Free Republic

To close out her 2019, Lupita Hernandez stopped after every mile to plant a small flag along Interstate-10 between Houston and San Antonio. Each pause in her 200-mile run was to honor a fellow veteran battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), something she has dealt with since she retired from the Marines in 2004. PTSD still affects her life each day, whether personally or in Hernandez’s work in the Veteran Treatment Court in Harris County, Texas. On average, 22 veterans commit suicide everyday, and that’s a statistic that is always on her mind. “I wanted to bring awareness to the stigma...

December 7,1941 – A Few Personal Memories 64 years ago today , I was “almost eight” : one of three brothers,living on a family farm in New York state. The day started out like most : we were up at the crack of dawn,because there were cows to be milked ,a wood stove to be lit, and a hearty breakfast to be wolfed down before we changed clothes for church. Like most kids my age, my thoughts were pre-occupied with Christmas-but it would be a long time before anyone felt really “merry” again. That evening was spent, huddled around the...

The other night Ann Coulter asked my boss, Chris Ruddy how old I am. That got me thinking that since late next week I'll be having a birthday, it might be instructive to recall not how old I am chronologically, but how old I am to be able to remember a whole lot of stuff. My friend Michael Reagan, no spring chicken himself, was kind enough the other day to tell me that I am as old as dirt, and suggested that I had been around long enough to have been baptized by John the Baptist. That's not quite true,...