The remains of two U.S. soldiers killed during the Vietnam War when their helicopter gunship was hit by enemy fire have been identified and will be returned 40 years after the men went missing, the Defense Department announced. ...more

July 19, 2008

Despite a report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom that the Islamic Saudi Academy in Alexandria, Va., has continued to use textbooks that teach hatred of everyone not of their specific brand of faith, the U.S. State Department has yet to act to close the school. Officials of the academy, which has about 1,000 students in prekindergarten through grade 12, promised to excise passages in the textbooks that disparage Jews and Christians, but according to an examination by The Washington Post for the 2006-2007 school year, though "much of the controversial material had been removed, at least one book still contained passages that extolled jihad and martyrdom, called for victory over one's enemies and said the killing of adulterers and apostates was 'justified.'" ...more

July 19, 2008

You, Master Rall, either suffer from a hyperinflated ego or are inured by a consumptive cynicism. You blaspheme the service of more than 8,000,000 Americans who served honorably in Vietnam. As I read your warped diatribe, it occurs to me you are among the children we fought for in the steaming undergrowth of Southeast Asia and the frozen wastes of North Korea, not to mention the sands and deprivations of Iraq and Afghanistan. ...more

July 19, 2008

Americans often buy guns for self-defense, a purpose that now has Supreme Court validation. But according to advocates of gun control, those purchasers overlook the people who pose the greatest threat: themselves. Anyone who acquires a firearm, we are told, is inviting a bloody death by suicide. ...more

July 13, 2008

"One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War," by Michael Dobbs (Knopf, $28.95) ...more

July 13, 2008

It is understandable that those who think President Bush has done a poor job want to replace him with a Democrat they think might do a better one. What is not understandable is why voters, who think Congress has performed poorly, would vote to keep the Democratic majority in place and, according to many polls, expand it. ...more

July 13, 2008

President Bush will attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing, the White House said Thursday. The announcement quashed any talk of a presidential boycott over China's violent crackdown after anti-government riots and protests in Tibet. ...more

July 4, 2008

Clay Felker, 82, the far-sighted editor who founded New York magazine and helped launch the "New Journalism" of the 1960s, with its novelistic techniques and strong point of view, died Tuesday in New York of throat and mouth cancer. ...more

July 2, 2008

The U.S. Army has released a study that states that leaders in the United States were more concerned with winning the military battle in Iraq than what to do once it was concluded. That's not exactly earth-shattering news, since most of us already know that, but the historical report is interesting because it's the first major report issued by U.S. military criticizing civilian leaders. The study, "On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign" was written by Donald Wright and Col. Timothy R. Reese, along with the Army's Contemporary Operations Study Team, according to a Washington Post article. They say U.S. commanders lacked a realistic vision of what Iraq would look like after that triumph, according to the story. "The transition to a new campaign was not well thought out, planned for, and prepared for before it began," wrote Wright and Reese. "Additionally, the assumptions about the nature of post Saddam Iraq on which the transition was planned proved to be largely incorrect." ...more

June 30, 2008