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Virginia Tech this morning confirmed that Fort Hood shooting suspect Nadal Malik Hasan graduated from the university in 1995. Here's the full news release. Virginia Tech has confirmed with the United States Army Human Resources Command in Alexandria, Va., that the alleged shooter at Fort Hood, Texas, once attended Virginia Tech. According to Virginia Tech records, Nidal Malik Hasan first enrolled at Virginia Tech for Summer Session II in 1992, and completed coursework in Spring Semester 1995. He received a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in biochemistry from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He minored in biology...

WASHINGTON — Military officials say Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspected shooter at Fort Hood, was a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for six years before being transferred to the Texas base in July. They said he received a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed. The Virginia-born soldier is single with no children. He is 39 years old. He is a graduate of Virginia Tech, where he was a member of the ROTC and earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1997. At Walter Reed, he did an internship, residency and a fellowship.

Jihad at Fort Hood? Shooter: Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan - Jihad Watch via kwout

Military officials say the suspected shooter at Fort Hood was a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for six years before being transferred to the Texas base in July. The officials had access to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's military record. They said he received a poor performance evaluation while at Walter Reed. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because military records are confidential. The Virginia-born soldier was single with no children. He was 39 years old. He is a graduate of Virginia Tech University, where he was a member of the ROTC and earned a bachelor's degree in...

Chris Higgins, 21, an upbeat Harvard University junior, is a social studies major who has worked at an orphanage in Uganda and backpacked around China while learning Mandarin. He is also a master sergeant in the Army ROTC, an officer-in-the-making who has spent weekends firing an M-16, rappelling, and honing land-navigation skills while many classmates are launching a blitz on the college social scene. “I have a mission,’’ said Higgins, a native of East Setauket, N.Y. That mission - to serve the country and gain leadership experience - is shared by a sharply growing number of American undergraduates, who have...

St. Augustine High School hosted a regional JROTC drill competition today. Grandson Gerry rolled me out of the sack at 6AM and off we went. Why we had to leave so early is beyond me, nothing started until about 9AM, but since the army was running things you just got to follow orders! I couldn't get the right angle on the Sun but managed to catch some of the action. I headed out just after 10AM to chase some critters, Gerry was there for the day. I'm trying to calibrate a new monitor, some pics may be light or dark...

To the list of collegiate types -- nerds, jocks, Greeks -- add one more: spies in training. The government is hoping they'll be hard to spot. The Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence officer training program in colleges and universities that would function much like the Reserve Officers' Training Corps run by the military services. The idea is to create a stream "of first- and second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence agencies," according to a description sent to Congress by Director of National Intelligence Dennis...

This is a tremendous speech by a young republican at the state Republican convention in Richmond, Virginia. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4_0L2ZJAvQ for part one. Part two is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zejvNWt65VI&feature=related

The Best Speech of the Virginia GOP Convention. Cadet Colonel Adnan Barqawi:"Impossible is Nothing..." Click here for the video Cadet Colonel Adnan Barqawi "Impossible is Nothing"We had so many speakers at the Virginia Convention, we had Mitt Romney, Sean Hannity and a slate of Virginia representatives but it was not one of them that claimed the day. It was Cadet Colonel Adnan Barqawi, a new citizen and descendent of Palestinian refugees born in Kuwait, who brought the house down with his speech given from the heart with a clear love of his new country and its founding principles. His success...

Harvard is open to just about anything, but for 40 years it has been closed to the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. That's about to change. Gen. David H. Petraeus will be the featured speaker at this year's ROTC commissioning ceremony at Harvard University, marking a step in Harvard's reclaiming of its honored tradition of service to the country. ....There are about three dozen Harvard students in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC), but the program is officially unrecognized. Students get no credit for military-science classes, and course work and drills are held at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology .....The...

<p>Want to trim the federal budget and improve the military at the same time? Shut down West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy, and use some of the savings to expand ROTC scholarships.</p> <p>After covering the U.S. military for nearly two decades, I've concluded that graduates of the service academies don't stand out compared to other officers. Yet producing them is more than twice as expensive as taking in graduates of civilian schools ($300,000 per West Point product vs. $130,000 for ROTC student). On top of the economic advantage, I've been told by some commanders that they prefer officers who come out of ROTC programs, because they tend to be better educated and less cynical about the military.</p>

Forty years ago today, Harvard University caved to pressure from violent student radicals and banned the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) from campus. The ban continues because Harvard finds the U.S. military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy too offensive to be countenanced. In those same 40 years, Harvard has hosted at least one terrorist - Yassir Arafat - and the former president of Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime. The latter, Mohammad Khatami, was asked to speak on the eve of 9/11. Current Harvard policy is to accommodate Muslim fundamentalists who demanded single-sex gym time in the name of Sharia law. They even...

Maj. Gen. Mark Graham is on the frontlines of the Army's struggle to stop its soldiers from killing themselves. Through a series of novel experiments, the 32-year military veteran has turned his sprawling base here into a suicide-prevention laboratory. One reason: Fort Carson has seen nine suicides in the past 15 months. Another: Six years ago, a 21-year-old ROTC cadet at the University of Kentucky killed himself in the apartment he shared with his brother and sister. He was Kevin Graham, Gen. Graham's youngest son.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - If it seems like a nightmare now, it started with a dream come true. Anna Viviano got into one of the best schools in the country, and as an ROTC recruit, she didn't have to pay a penny. "I talked to a couple recruiters and they were just like you can go to Vanderbilt for free," she recalled. And for two and a-half years, Viviano thrived -- second in her ROTC class and a near-perfect GPA. "I thought everything was going swimmingly -- was right on track to do what I wanted," she said. Then came...

FORT MONROE, Va., Dec. 29, 2008 – The blast of a roadside bomb in Iraq's Sunni Triangle resulted in the amputation of a portion of Richard Ingram's left arm, but it did not rob him of his dream of becoming an Army officer. Richard Ingram, right, takes the oath of office as a second lieutenant administered by Army 1st Lt. Robert Morris at North Georgia College and State University, Dec. 13, 2008. Photo by Kate Maine  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Ingram's dream became a reality Dec. 13 when he graduated from North Georgia College and State University...

Polls closed early? More votes disqualified than counted for either side? Individuals casting multiple votes? No independent, anti-fraud auditing? Yes -- to all of the above. And, at the final result, by a 39-vote margin Columbia University students decided to renew the ban on ROTC classes at the Ivy League school. In an episode reminiscent of the referenda conducted by Joe Stalin in the USSR’s heyday, Columbia University surveyed its students from Monday, November 24 until Monday, December 1 to gauge interest for the return of the Navy’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) to campus. Students currently have no option...

Should all schools allow ROTC on their campuses? Yes or No.

Should public schools open their doors to military recruitment, of any type, on campus? That was the question San Francisco voters took up in 2005, when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition I, which urged the city's schools to reject military recruitment in favor of college scholarship programs. The San Francisco Unified School District responded in 2006 by beginning to phase out of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, a long-standing and well-funded recruitment instrument of the Department of Defense, which targets San Francisco students of color, often from poor families, who attend seven public high schools, while steering clear of the...

During Columbia University’s ServiceNation Presidential Forum on the seventh anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, Judy Woodruff of PBS’s “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” demonstrated that she understands as much about volunteerism as Charlie Gibson does about the Bush Doctrine. (If you want to read more, this is the second item on the page.)

CANON CITY, Colo. -- A Kent man who is an associate professor at Seattle University was arrested in connection with a variety of child sex crimes on Monday in Colorado, reported KIRO 7 Eyewitness News. Police said the arrest of Major Andrew Douglas Franz, 41, stemmed from an undercover Internet investigation by the Fremont County Combined Investigative Response Team. Police said Franz traveled from Washington to Fremont County in Colorado for the purpose of having sex with an underage girl. ...

Any Harvard student with the balls to participate in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) deserves our respect. Quite frankly, ROTC doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. For four years, cadets and midshipmen wake up obscenely early in order to trek to MIT and get yelled at by their instructors. That’s an indignity that Harvard usually reserves for accounting students. If you want to know what visceral discomfort looks like, watch a Harvard ROTC student shuffle across campus in his military uniform. Banished by the Faculty in 1969 amid a rising tide of anti-war sentiment on Harvard’s campus,...

CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan - More than 100 U.S. Marines stood at attention before four empty boots and two sets of dog tags Tuesday to honor the first Marines to die in Afghanistan since their unit's deployment last month. 1st Sgt. Luke J. Mercardante, 35, and Cpl. Kyle W. Wilks, 24, died in a roadside bomb explosion in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province on April 15, said Lt. Col. Ricky Brown, the commander of Combat Logistics Battalion 24, 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at Camp Lejuene, North Carolina. Dark, overcast skies, a blustery wind and light droplets of rain reflected...

EVERETT -- Eleven years ago, Sabrina M. Weiner graduated as a valedictorian at Kamiak High School near Everett. She was a National Merit Scholar, aiming for a bright future after earning a Navy ROTC scholarship to Stanford University. Two months ago, Weiner, 27, after seven years in the active and reserve duty during which she rose to the rank of lieutenant, forfeited her career. In a rare instance involving a commissioned officer, Weiner was arrested and given a choice between a court-martial or less-than-honorable discharge after refusing to serve in Iraq. Speaking publicly for the first time about it, Weiner...

EVERETT -- Eleven years ago, Sabrina M. Weiner graduated as a valedictorian at Kamiak High School near Everett. She was a National Merit Scholar, aiming for a bright future after earning a Navy ROTC scholarship to Stanford University. Two months ago, Weiner, 27, forfeited her Navy career after seven years on active and reserve duty, during which she rose to the rank of lieutenant. In a rare instance involving a commissioned officer, Weiner was arrested and given a choice between a court-martial or less-than-honorable discharge after refusing to serve in Iraq. Speaking publicly for the first time about it, Weiner...

Ohio State University's ROTC cadets have ended the decades-long practice of combat training with mock rifles on the main campus because of public edginess in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, officials said. Since the decision was made a couple of weeks ago, tactical training with rubber replicas of an M-16 rifle has been moved indoors, or cadets have trained without rifles, said Navy Capt. Steven Noce, who heads the university's ROTC program. The tactical training, typically conducted around the ROTC building near Ohio Stadium, has generated a few calls to police from concerned people in the past year,...

As a drill instructor at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, Luke Mercardante trained more than 1,200 men, turning them from civilians into Marines. Later, at Camp Lejeune, Mercardante visited the Wounded Warriors barracks and was approached by a young man who had been one of his recruits. The man told him that a lesson he learned from Mercardante at boot camp saved his life, said Mercardante's girlfriend, Kimberly Hull. The young man remembered Mercardante yelling at him, telling him not to move, Hull said. So when the time came, he didn't move, and lived.

The conference program on the sponsors’ website promises to air a “wide range of viewpoints” on what happened and why, but the list of speakers shows no range at all—everyone seems to be a proud ex-protester or at least a familiar partisan of the Left. While Todd Gitlin (formerly the president of Students for a Democratic Society, now at Columbia’s journalism school) is a sober and reflective thinker, most of his fellow speakers are far from that standard. They include Kathleen Cleaver, Eldridge Cleaver’s widow and a former Black Panther official; veteran activist Tom Hayden; several former members of the...

WASHINGTON, March 12, 2008 – Nick Jackson wakes up earlier and has longer days than most freshmen at the University of Cincinnati, and once a week his clothes are selected for him. But unlike most students here, Jackson, one in about 30 cadets enrolled in the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps, will graduate school without debt and with a job awaiting him. “I decided to take the scholarship for financial reasons, but then once I got in here and I met everybody and I’m friends with everybody, it’s turning into something else,” said Jackson, dressed in Army camouflage as...

Dustin Bonilla and Christina Eaves of Mar Vista High's Navy Junior ROTC competed in a color guard competition SAN DIEGO – From the bleachers, all you could hear were brief responses like “Aye aye, sir!” The shouting was clearer on the football field, especially beyond the west end-zone at Patrick Henry High School. Dozens of students from 12 high schools were competing in a field meet yesterday. Each student was a cadet with the Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. All wore the same Navy-issued uniform: a short-sleeved white dress shirt, black pants, black shoes and a narrow cap...

Faculty objects to receiving funding from armed forces due to 'don't ask, don't tell' policy SSU maintains an anti-discrimination policy that extends to contracts with outside entities and severed its ties to the Army after complaints from the faculty. The Army was committed to spending $15,000 on the Ron Logsdon Basketball Classic, a four-team tournament in December. The event would have been renamed the Ron Logsdon Classic presented by the U.S. Army, Athletic Director Bill Fusco said. SSU Provost Eduardo Ochoa said the administration will provide the lost funding for this year's tournament, but the athletic department will have to...

Reactions from homeowners, students lack respect for ROTC morning training Dear Editor, As the officer in charge of the Ripon ROTC program, I would like to ask the student body's assistance in the training of our Cadets. As many students have observed, our cadets conduct physical training three times a week from 6-7 in the morning. We routinely jog in formation through city streets, call cadences and train in the vicinity of the college. Most mornings, we use city roads south of Fond du Lac St. and the college campus to conduct our physical training. The ROTC program is not...

This fall, conservatives have cause to redouble our efforts in the ongoing campus-military war, for the left has recently suffered two strategic setbacks in its fight to prevent students from meeting with military recruiters and participating in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) on campus. First, thanks to the oversight of Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Department of Defense (DOD) in May proposed stringent internal guidelines for enforcing the Solomon amendment, and second, thanks to a September 2nd Circuit Court ruling, academia lost its self-proclaimed “last” legal battle seeking exemption from the Solomon amendment. For those not familiar with...

The controversial demise of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps in San Francisco schools scheduled for this spring will likely be put off for at least a year because the school district hasn't developed a promised replacement program. The expected reprieve would drag out what has already been a protracted and emotional battle over the district's 90-year tie to the military program. Still, supporters say the prospect of an extra year offers hope that JROTC could survive in San Francisco. The school board voted last November to phase out JROTC over two years because of its connection to the military,...

COLUMBIA University Presi dent Lee Bollinger yester day made some cutting crit icisms while introducing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - but that doesn't make the school's decision to offer a platform to the head of a violent terrorist state any less abject, squalid or shameless. "Abject, squalid, shameless" is how Winston Churchill described the resolution passed by Oxford University's prestigious Debating Union in 1933 - the year Adolf Hitler came to power - that "this House will under no circumstances fight for King and Country." And Columbia's event, like the 1933 Oxford resolution, sent (to quote Churchill again) a "very...

So, in the end, Monday the Iranian wild man Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got a dressing down from the man who had invited him -- in the name of free speech, you understand -- to speak at Columbia University. Likely, by time for the speech, Columbia President Lee Bollinger had no choice other than to perfume himself against the stench from a statesman who proposes to exterminate Israel, presides over one of the world's least free regimes and may, to boot, have a secret nuclear weapons program going. Bollinger had been getting unshirted hell from reasonable people displeased -- as why wouldn't...

Columbia University has rightfully been under fire for inviting Iran's President to speak to its student body. Now Columbia's Dean is not only defending the decision, but says that Columbia would offer a platform for Hitler to come and speak if he were alive and in America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxmEGsOkEVc So, there you have Dean John Coatsworth of Columbia University was on Fox News late last week telling the world that Hitler would be invited to speak at Columbia, were he available. Wonderful. But how do you square this against the decision by Columbia to un-invite the founder of the Minutemen? How...

Chicago "homer" refs are hosing the Dallas Cowboys... Updated: 9:49 PM 09/23/07 FOX 5 in NYC, Me, 7:05am...MONDAY Updated: 8:46 PM 09/23/07 BIG THANKS to PunditReview and Dean Barnett... Updated: 8:34 PM 09/23/07 <a href="http://ads.townhall.com/accipiter/adclick/CID=000127050000000000000000/site=TOWNHALL/area=TownHall.Web.Columnists.DineshDSouza/POSITION=TOWN_SKY/AAMGEOIP=68.112.78.1"> <img src="http://media.townhall.com/townhall/townhall-logo.gif" alt="" width="160" height="600" border="0"> </a> Ahmadinejad is in, ROTC is out By Dinesh D'Souza Monday, September 24, 2007 President Lee Bollinger of Columbia University is a very open-minded guy, in his own opinion. In inviting the Iranian prime minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia, he issued this statement. "Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas...Necessarily...

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Sept. 17, 2007 — Two lieutenant colonels with the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing bring the words "once a wingman, always a wingman" to life, showing how Air Force ties transcend barriers of time and distance. "The relationships you develop while deployed will help you later in your Air Force journey. Building these bonds helps us get the mission accomplished and is what makes us the best Air Force in the world. We have a history. This is what it's all about -- and that's how we roll." Lt. Col. Kelly Goggin Proving the Air Force is getting smaller,...

FSM Contributing Editor W. Thomas Smith, Jr. offers advice to his newly graduated nephew. It’s a letter written for a young man, but all young adults – men and women – would do well to follow its 25 points.

WASHINGTON, May 17, 2007 – The nation’s leaders gathered today to recognize a group of young people taking the first step toward leading America’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates commissioned 55 ROTC cadets and midshipmen today at the White House in a ceremony attended by President Bush and other political and military leaders. The new officers represent all 50 states, four territories and the District of Columbia. This is the first time a joint ROTC commissioning ceremony has been held, and the first time a defense secretary has administered the oath of commissioning. Previously,...

LANCASTER[CA] Braving the windy, chilly weather, more than 80 people came to the Lancaster Cemetery on Sunday to remember the Holocaust and the heroism of those who fought against the Nazis, including those who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. "The fact that it is cold and windy and somewhat inclement is not inappropriate," said Rabbi David Hoffman of congregation Beth Knesset Bamidbar in Lancaster. "The people in the Warsaw Ghetto experienced much worse." Sunday's service of remembrance was held on the Jewish day of Yom HaShoah Ve-Hagevurah, or day for remembrance for the Holocaust and the Heroism. "We know...

A few dozen members of the Catholic Worker movement staged a protest in front of the University of Notre Dame’s administration building today, saying the university’s ROTC program contradicts Catholic teaching. “It saddens us that one of the preeminent universities is training warriors,” said the Rev. Ben Jimenez, a Catholic priest from Cleveland. The protest ended as Notre Dame police quietly pulled some of the protesters aside -- fewer than a dozen in all. The protesters were doing a re-enactment of the martyrdom of St. Marcellus, a third-century soldier who became a conscientious objector after he’d converted to Christianity. As...

Tempers flare at ROTC Rally Groups nearly come to blows outside Student Union By: Wes Rahn, Collegian Staff Issue date: 3/9/07 Section: News Approximately 30 students shouted anti-war sentiments at speakers at the Student Union yesterday to protest a student rally, held by the Republican Club. Media Credit: Cristian Gomez/Collegian Approximately 30 students shouted anti-war sentiments at speakers at the Student Union yesterday to protest a student rally, held by the Republican Club. An organized, on-campus rally in support of ROTC erupted in conflict yesterday as members of the audience shouted their anti-military sentiments at the three featured speakers. The...

Today wasn't a good day for outdoor photography, but this is the first picture of my grandson in his uniform. They grow up much too fast. He was just a baby this time last year!

I sit here, literally adrift, trying to decide if I am more aghast, offended or innured to this latest attack on my fundamental beliefs. My Son is in his Freshman year of High School. Before the School Term started he chose ROTC as one of his electives..... Not so far a stretch since both his Father and I served in the Army... as well as our Ancestors before us. I'll admit that having both been in Basic with "Rotsies" as we called them, as well as serving under a few Officers that had little else in the way of training...

"In the first place God made idiots," observed Mark Twain. "This was for practice. Then he made school boards." The San Francisco Board of Education's 4-2 vote last week to abolish the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, which has been active in the city's high schools for 90 years, tends to support his view. Why is JROTC being done away with? It isn't for lack of interest. More than 1,600 San Francisco students currently take part in its voluntary activities. "Kids love this program as if it's family," notes the San Francisco Chronicle. It is "a program that students...

Tuesday night by a vote of 4-2, the San Francisco Board of Ed banned Junior ROTC training in seven city high schools, throwing 1,600 students out of those clubs. This is a direct insult to the U.S. military and violates the civil rights, I believe, of the ROTC students. The federal government should immediately suspend all federal aid to San Francisco schools. There's no reason to ban JROTC. Nobody's required to join it. And if a student with parental approval wants to investigate a career in the military, every American school should encourage that. Obviously, the military is protecting us...

As students settle in to their classes at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa., there is good news and bad on the academic front. First, the former because it will take less time than the latter, although the more positive update is not inconsiderable. “On May 20, 2006, President [Brian C.] Mitchell not only attended the ROTC commissioning ceremony, but also spoke movingly about the value of both the ROTC program and our military,” the staff of The Counterweight wrote. “While those outside of academia might see such an act as commonplace, it is anything but.” “When even Bucknell’s own course...

Here's something small but worthwhile you prolific emailers can do - write an email for a good cause. The SF School Board wants to shut down JROTC because, basically, the School Board thinks JROTC is incompatible with SF politics. They want to replace it with something typically PC. You may begin shivering now. The JROTC kids want it to stay; they have way more applicants than JROTC can take (yes, in San Francisco, we have something like 1500 kids in JROTC). There are thousands of schools on the waiting list to set up JROTC programs because of limited funds, and...

Board has plan to oust ROTC from S.F. schools Members want to cut program over 'Don't ask, Don't tell' Heather Knight, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, May 23, 2006 The San Francisco Board of Education appears poised to kick the military's Junior ROTC programs out of the city's public schools, saying the Pentagon's refusal to allow openly gay service members is deplorable and not in line with the school district's anti-discrimination policy. School board members are scheduled to introduce a resolution tonight outlawing the JROTC because of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule. The resolution calls that policy an "unjust,...