President Bush, Perhaps you know me from my work. I wrote and directed the movies "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals." Walking Civil War battlefields, soaking up the letters and diaries of that generation, re-creating the world of our ancestors -- all this has given me a deep appreciation for our country. My dad was with the Army Air Corps in North Africa while your dad was in the Pacific. My French mother was liberated in Tunisia and became a lawful immigrant to the...

George W. Bush is taking time to explain himself, open up to the public in new ways and court the U.S. Congress as he tries to breathe life into a presidency beset by sagging ratings and influence. With a job-approval rating under 40 percent, Bush, who went to his Crawford ranch for a quiet weekend, has a long way to go. Aides acknowledge it will take a while to rebuild his image, and much will depend on the outcome of the Iraq war. White House staffers, who have long limited the president's appearances to speeches and photo opportunities with little...

Last week, I published a new book, "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy." A lot of my friends are not happy with me for writing it, and I have been embraced by a number of people on the left whom I would ordinarily consider my political enemies. Both are mistaken about why I wrote the book and what I hope to accomplish with it.Some of my former friends on the right have attacked me as an opportunist who sold out his party and his president to get a best-seller. They would not think so...

Jimmy Carter has been trying to build a legacy recently by trying to make people forget his presidency. What is Carter's real legacy? Let's see: The Real Jimmy Carter by Steven F. Hayward The Nobel Prize is just the beginning: Jimmy Carter is enjoying a new day in the sun, with left-wing historians taking a "fresh look" at his disastrous presidency and trying to bamboozle Americans into thinking that it was actually successful. This ongoing Saint Jimmy campaign would be laughable if it weren't part of a larger strategy to whitewash the records of failed Democrats and justify Carter's outsize...

American politics today is not just about winning elections or prevailing on issues. It's about delegitimizing, or preventing the delegitimization of, our presidents. This thought sprang into my head as I was reading the angry and sometimes obscene Democratic Web logs and noted the preoccupation of some bloggers with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, now seven years in the past. For them this was a completely illegitimate exercise, because Clinton was being attacked for his sex life. I think this is wrong, since reasonable people could either (a) say Clinton deserved impeachment because he lied under oath in a federal...

t's the end of an era – Alan Greenspan has stepped down as chairman of the Federal Reserve after 18 years at the helm. Now it's time to examine the myths regarding his long tenure as chief steward of the American economy. Many have been quick to lavish praise on Greenspan when he announced he would step down on Jan. 31. "He has a legitimate claim to being the greatest central banker who ever lived," Princeton University economist Alan Blinder, who spent 19 months as the Fed's No. 2 in the mid-1990s, wrote in a paper. President Bush went so...

John Whyte commanded three companies, including a rifle company in Iraq. John was killed in an accident after returning from combat, when a car struck him while he was standing on the side of a Kansas City highway. There is a proverb that reads, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." Those who knew John might change it to read, "As iron sharpens iron, so John Whyte sharpens those around him." He was on a self-imposed mission to be the most effective leader that he could be, and even better, he was on a self-imposed mission to help...

F A C T O R 8: THE ARKANSAS PRISON BLOOD SCANDAL(... or how can Hollywood support a clinton, Mr. Gere?)  

 AFTERWORD: ON CLINTON SMALLNESS--BRINKLEY MISSES THE POINT THE FAILED, DYSFUNCTIONAL CLINTON PRESIDENCY(DECONSTRUCTING CLINTON'S HOFSTRA SPEECH) part1: The "Brinkley" Lie   by Mia T, 12.27.05   One of the American historians I most admire, Douglas Brinkley out there, sitting here, was quoted in the paper today as saying that I would be viewed as a great president except for the fact of the impeachment, which is just there. bill clintonHofstra apologia November 11, 2005 clinton's ranking will likely get worse over time. Economic issues fade in importance. Moral issues presist and grow. (paraphrase) Douglas Brinkley February 2000(discussing C-SPAN PRESIDENTS POLL)...

THE FAILED, DYSFUNCTIONAL CLINTON PRESIDENCY(DECONSTRUCTING CLINTON'S HOFSTRA SPEECH) part1: The "Brinkley" Lieby Mia T, 12.26.05 (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)   ne would think that after bill clinton's shameless--pathetic, really--Hofstra apologia, Doris Kearns Goodwin and those 400 other hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton retrograde-obsessing historiographers would finally get it. But then, we are talking leftist lobe here.... The speech, full of poses, poll-tested phrases and prevarication, was just another example of the clintons' utter contempt. For the people, for the presidents, for the presidency, for the country, for the Constitution... and, ultimately I suspect, for themselves. This endeavor is the...

CHRIS MATTHEWS: 'BUSH BELONGS ON MOUNT RUSHMORE'IF HE WINS 'GREATEST GAMBLE SINCE ROOSEVELT BACKED BRITAIN BEFORE WWII' (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) WHY DID BILL CLINTON IGNORE TERRORISM?Was it simply the constraints of his liberal mindset, or was it something even more threatening to our national security?by Mia T, 8.18.05 (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) thanx to jla and Wolverine for the audio "Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in '91 and he went to the Sudan. We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America...

Eight Republican members in the House of Representatives Tuesday praised the progress being made in the Iraq war and called on the American people to demonstrate the support necessary to make that conflict part of the United States' "legacy of liberty." On the same day that Vice President Dick Cheney insisted in a speech that an early withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq would be "unwise in the extreme," the GOP congressmen used a news conference to emphasize the accomplishments made by coalition troops in that Middle East country. "I think one message that came to all Americans after 9/11...

AL ASAD, Iraq (Nov. 22, 2005) -- For many Marines, the Corps becomes a surrogate family as soon as young recruits step on the yellow footprints at Marine Corps Recruit Depots. But, for Lance Cpl. Shannon M. Flaherty, a Sewell, N.J., native, joining the Marine Corps was just another page out of her family’s history book. Flaherty, a 23-year-old, CH-53 avionics technician with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 466, is a third-generation Marine. Fate, chance or a combination of both recently brought Flaherty and her father Chief Warrant Officer 3 James M. Flaherty together for a few days in an unlikely...

D U B Y A vs. B U B B A the truman factor by Mia T, 11.19.05 TRUMAN & BUSH Give 'em hell, Dubya? by Jay Ambrose New York Post (print edition) 11.19.05 George W. Bush's approval ratings are at an all-time low for his presidency--37 percent--and his politiial opponents, seeing that he is down, have begun kicking him especially hard, even to the point of doing their best to make us lose the war in Iraq. For comfort, the president might reflect that approval ratings are sometimes directly contradicted by later, more reflective judgment. He might think...

HANNIBAL, N.Y. (AP) — Some boys and girls in an Oswego County school district must sit in separate sections of their school buses following the arrest of two students for engaging in sexual activity on their ride home. State police said a 14-year-old boy was charged in juvenile court with forcing a 13-year-old girl into a sexual act and a 16-year-old boy was charged with a misdemeanor count of sexual misconduct involving a 14-year-old girl. Investigator Stephen Cadwell said the Hannibal Central Schools students were all on the same after-hours bus ride Nov. 7. "These cases are coincidental," Cadwell said....

Yitzhak Shamir Validated: THE CLINTONS ARE "A GREAT DANGER TO JEWS" [and to America and the world] by Mia T, 11.15.05 "I view Hillary Clinton as a great danger to Jews if she is elected."   former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir Jewish Press, July 2000   Clinton also referred to the Oslo peace process -- by any standard a total and abject failure -- "our best chance for a lasting and comprehensive peace." I'm surprised he wasn't booed off the stage. "If you work for peace and fail, fewer people will die than if you do not work...