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Exit this survey >> Renowned polling and political firm Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research is moderating nationally televised focus group sessions about your opinion of the Presidential debates. In these focus groups, you will be watching the debates live and commenting on them on national television. We promise you a few hours of interesting conversation, AND the opportunity to be on national television. It couldn't be easier. We will also be providing food. Just fill out the application below and we will email you to let you know when the next focus group in your city will be. We encourage you...

HONOLULU, Sept. 16, 2007 – Members of Scott Harpley’s Ringgold High School graduation class in northern Georgia probably wouldn’t recognize the driven young sailor squeezed into seat 51F on an airplane yesterday headed here to his first duty assignment. U.S. Navy Fireman Apprentice Scott Harpley, age 22, heads to his first duty assignment in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where he will serve aboard the Navy submarine USS Pasadena, Sept. 15, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by Donna Miles   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. At age 22, U.S. Navy Fireman Apprentice Harpley is much more – and in some cases,...

VIENNA, Austria - It's the business end of climate change: ensuring that the $20 trillion the world will spend on energy over the next two decades is as environmentally friendly as possible. This week's latest round of talks on global warming, which get under way in Vienna on Monday, will focus on giving governments and private investors tips and incentives to keep a lid on greenhouse gas emissions. "We need to 'climate-proof' economic growth," Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official, told reporters Sunday. More than 1,000 delegates were gathering in the Austrian capital for discussions on advising nations,...

WISE, Va. - Presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama on Wednesday focused on the struggles of the nation's poor — from rural Appalachia to Washington's urban Anacostia — in competing speeches that underscored the fierce fight for the Democratic nomination. Edwards was wrapping up his eight-state poverty tour with stops in Virginia and Kentucky, the latter where Democratic icon Robert F. Kennedy spoke nearly 40 years ago in his plea to help the nation's forgotten. Unwilling to cede the issue to Edwards, Obama spoke at a recreation center in the nation's capital, and in a jab at his rival,...

U.S. Army Master Sgt. Brinda Kupiec of Lubbock, Texas, the host national escort noncommissioned officer in charge with the 657th Area Support Group, checks in local Iraqi laborers, May 3, 2007, as they report for work at Logistical Support Area Anaconda. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Alexandra Hemmerly-Brown Deployment Provides Direction, Focus for Anaconda Soldier By Sgt. Alexandra Hemmerly-Brown 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary) LOGISTICAL SUPPORT AREA ANACONDA, Iraq, May 14, 2007 — Two years ago, a wife sat by her husband’s side, comforting him. The woman had quit her job a school teacher several years earlier to help her...

Dragon Fire West nets 22 suspects, 11 weapon caches in four days. Multi-National Division – Baghdad PAO1st Cavalry Division Public Affairs CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq, May 11, 2007 — The addition of two brigades to Baghdad during the past several months has had a positive impact, according to the commanding general of Multi-National Division – Baghdad. "Many of the suspects are picked up during targeted operations, thanks to tips from the local populace."U.S. Army Maj. Kirk Luedeke “It makes a huge difference, not only for our forces but for the Iraqi forces, as well,” said Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil...

CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush returns to work Monday on the volatile issue of immigration, where his hope for a legislative breakthrough is complicated by cold relations with Congress. Bush will be back in Yuma, Ariz., to inspect the construction of border fencing and to push for the creation of a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The trip serves as a bookend to the visit Bush made to the same southwest desert city last May. It also comes as tension rises over a new immigration proposal tied to the White House. Bush's team is...

"Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson – considered the most politically powerful evangelical figure in the U.S. – said in a phone call to Dan Gilgoff, senior editor at U.S. News & World Report. "[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian. At least that’s my impression.” Thompson’s spokesman Mark Corallo took issue with the statement. "Thompson is indeed a Christian,” he said. "He was baptized into the Church of Christ.”

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, March 14, 2007 – Give an Afghan a job hauling bags of cement, he works for a day. Give an Afghan a job that offers on-the-job-training, and he works for the rest of his life. That is the general idea behind a shift in focus in the Afghanistan First program, a policy that gives incentives to Afghan companies and contractors in Afghanistan that use local Afghan labor to fulfill work contracts. More than $1 billion in contracts went to Afghan companies in 2006. “It was a socioeconomic development program, a way to provide the population...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12, 2007 – U.S. interests in the Middle East go well beyond Iraq, and to walk away from the commitments in Iraq would be damaging to U.S. credibility, a senior defense official said yesterday, speaking on background to reporters. “Our allies that we work with and our coalition partners that we work with are watching us very carefully,” he said. The deployments of the USS Stennis Carrier Strike Group and the 3rd Battalion, 43rd Air Defense Regiment, which the Defense Department announced yesterday, are focused on this broader, region-based strategy, a senior military official, also speaking on...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2006 -- Defense secretary nominee Robert M. Gates told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee during his confirmation hearing today that if he’s confirmed to the top Pentagon post, his highest calling will be to ensure success in Iraq and look out for the men and women in uniform. Robert M. Gates, defense secretary nominee, responds to questions during a Senate Armed Services Commitee hearing regarding his confirmation, Dec. 5. Photo by Cherie A. Thurlby  '(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Gates told committee members during his opening statement that he’s “under no illusion why...

TOKYO - Japan is ready for North Korea to carry out its threatened nuclear test as soon as this weekend, officials said yesterday. Japanese Vice-Foreign Minister Shotaro Yachi, on a visit to Washington, said Pyongyang's resolve to test its first atom bomb should not be underestimated. "We discussed the possibility that the test would occur this weekend," Mr Yachi said after talks with US Deputy National Security Adviser Jack Crouch. North Korea issued a statement on Tuesday saying it would test a nuclear bomb, dramatically raising the stakes in its standoff with the US on its quest for atomic weapons....

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14, 2006 – Iraqi and coalition forces captured a key al Qaeda operative and some 70 more terror suspects in Iraq during a series of 25 raids in and around Baghdad Sept. 12, a senior Multinational Force Iraq spokesman told reporters in Baghdad today. The raids netted a personal associate of Abu Ayyoub al-Masri, Army Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said. Masri took control of al Qaeda in Iraq after a U.S.-led air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in early June. While not revealing the detainee’s name, Caldwell called him “the leader of assassination, kidnapping and IED (improvised explosive...

LOS ANGELES – Immigrants Without Borders is an Arizona-based assistance organization. It doesn't have the multimillion-dollar funding of national Latino organizations, nor does it have their fame. But this regional group has something the others don't: the ability to mobilize immigrants, to organize marches like the ones seen in the past few months and a long list of community contacts. Bringing these two sides together and the development of a long-term social and economic strategy for Latinos are among the goals of the National Latino Congress. Some 1,300 leaders and activists from across the nation are attending the event, which...

I am proudly endorsing Tom Gallagher for Governor of Florida. In a day when moral standards are up for grabs, Tom will be a champion for the family. He will work to provide genuine school choice for every Florida child, and he understands that the courts must be reigned in. Dr. James Dobson National Conservative Leader

What with the Washington State Supreme Court handing down its anti-gay-marriage decision several weeks ago and the ever-hearing more about attacks on reproductive rights down south, I’m feeling that the States is tripping a bit too merrily down the Handmaid’s path. This week, I found a way to strike back. Focus on the Family, the horrid anti-gay evangelical church based in Colorado Springs that wields too much power for anyone’s good, has a store on their website that will give you books, CDs, and DVDs absolutely free of charge. Usually people pay for their items by donation, raising millions of...

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Thomas Fisher, commander of the 1-68 Combined Arms Battalion, speaks with local sheiks and leaders during a groundbreaking ceremony June 15, 2006, held for three new construction projects in the region. U.S. Army photo by Spc. Michael Pfaff Coalition-Iraqi Construction Plan Focuses on Water, Roads U.S. soldiers lived on the outskirts of the village and, while living in the area among the people, were able to build a relationship with the community. By U.S. Army Spc. Michael Pfaff BAQUBAH, Iraq, June 29, 2006 -- A groundbreaking ceremony was held June 15 to mark the beginning...

WASHINGTON - House Republicans intend to hold votes this summer and fall touching on abortion, guns, religion and other priority issues for social conservatives, part of an attempt to improve the party's prospects in the midterm elections. The "American Values Agenda" also includes a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage — which already has failed in the Senate — a prohibition on human cloning and possibly votes on several popular tax cuts. "Radical courts have attempted to gut our religious freedom and redefine the value system on which America was built. We hope to restore some of those basic...

6/23/2006 - SAN ANTONIO (AFPN) -- It was around 10 p.m. on June 25, 1996, when Staff Sgt. Alfredo Guerrero went to check the security post on the rooftop of an eight-story Khobar Towers apartment building at Dhahran Air Base, Saudi Arabia. He asked the sentry on watch if everything was OK. Below them, residents in the rooms were settling in for the night. Most were with the 4404th Wing -- protectors of the "no fly zone" in Southern Iraq in support of Operation Southern Watch. Some Airmen were writing letters or calling home. Some were playing cards or shooting...

In May, an otherwise dismal month for Detroit, Ford Motor Co. (F ) sold more than 20,000 Focus subcompacts, the fuel sipper's best showing in nine months. That's great news, right? Not really. Ford lost an estimated $4,000 to $5,000 on each Focus it sold. What irony. Just when the subcompact market is heating up, Ford can't make money on a car acclaimed for its taut handling and decent 26/32-mpg fuel economy. The auto maker's Focus problem (pun intended) is an object lesson in how Ford continues to be hamstrung by high labor costs and tired product design. By choosing...