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~ August 4th ~ ~ Happy 224th Birthday, US Coast Guard!! ~ Canteen Mission StatementShowing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies militaryand the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. From Flotilla 76, Oregon The United States Coast Guard, one of the country's five armed services, is a unique agency of the federal government. We trace our history back to 4 August 1790, when the first Congress authorized the construction of ten vessels to enforce tariff and trade laws and to prevent smuggling. Known variously through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries...

More than two-thirds of America's youth would fail to qualify for military service because of physical, behavioral or educational shortcomings, posing challenges to building the next generation of soldiers even as the U.S. draws down troops from conflict zones. The military deems many youngsters ineligible due to obesity, lack of a high-school diploma, felony convictions and prescription-drug use for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. But others are now also running afoul of standards for appearance amid the growing popularity of large-scale tattoos and devices called ear gauges that create large holes in earlobes.

LOS ANGELES – The U.S. Coast Guard says a man is "lucky to be alive" after he was rescued 11 days into an attempted kayak voyage from California to Hawaii. A helicopter spotted the 57-year-old man, who had turned back to California, in the Pacific on Tuesday about 60 miles southwest of Santa Barbara's Point Conception after he sent a distress call indicating equipment failure, the Coast Guard said in a statement. The helicopter directed a Coast Guard cutter crew to the man, who was found in good health, the statement said. His name was not released.

Today, the Post published excerpts of Bowe Bergdahl’s journal, along with emails and other writings, giving us the most intimate, complex, and in many ways sad view we’ve yet had of the young man who had been held prisoner by the Taliban for five years. What the journal ultimately shows suggests that as a partisan political issue, Bergdahl’s release is likely to fade before long. The right has gotten about as much as they can out of it, and now that we know how troubled Bergdahl was before he wandered off his base, they may just let it go. The...

If he couldn’t tend to the coasts, why’d the Army think he could handle the Taliban? The U.S. government confirmed Wednesday that Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was discharged early from the Coast Guard, after only 26 days in boot camp, two years before he tried to enlist in the Army. The fact raises questions on a third front that has nothing to do with how Bergdahl came to be captured by the Taliban, or how much the Obama Administration did to win his freedom May 31 in an exchange for five senior Taliban leaders: why did the Army let a failed...

Prior to his Army service, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was “administratively discharged” from the Coast Guard after only 26 days in 2006. U.S. Coast Guard and Army officials confirmed to CBS News that the sergeant who was recently exchanged for five Taliban detainees had joined the Coast Guard before the Army, but was dismissed for unclear reasons just 26 days later. Lt. Col. Elaine Conway told CBS News that the Army knew of Bergdahl’s discharge from the Coast Guard, and said they are “looking into” whether it was known at the time of his enlistment into the Army. An “uncharacterized discharge”...

Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. Army sergeant captured in Afghanistan and held for nearly five years before being traded for five top Taliban operatives, was discharged from the Coast Guard before he joined the Army, Fox News confirmed. An Army spokesman did not confirm reports that Bergdahl's discharge was due to psychological reasons or elaborate on the circumstances leading to his ouster in 2006. "We did confirm that Bergdahl was administratively discharged from the USCG prior to his enlistment to the U.S. Army,” the spokesman said.

CAMP PENDLETON — A surf contest pitting top area surfers from several branches of the armed forces against surfers from the British Army is set for May 24 at Camp Pendleton. This is the fourth year Red Bull is holding the Rivals Surf Competition on base, but the first year that the contest has international participants. The U.S. team’s 12 active-duty military surfers were picked based on performance at last month’stryouts at the base’s Del Mar Beach. Teams compete at the Del Mar Jetty in a modified version of the National Surf League’s game format. The one-day contest is similar...

The Coast Guard Auxiliary offers the following suggestions for recreational boaters in meeting this worthwhile resolution. "I will always wear a life jacket while underway." "I will get a vessel safety check prior to the start of boating season." "I will take a boating safety course to enhance my knowledge of safe boating practices." "I will not operate a vessel when impaired by drugs or alcohol." "I will not dump waste in area lakes and rivers while boating." "I will not transport invasive species from one body of water to another." "If going offshore, I will have a working VHF...

Maryland state police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department’s Federal Air Marshal Service. Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland’s Coast Guard service, took her private notes and government documents that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act during a predawn raid of her family home on Aug. 6. The documents, some which chronicled her sources and her work at the Times...

A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter. A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates...

The Obama administration has turned bureaucrats at environmental agencies into armed SWAT teams to conduct unprecedented raids on small mining operations for what used to be simple reviews of clean water permits. That’s according to Colorado Republican Rep. Doug Lamborn, chairman of the House Natural Resources subcommittee on energy and mineral resources, who held a hearing Thursday that examined the August raid of armed federal officials including the Environmental Protection Agency in Chicken, Alaska. Lamborn said the “EPA SWAT team of heavily armed and armored agents conducted paperwork inspections on small mining operations, in what appears nothing more than an...

The United States Coast Guard was established August 4, 1790.United States Coast Guard Tribute "Semper Paratus"US Coast Guard home page

The night-vision image in the rescue helicopter showed a downed pilot in a life raft bobbing 35 miles from the Atlantic shoreline, but when Brian Fogle got ready to plunge down to him, the midnight sky and sea melded into inky blackness. “The hard part was not being able to see anything,” Fogle said. And then he stepped out that door and slid down a line into the rolling dark ocean. The signal had come to the Coast Guard 20 to 30 minutes before 11 p.m. Thursday: A D.C. Air National Guard F-16C was down in the Atlantic after touching...

After spending four days stranded on a boat in the Caribbean Sea, Amber Burkett is home. The 16-year-old Bridge City resident, whom Coast Guard rescuers found Wednesday 60 miles away from the Honduras island she and eight friends were trying to reach, cried and laughed, sometimes simultaneously, Saturday evening while exchanging hugs with more than a dozen friends and family members who had gathered to greet her.

MIAMI, FL – Drugs, weapons, illegal aliens all are welcome under a new directive. There is an ongoing, emergency situation with the U.S. Coast Guard, which is now an agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “By directive, starting last Monday, 29 April 2013 (barring emergency calls) Coast Guard District 7, which stretches from the Carolinas to Alabama to Florida, has been restricted from activity. There will be no enforcement patrols of large or small craft allowed in U.S. territorial seas, district-wide,” according to a WDW confidential source.

Oh, and the cruise line is exempt from paying a ton of taxes As if excrement-coated floors weren't outrageous enough, Quartz takes a look at another of Carnival Cruise's dirty secrets: Though it's exempt from a slew of taxes thanks to the fact that it's incorporated in Panama, it's gotten millions of dollars of assistance from the US Coast Guard in recent years. Sen. Jay Rockefeller last week sent a letter to Carnival's CEO in which he expressed his "serious concerns" about February's "nightmarish" Triumph stranding, and outlined how the Coast Guard and American taxpayer have continually had to...

KETCHIKAN, Alaska — Two Wrangell mariners are safe with the help of a Good Samaritan vessel. The Coast Guard says the wooden-hull trawler Carrie Arlene sent out a distress report . ... The Coast Guard and Wrangell Search and Rescue tried to reach the vessel but were turned back by foul weather.

The Mexican drug cartels once again have taken deadly aim against U.S. law enforcement. This time the narco terrorists intentionally rammed their smuggling panga boat against an approaching Coast Guard inflatable which resulted in the death of Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III and the injury of another guardsman after they fell into the sea off the southern California coast as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Two suspects have been detained. The narco insurgents from Mexico increasingly are targeting U.S. officials on both sides of the border: last August two CIA officials were injured in a shooting ambush against...

PORT OF HUENEME, Calif. (KABC) -- A member of the U.S. Coast Guard was killed in the line of duty when his boat was rammed by a drug smuggler's craft. Law enforcement sources told ABC News that the Coast Guard intercepted two boats - a pleasure craft and a small panga boat - near San Clemente Island in Santa Barbara County at about 1 a.m. Sunday. The panga, which was operated by Mexican Nationals, was carrying marijuana. According to initial reports, the Coast Guard took the pleasure craft into custody and detained two people on board. Then, the Coast Guard...