Edward Lannigan has a box full of medals that testify to his heroic service in the Pacific Theater during World War II, including his presence at Iwo Jima, the bloodiest battle in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps. The battle began 65 years ago this weekend.
In Lannigan's box are two Purple Hearts, a Silver Medal, two presidential citations and other awards attached to fading ribbons, small but poignant recognition of the bravery of a young man — a boy, really — who would return home from war with shrapnel in his skull and only one functional arm and hand.
But the medals are not on display. They live inside the box in a dark corner of the bottom drawer of the desk in his study.
There are many veterans who proudly showcase their war-related decorations. Lannigan is not one of them.
A Haitian attorney says 10 Americans detained in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country after the Jan. 12 earthquake have been charged with child kidnapping.Oh my. It seems we've misplaced some of those foreign aid checks with all the zeros on them. Perhaps some more reasonable charges would help us find them...
Edwin Coq says the Americans also are charged with criminal association. The 10 appeared in court Thursday and were whisked away to a jail in Haiti's capital of Port-au-Prince.
Coq attended the session and has represented the group here.
"It is so different from the United States. It seemed to have a history, and the buildings are years and years and years old. Here in the United States an old building is about 17 (years old), and over there it's from 500 B.C., it's incredible," she said.Really?! Years and years and years old! Actually in 500 B.C. (and I'm sure you meant B.C.E. you insensitive christocentric American!) Iberia was being colonized by Greeks. Pretty much everything they built is a bit "run down" now. And really Gwen, everything in the United States is about 17 years old? Ah yes, I remember back in 1990s when America opened and they built the Old North Church and Faneuil Hall, and it seems like just yesterday they laid the final brick for Independence Hall, and what a sight to see the helicopter raise the capstone for the Washington Monument up and into place...
That Mr. Zelaya acted as if he were above the law, there is no doubt. While Honduran law allows for a constitutional rewrite, the power to open that door does not lie with the president. A constituent assembly can only be called through a national referendum approved by its Congress [...]This was not a coup against Zelaya. It was the prevention of a coup by Zelaya. The military refused to help him improperly change the constitution. The Congress, Attorney General, and the Supreme Court all said the President was acting illegally. Now Congress has constitutionally appointed the next President according to the line of succession, and the next elections will not be disrupted. If anyone was attempting a "coup" it was Mr. Zelaya and his "Ballots by Hugo." Just look at who's supporting him: Chavez, Ortega, Castro, and the Obama administration.
Honduras is fighting back by strictly following the constitution. The Honduran Congress met in emergency session yesterday and designated its president as the interim executive as stipulated in Honduran law. It also said that presidential elections set for November will go forward. The Supreme Court later said that the military acted on its orders. It also said that when Mr. Zelaya realized that he was going to be prosecuted for his illegal behavior, he agreed to an offer to resign in exchange for safe passage out of the country. Mr. Zelaya denies it.
Many Hondurans are going to be celebrating Mr. Zelaya's foreign excursion. Street protests against his heavy-handed tactics had already begun last week. On Friday a large number of military reservists took their turn. "We won't go backwards," one sign said. "We want to live in peace, freedom and development." [...]
For Hondurans who still remember military dictatorship, Mr. Zelaya also has another strike against him: He keeps rotten company. Earlier this month he hosted an OAS general assembly and led the effort, along side OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, to bring Cuba back into the supposedly democratic organization. [...]
The struggle against chavismo has never been about left-right politics. It is about defending the independence of institutions that keep presidents from becoming dictators. This crisis clearly delineates the problem. In failing to come to the aid of checks and balances, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Insulza expose their true colors.
A former U.S. State Department official and his wife have been arrested for spying for the Cuban government for nearly 30 years, the Justice Department said on Friday. [...]Unlike most recent high profile traitors, these two pieces of filth were motivated by ideology, not money. Treason is inexcusable and they should face the ultimate punishment.
According to court documents, the two were recruited in 1979 by a Cuban official who directed Kendall Myers to pursue a job at either the State Department or the CIA.
Myers worked part-time at the State Department since 1977 and joined full-time in 1985, eventually working his way up to a position of senior analyst specializing in intelligence analysis on European matters.
With a Top Secret/SCI security clearance, he had daily access to classified information and viewed more than 200 intelligence reports about Cuba, according to the affidavit.
He retired in 2007.
Gwendolyn Myers worked at a bank. The two received messages from the Cuban government via shortwave radio and hand-passed messages, and typically passed their responses to handlers by hand.
One of the president's honored guests – Jim Norene, a member of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne – didn't make it.
"Last night, after visiting this cemetery for one last time, he passed away in his sleep," Obama told a solemn crowd of vets stretching farther than most eyes can see. "Jim was gravely ill when he left his home, and he knew that he might not return. But just as he did sixty-five years ago, he came anyway. May he now rest in peace with the boys he once bled with, and may his family always find solace in the heroism he showed here." [...]
"In the face of a merciless assault from these cliffs, you could have idled the boats offshore," Obama said. "Amid a barrage of tracer bullets that lit the night sky, you could have stayed in those planes. You could have hid in the hedgerows or waited behind the sea wall.
"At an hour of maximum danger, amid the bleakest of circumstances, men who thought themselves ordinary found it within themselves to do the extraordinary. They fought for their moms and sweethearts back home, for the fellow warriors they came to know as brothers. And they fought out of a simple sense of duty – a duty sustained by the same ideals for which their countrymen had fought and bled for over two centuries."
Nearly four years after hurricanes Katrina and Rita left a million Americans homeless, the government is threatening to throw thousands of storm survivors out of temporary federal housing.I'm sorry, but if you haven't gotten your act together after four years then you've just been sitting on your ass. Pack it up, move on, and accept the fact that you may not be able to live where you want too. The Nanny State's teat is dry.
A FEMA official told a House panel Friday that the government will send Katrina survivors still living in temporary housing eviction notices starting June 1 and try to connect them to agencies that can help them. But he also said it would be "some period of time," meaning months, before the evictions actually would begin.
The $5.6 billion housing assistance program that provided temporary trailers and hotel rooms to victims was supposed to end in 2007. But the deadline was extended by two years to May 1 of this year to help the more than 5,000 individuals and families still struggling to rebuild their lives. (At its peak, 143,000 households along the Gulf Coast were located in temporary housing units.)
But the Obama administration says they have to go by the end of the month or face eviction.
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