Free Republic

These kinds of fires have occurred here regularly for decades. They are exacerbated this year because Southern California has had only 3” of rain in a year. Obviously, present efforts at prevention and firefighting are ineffective. What else must be done to stop future blazes? Television watchers in SoCal are treated to a steady diet of helicopters and fixed wing aircraft dropping water and fire retardant on the fires. While helpful, these efforts are like spitting on your fireplace fire. The amount of water is pitifully small, and much of what does get dropped vaporizes on its way down. These...

Paralyzed by an all-Iraq, all-war, all-the-time fever (not to mention a desperate opposition to the possibility of said war), the media managed to miss one of the central stories of President Bush's Crawford vacation: the administration's emerging plan to remake the structure of U.S. military forces. Yes, defense "transformaton" is about to rise from the grave, revitalized by the sweeping changes in American and international politics caused by the events of last September 11. And what appears to be a normal turning of the bureaucratic wheel -- the preparation of the 2004 defense budget request -- stands every chance of...