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WASHINGTON, May 13, 2010 – Afghan President Hamid Karzai, flanked by America’s top defense leaders, walked among the white marble tombstones at Arlington National Cemetery today, a silent tribute to U.S. servicemembers who made the ultimate sacrifice, many while battling terrorism in Afghanistan.Video Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, right, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and John C. Metzler Jr., superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery, tour the cemetery's Section 60, in Arlington, Va., May 13, 2010. DoD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Navy Adm. Mike...

A New Jersey judge-cum-filmmaker has chosen to step down from the bench rather than abide by a dictum from state judicial authorities that he not publicize his satirical movie painting President Obama as a modern-day Faust. Kenneth Del Vecchio quit his North Arlington municipal court judgeship on May 3, the day the New Jersey Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Extrajudicial Affairs directed that he should not be interviewed or participate in any press or publicity that may accompany the film, "O.B.A.M. Nude," which was to be released the next day. It was a letdown for Del Vecchio, who has been...

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY - 23 year old, Staff Sgt. James R. Patton, an Army Ranger, stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, was laid to rest yesterday, at Arlington National Cemetery. Accepting the flag was his young widow, Beatriz and infant daughter, Cecilia. His parents and sister-in-law also received flags. Staff Sgt. Patton was remembered today by many. He was a member of Company B, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. In addition to his wife and daughter, those attending were his parents, siblings, in-laws, multiple family and friends, military comrades, including the Patriot Guard Riders. Staff Sgt. Patton died April 18, 2010,...

ARLINGTON, Va. - A lawsuit which could delay the Virginia HOT lanes project will go forward, a U.S. District Court ruled Thursday. The suit, filed by the Arlington County Board, says the high occupancy toll lanes planned for a stretch of Interstate 95/395 are intended to benefit mainly rich, white, suburban and rural residents of Stafford and Spotsylvania counties. The new toll road is planned to run between Spotsylvania County and the D.C. line. Arlington says the added traffic would come at the expense of the county's diverse urban population and constitute a violation of civil rights. "We'll find out...

Note: The following text is a quote: April 16, 2010 ICE agents seize $8 million helicopter planned for illegal shipment to Iran ARLINGTON, Texas - Special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday seized a Bell helicopter with an estimated value of $8 million that was destined for shipment to Iran in violation of trade sanctions. Federal agents had first grounded the helicopter in its Arlington, Texas, hangar in December. The aircraft is owned by the Italian company Tiber Aviation. U.S. Federal District Judge John McBryde, Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division, signed the civil arrest...

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a touching and poignant remembrance written by Jo Dermody. Mrs. Dermody wrote this response after reading an RFFM.org column titled, "Arlington Natl. Cemetery's Old Guard: Not All of Washington, D.C. Shut Down During Snow Storm" http://rffm.typepad.com/republicans_for_fair_medi/2010/02/arlington-cemetery-honor-guard-not-all-of-washington-dcshut-down-during-snow-storm-by-lyle-j-rapacki.html Mrs. Dermody gives a description of her husband's burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Though John Dermody does not rest in the Tomb of the Unknowns, his body lays in hallowed ground, but his spirit resides in a Heavenly place. My husband John was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on May 15, 2007. My four kids wanted him there. He...

Arlington police said William R. Bumbrey III, who was suspected of stealing from a nearby pharmacy, was on the platform at the Pentagon City Metro station when an officer approached him. Police said the officer used his Taser, which administers an electric jolt and is designed to be safer than using a firearm, after Bumbrey became aggressive and refused to respond to spoken orders. . . . "He was still struggling," Nosal said. She said that because Bumbrey apparently did not react to the Taser shot, police question whether the Taser made contact with him. . . . Bumbrey was...

YORK It took 41 years, but a York County airman missing in action since the Vietnam War has finally been laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery after his remains were positively identified earlier this year. Melvin Douglas Rash, of Grafton, was buried with full military honors Dec. 7 at the revered Washington-area cemetery. He had been missing since 1968, when his Air Force C-130 airplane was presumably shot down over Vietnam. After years of dead ends, the plane's wreckage was finally positively identified in 2002 in a jungle area near the Laotian border. It took six years before military...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12, 2009 – The Arlington Wreath Project, an unofficial national tradition, prompted about 6,000 volunteers to wake up extra early this morning to help place 16,000 wreaths on graves at Arlington National Cemetery. "It's really nice that America still remembers our troops," said Nikki Bunting, the widow of Army Capt. Brian Bunting, who died in Afghanistan in February 2009. She visited her husband's grave with their children, 2-year-old Connor and 5-week-old Cooper. “It's a sad sight, but it's really beautiful. It reminds us that people care,” she said. Morrill Worcester, president of Maine-based Worcester Wreath Company, started the...

Capt. John Gaffaney Capt. John Gaffaney, 56, was a psychiatric nurse who worked for San Diego County, Calif., for more than 20 years and had arrived at Fort Hood the day before the shooting to prepare for a deployment to Iraq. Born in Williston, N.D., Gaffney had served in the Navy and later the California National Guard as a younger man, his family said.

The fight over Robert E. Lee's beloved home—seized by the U.S. government during the Civil War—went on for decades One afternoon in May 1861, a young Union Army officer went rushing into the mansion that commanded the hills across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. "You must pack up all you value immediately and send it off in the morning," Lt. Orton Williams told Mary Custis Lee, wife of Robert E. Lee, who was away mobilizing Virginia's military forces as the country hurtled toward the bloodiest war in its history. Mary Lee dreaded the thought of abandoning Arlington, the 1,100-acre...

A burial at Arlington National Cemetery Friday had all the trimmings of a proper military funeral except one thing, the soldier’s remains. It's theft in front of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. has left the family distraught. The urn containing the remains of bronze star and two purple hearts winner Army Colonel Norbert Otto Schmidt was taken from his family’s SUV just before the funeral. The thieves also stole a computer and other items from the vehicle. The ceremony had to be moved to a different part of the cemetery but the gravestone will be moved to its proper...

“People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” George Orwell Veteran’s Day is a time to remember “All gave some….Some gave all.”Before reaching the new gravestones in Arlington National Cemetery’s ‘Section 60’ it’s easy to recognize why a simple, quilted, patch of green grass and white stones buried alongside the quiet banks of the Potomac River troubles the heart.Names etched into fresh marble tell the sad tale of early death …Travis L. Youngblood…. Justin Ray Davis….Andy D. Anderson….Thomas J. Barbieri Jr….. Kenneth E. Zeigler II….James R. McIlvaine …....

<p>This is an early notice that we have permits for ALL of the Memorial Circle in front of Arlington Cemetery. We’ve already had our preliminary meeting with the National Park Service and everything is a GO.</p> <p>We will be there on March 20,2010 when ANSWER, World Can’t Wait and other anti-war, anti-troop, anti-American groups gather on the Mall and march to the Pentagon.</p>

Prince William County decided not to join Arlington County in its lawsuit against high-occupancy toll lanes on Interstates 95 and 395, citing what it characterizes as race-baiting and class warfare in the suit. The county considered joining the suit because it shared concerns about the HOT lanes’ proceeding without a proper environmental study and their effect on traffic, but Board Chairman Corey Stewart, R-At large, said the board unanimously agreed Arlington’s suit raised too many concerns. “The board had a closer look at the suit and there are allegations in there about Pierce Homer, the secretary of transportation, and about...

Here is a CNN report showing the location in Arlington National Cemetery where Sen. Ted Kennedy is being buried today. He will be buried near the graves of his two brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy - both of whom were assassinated. The hillside location looking out over he cemetery and toward the Lincoln Memorial is where President John Kennedy stood just shortly before his assassination and said, "I could stay here forever." . . . . . (Watch Video)

A photo gallery in remembrance

The families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are being told to wait -- sometimes two months -- until their loved ones can be buried with full honors in Arlington National Cemetery. The hallowed memorial site, which handles up to 27 burials a day, is so overwhelmed with the bodies of elderly veterans and young soldiers that families are told they'll have to go without full-honors ceremonies if they want a timely burial, according to a spokesman.

July 17, 2009 | A few days after Memorial Day, I walked across the sprawling, plush lawn of Arlington National Cemetery. I headed toward Section 60, a remote area of the famous burial ground, where 600 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest. Gina Gray, former public affairs officer at the cemetery, had testified that mismanagement at Arlington had resulted in callous treatment of personal mementos and artifacts left on grave sites in Section 60. The sun was out after several days of rain. As I approached the gravestones, I saw that Gray was right. Left out...

Salon.com has a disheartening story about the troubles at the national cemetery at Arlington, Virginia, those sacred grounds were thousands upon thousands of our nation’s heroes and notables have been buried. Infuriatingly, it seems that cemetery records are a mess, some of them not corresponding to headstones, many garbled or lost. This is the nation’s most revered cemetery yet some soldier’s names are lost to the permanent record, some burials are unknown because of failed record keeping, it is even thought that some headstones are on the wrong graves. In 2004 and 2005, Arlington conducted a pilot project to...