Free Republic

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is “continuing to assess the cause of the outage” that resulted in flights being temporarily grounded Wednesday morning, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a video update Wednesday afternoon. “The most important thing I want passengers to know is our number one priority is safety,” he began. “It’s one of the reasons why today for example, while this issue was being worked out on the system side, there was this ground stop of about an hour and a half nationwide to make absolutely sure out of an abundance of caution that no aircraft could take...

California officials need to add up the costs of all the state's clean-energy policies before adopting any more, according to a report issued Monday by a government oversight agency. The state has adopted a series of far-reaching energy reforms - boosting the use of renewable power and reining in greenhouse gases - without considering how each policy affects the others, the Little Hoover Commission argues in the report. Even worse, state officials have no clear idea how much all of those reforms, taken together, will cost. Californians could soon face a "rate impact bomb" of exploding electricity prices as a...

WASHINGTON - Congressional Democrats will have plenty to ponder during the Christmas-New Year recess. For instance, why did things go so badly this fall, and how well did their leaders serve them? Partisan players will quarrel for months, but objective analysts say the debate must start here: An embattled president made extraordinary use of his veto power and he was backed by GOP lawmakers who may have put their political fortunes at risk. Also, a new Democratic leadership team overestimated the impact of the Iraq war and the 2006 elections, learning too late they had no tools to force Bush...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7, 2007 – The first of five brigade combat teams to redeploy without being replaced has now departed Iraq, and most of the soldiers are home in Fort Hood, Texas, a senior Joint Staff official said today. With the departure of 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, commanders in Iraq have adjusted the force posture and will continue to make assessments before the next redeployments, Army Lt. Gen. Carter F. Ham, the Joint Staff director for operations, said in a Pentagon news briefing. Ham and Marine Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, the Joint Staff director for strategic plans and...

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 3, 2007 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived here today on a fact-finding mission to get a face-to-face assessment from commanders about conditions on the ground, particularly in the volatile southern region. The situation in the area will be the focus of a meeting the secretary is to attend next week in Scotland. Gates, on his third trip here as defense secretary, told reporters he also plans get input from President Hamid Karzai and Defense Minister Abdul Raheem Wardak, following up his and Wardak’s recent Pentagon visit. The secretary last visited Afghanistan in June. He acknowledged...

WASHINGTON, March 14, 2006 – Nearly three years into Operation Iraqi Freedom, it's fair for people to ask why the United States should see the mission through, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said today. In a Pentagon news briefing, Rumsfeld acknowledged Iraq is facing "a very difficult situation." Similar questions were raised in the past when the country confronted tough challenges, he said. And just as past generations endured tough times, so too must Americans today in Iraq. "Consider what the world would be like if, whenever things seem to go wrong or to have grown more difficult than expected,...