Free Republic

KINGWOOD -- Two rifles broke. Two targets fell down, during the match, but it wasn't enough to spoil the Preston High JROTC Rifle Team's concentration. The team won a third-straight West Virginia Junior Olympics Three-Position Air Rifle championship last weekend in Buckhannon, bringing home gold and bronze medals from the competition. Another area team, the Mason-Dixon Rifle Club Juniors, comprised of teens from Preston and Monongalia counties, won a silver medal in the precision shooting competition at the meet. The school's A Team of Rustin Ault, Warren Bittinger, Tim Gordon and Mike Witt captured the gold medal. The B Team...

Realistic-looking rifles need to go Recently, a few friends and I were walking to Case Hall for dinner. As we neared our destination, we encountered a group of men about 100 feet in front of us who were dressed in full camouflage, carrying packs and had what appeared to be black M-16 assault rifles. I don't normally see people carrying assault weapons, so I was a little disturbed. I assumed this was part of an Army ROTC exercise, but there was no way for me to know for sure. (SNIP) I have been trying to contact Youatt for the last...

  'Run for Freedom' at Old Dominion University Honors War Dead By Donna MilesAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, April 7, 2004 — Navy and Army ROTC members, as well as students, faculty and staff at Old Dominion University and the local community are lapping the school's perimeter in Norfolk, Va., during a six-day "Run for Freedom" to honor every U.S. service member killed during the war on terror. Organized by Jason Redman, a Navy SEAL attending the university through the Navy's Seaman to Admiral Program, the event is a fundraiser to benefit families of fallen service members. Proceeds will...

A Manila court handed down the death penalty to a University of Sto. Tomas (UST) student for killing fellow student Mark Welson Chua, who had exposed corruption in the UST-Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) two years ago. The victim’s parents, Welson and Amet Chua, their daughter Charmaine, relatives and friends cried as a guilty verdict against accused Arnulfo Aparri Jr. was read in an open court by a staffer of Manila Judge Romulo Lopez of Regional Trial Court Branch 18. But for the mother, the conviction of only one of the killers is not enough to compensate for the death...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House moved Tuesday to deny defense-related funding to universities that don't provide ROTC programs and military recruiters equal access to their campuses. Opponents said the bill was an assault on university policies banning gay discrimination. Under the legislation, passed 343-81, universities would have to give military recruiters access to campus and to students that is equal in quality and scope as that provided to other employers. It also requires that colleges with ROTC programs submit an annual report to the Secretary of Defense confirming they will continue to support those programs. The measure, sponsored by Rep....

Recently there was an article in Newsweek, among what appears to be a standard array of disgraceful articles, called "American Terminator." It says that America is "an empire in all but name," going on to bemoan several problems that are hinderingour imperial power. The article identifies three "deficits" that we face in furthering our dominance. The first is an "economic deficit," which has been caused by growing economic weaknesses over the last quarter century or so. The second is a "manpower deficit," caused by a shortage of troops to occupy other countries. The third one is the most serious, an...

<p>Ryan Holets knows his road through the military might lead him to Baghdad or Fallujah, but the high school junior said he would have no problem putting himself in danger. "I'm definitely aware of it. I read a statistic that one out of four of all fighter pilots don't come back alive. I'd rather go out doing something I love than sit around and wait for something to happen," said Holets, 17, a junior at South Fayette High School.</p>

Cornell A. Wilson Jr., a 6-foot-2-inch, 215-pound, former high school baseball and football player, chose academics over sports in college. And even though he was in the Navy ROTC program, he chose a commission in the Marine Corps over one in the Navy. College was where young Wilson became fascinated by the gung-ho reputation, fellowship of valor and esprit de corps of America's warrior elite – the Marine Corps. The future Marine general loved sports, but during his college years, he opted for the oratorio choir, African-American Society and Semper Fidelis (Latin for "Always Faithful") Society, a student organization dedicated...

I am in my senior year of high school and have enrolled in some dual-enrollment courses in a local community college and the Army ROTC program in the UCF. I enrolled in the Army ROTC because I live only a short distance from the UCF but I am not sure I want to be in the Army. Could you tell me what the differences are between the Army and the Marines?

It took the words of three combat veterans yesterday to help Central High sophomore Jessica French understand what she and so many of her classmates have taken for granted. Jessica was one of 900 Central students who listened to World War II veterans Alvin LaRue Sr. and Jack Pittenger and Vietnam veteran Gordon Gutmann talk about their wartime experiences. Still, she knows that the ideals that those veterans fought to preserve, from the right to vote to freedom of speech, do not resonate with many of her classmates. "Not a lot of people get involved in the process," Jessica said....

About two weeks ago I picked up a new biography on Former President Bill Clinton. It was by British author Nigel Hamilton who wrote the biography on Field Marshall Montgomery of W.W.II fame and one on John F. Kennedy, "JFK: Reckless Youth". Having not read any of the previous books on Clinton I had expected this book to have a different take on Clinton only because it was written by Hamilton. I will have to point out I am from Arkansas so that is why I have an interest in reading this book. The opening chapters of this book have...

<p>BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- A group of law schools, professors and students is suing the Department of Defense, alleging its requirement that law schools allow military recruiters on campus violates the First Amendment.</p> <p>Many universities have barred recruiters, arguing the military's ban on homosexuals violated nondiscrimination rules.</p>

Our soldiers deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom have stirred the country with their courage, proficiency, patriotism and decency. These young men and women come from diverse ethnic, racial and social backgrounds. Many have gone to college. But the colleges they attended are not Harvard, Yale or Stanford. America's elite schools tend to regard the military as morally suspect. Students soon get the message that a career in the armed forces is unworthy of their consideration. The distaste of top-tier schools for the military is powerfully demonstrated when faculties deny the Reserve Officer Training Core (ROTC) access to the campus. Harvard,...

Our daughter has been receiving numerous college come-ons recently. Most of the elite schools sending out books and application material stress their diversity with academics being mentioned only secondarily. MIT's book had the disclaimer at the very first page, "Not just for geeks." Harvard, however, takes the cake for leftism out of control. Here follows their paragraph on ROTC. "Reserve Officers' Traning Corps courses are offered at MIT by three services and are open to Harvard students by cross-registration. At this time, it is the policy of the military services to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, a policy...

Police Corps starved for funds By David Keene Congress is notorious for lavishing money on programs, weapons systems and projects that everyone privately knows don't work or aren't worth a fraction of what we put into them. At the same time, smaller programs that actually work are often ignored because they are small or because they don't have high-powered sponsorship. The Police Corps may be just such a program. Adam Walinsky, an iconoclastic speechwriter for the late Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.), dreamed up the program in the late 70s and, after years of effort, finally managed to get it enacted...

Yale University is one of America's most venerable and influential institutions. The last three president have been Yalies (four, if you include co-president Hillary) along with numerous Supreme Court justices, Cabinet secretaries, dignitaries, writers, opinion-shapers and business leaders. Yet this aristocratic institution was the rude site of a professorial commencement "protest" when President Bush spoke at its graduation three years ago, has recently played host to a virulently anti-Semitic "poet" and refuses to honor and support the brave men and women of our armed forces whose sacrifices make its intellectual riches and freedoms possible.

For the following reasons, it is unthinkable that George W. Bush is the Commander in Chief --- 1. He got a draft notice but did not report 2. A Senator intervened on his behalf to keep him out 3. He lied to a survivor of the Bataan Death March 4. He led demonstrations against his country during war on foreign soil in which the U.S. flag was burned 5. He did not report to ROTC at the U of Arkansas as he had promised 6. In the letter to the survivor of the Bataan Death March he told the Colonel...

Graduation Present: It's Not 1968 at Columbia AnymoreBy Ron LewenbergFrontPageMagazine.com | May 9, 2003 Thirty-five years ago radical student activists, capitalizing on the anti-war movement and local issues, seized an administration building at Columbia University. The take-over of Hamilton Hall and other buildings lasted 8 days before the police broke it up. Unfortunately, the damage had been done to Columbia's reputation, and the administration, fearing future violence, began to slowly accede to the SDS radicals. Despite the presence of the Majority Coalition opposing the radicals, the faculty essentially capitulated during the takeover, when over 100 signed a resolution supporting the...

Regina Herzlinger is a professor at Harvard Business School. In her circle of friends, she said yesterday, it's not unusual for someone to know someone who was injured or even killed on Sept 11. ``So many were upper middle class people,'' she said. They were bond traders and stockbrokers and financiers; enormously prosperous, wonderfully smart. Yet the soldiers now fighting at least partly to avenge their deaths come from a different America. They're not poor, necessarily, but not rich either. Surely they're neither business tycoons nor investment bankers in training. Look at the daily thumbnail sketches in this newspaper. Most...

Looking through some of the digital images taken last weekend at Rally for America - Sacramento, this is our picture of the day. As you look at our friend Ed, a distinguished and decorated veteran, do you see the warmth and pride in his face as he listens to Virgil, a ROTC cadet.  Few of us could walk in his shoes, know the courage under fire, the war wounds or the memories Ed shares with his fellow veterans. But his face, with all the character and wisdom I see when we talk, says it all today... Virgil approaches the...