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CAMP TAQADDUM, Iraq (Nov. 3, 2005) -- When Marines departed Camp Lejeune, N.C. to continue the war on terrorism here, many said farewell to families knowing their next visit would have to wait until after the deployment. However, some married spouses never had to say goodbye. For married couple 1st Lt.’s Donald and Heather Traves, saying goodbye was more of a, “see you soon,” since they would be relatively close to each other deploying together. Although they are stationed on separate bases, this has not deterred the couple from keeping in touch, according to Donald, who is the officer in...

The Venona decodes, their meaning and interpretation, are too large a subject for this thread.

When Illinois Senator Richard Durbin apologized for his characterization of the interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay as being akin to those of the Nazis, Pol Pot, and Soviets, he said something that has always struck me as being odd coming from the likes of faux liberals. He said that he thought our troops were the best in the world, which is a variation on what anti-war faux liberals say when cornered with their attitudes about the war: "I support the troops." "I support the troops" is a nice, touchy-feely statement that few people can disagree with, but there is...

Thomas Sowell, writing on the pending Senate showdown over judicial confirmations, notes that: "A disinformation campaign has already been launched to depict judges who believe in following the written law as being "activist" conservatives, just like liberal activists." "Those who play this game of verbal equivalence can seldom, if ever, come up with concrete examples where conservative judges made rulings that went directly counter to what the written law says or who made rulings for which there is no written law." It is indeed remarkable that the opponents of many of the current nominees can go so far in their...

When some members of Congress violate the Constitution, how can we have any confidence in their leadership? Yet that is precisely the effect these unlawful filibusters of judicial nominees are having -- undermining confidence in the Senate. Instead of voting yes or no on President Bush's picks for certain federal judgeships, Democrats are refusing to allow a vote to even take place, using a Senate rule that no motion may come to a vote while still under discussion. The filibuster, as it's called, has been used by both sides for over a century and a half to delay votes while...

These are the times that try English majors’ souls. The sacred rules we were taught, and struggled to grasp and live by, are violated in the daily papers, not to mention radio. Doesn’t anyone these days know the difference between may and might? I grant there are gray areas where either can be argued. But there are some areas that aren’t gray: “I might go to the movies tonight.” I don’t want to seem priggish about this. I may wince inwardly at a split infinitive, and I try (with some strain) never to split one myself, but I don’t complain...

Many judges these days like to refer to the Constitution of the United States as a "living, breathing document", implying that its text is designed to be flexible. It is not. The Constitution is a set of rules, and like any other set of rules, it is meant to be strict and uncompromising. Of course, the Constitution can be modified through the amendment process, but once ratified, any amendment becomes like the rest of the Constitution; rigid. And while any amendment may be repealed, as was the case with the 18th Amendment (The Prohibition Act), until that happens, it is...

From whence cometh those fears?

In this maelstrom of crass commercialization and acrimony surrounding the day on which we celebrate your nativity, Jesus, I want to wish you a Happy Birthday. How remiss we are. The family of man is a distracted and rancorous lot, and as we scurry to and fro scratching items off our Christmas lists while others try to scratch your Holy Day off calendars, we forget what’s truly important. So my birthday gift to you will be, simply, to thank you for what really matters, all of which has been your gift to us.

You were hard-pressed to find the story or to see the images anywhere in the mainstream media. Three unarmed Iraqi election officials recently murdered in cold blood on their way to work – dragged from their car and shot in the head, execution style, by spineless terrorists. The entire massacre was caught on film. Their crime? Helping to further the cause of a free and democratic Iraq. Since the end of major combat operations, hundreds upon hundreds of innocent Iraqi men women and children have been deliberately targeted and blown limb from limb by foreign invaders – by the same...

America was not founded on the concept of a "wall of separation between church and state," it was founded upon pluralism. The "wall of separation" phrase does not appear in any of our founding documents; it is taken from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson. To base our laws on the correspondence of Jefferson, rather than the Constitution ratified by representatives of each of the original " united states ," is in direct opposition to our system of representative government. Jefferson was a brilliant man, but he also favored slavery and was fanatical about macaroni and cheese. However, slavery was...

  ADVENTThe word Advent is from the Latin adventus for "coming" and is associated with the four weeks of preparation for Christmas. Advent always contains four Sundays, beginning on the Sunday nearest the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, (November 30) and continuing until December 24. It blends together a penitential spirit, very similar to Lent, a liturgical theme of preparation for the Second and Final Coming of the Lord, called the Parousia, and a joyful theme of getting ready for the Bethlehem event.Since the 900s Advent has been considered the beginning of the Church year. This does not...

Victory At Yorktown: The Campaign That Won The Revolution by Richard M. Ketchum, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 350 pages. Index, maps, Notes, Principal Character bios. $27.50. “A surprising number of these men had six years of punishing, bloody warfare behind them; six years of hardship and suffering, hunger and tedium, no pay, and unparalleled neglect by their government and fellow Americans… some of these men standing under the hot Virginia sun were survivors of the fights at Concord and Bunker Hill, had suffered bitter defeat with Arnold and Montgomery before Quebec, had been part of the humiliating loss...

...Derrida... was... one of the most famous intellectuals of the past 40 years. His celebrity rivaled that of Jean-Paul Sartre. As the founder, honorary CEO and chief publicist for an abstruse philosophical doctrine he called "deconstruction," Mr. Derrida was celebrated and vilified in about equal measure.... What is deconstruction? ...[D]econstruction comes with a lifetime guarantee to render discussion of any subject completely unintelligible.... the view that the meanings of words are completely arbitrary and that, at bottom, reality is unknowable. [I]f you dress up the idea in a forbidding vocabulary, full of neologisms and recondite references to philosophy, then you...

The Ten Commandments    GRACE MACKINNON Dear Grace, My son and I were discussing the importance of the Ten Commandments and how they are to be used as a guide. He says they are part of the Old Testament and therefore we need not focus that much on them. His attitude towards them is that they are just a lot of "Do Nots." Can you help me explain why God gave us these commandments and why they are still important for us today? While it is certainly true that many people have this understanding or attitude towards the Ten...

  A Universal Mistake One of the most important of Ayn Rand's contributions to the field of epistemology is contained in the seventh chapter of her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology entitled, "The Cognitive Role of Concepts." In it she explains how the world we are conscious of is comprised of an infinite complexity of existents, events, and relationships and why it is not possible for us to comprehend this complexity simply by perceiving it. To understand it, we must "break it up," into manageable pieces we can identify and understand. This, Ayn Rand explains, is the role of concepts."The essence...

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge, dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc: Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that "speech, or... the press" also means the Internet, see Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997), and that "persons, houses, papers, and effects" also means public telephone booths, see Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases -- or even the...

At about 10 Minutes to Midnight I had a jolt of revelation That answered life's hardest question At least for the year gone by. I was partying with a friend Who had a bunch of us over To celebrate a new year And all the great things about the past one. I brought my friend a gift That I knew he would appreciate I dropped a C-Note on the liquor store And brought him over the good stuff. A solid, worthy Cognac Graced my elegant glass And shone like a precious garnet In the light and glow of celebration. I...

<p>Kwanzaa, being observed today through Jan. 1, is a celebration of African-American culture and a remembrance of its history, said Roxanne Chase-Clark, president of the United Families of African Descent. A Kwanzaa celebration will be held at 1 p.m. tomorrow at the Monmouth County Library Headquarters, 125 Symmes Drive, Manalapan. Admission is free.</p>

Just a week before Christmas I had a visitor. This is how it happened. I just finished the household chores for the night and was preparing to go to bed when I heard a noise in the front of the house. I opened the door to the front room, and to my surprise, Santa himself stepped out from behind the Christmas tree. He placed his finger over his mouth so I would not cry out. "What are you doing?" I started to ask him. The words choked in my throat, as I saw he had tears in his eyes. His...