Free Republic

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe told The Daily Caller he believes President Barack Obama pressured the military into granting an unprecedented exception to rules that prohibit participation in political activities while in uniform. The Defense Department authorized a waiver to allow uniformed service members to march in last weekend’s San Diego gay pride parade, overriding a Defense Department directive‘s specific rules against uniformed service members’ participation in political events. “The Department of Defense isn’t allowing this to go on, it’s the president,” Inhofe said in an interview with TheDC. “The secretary of defense answers to the president, and the military...

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Some of the loudest cheers at San Diego's gay pride parade were for active-duty troops marching in military dress. Saturday's celebration marks the first time U.S. service members are participating in a gay pride event while decked out in full uniform.

(Reuters) - The Department of Defense will allow active duty members of all branches of the U.S. military to don their service uniforms while marching in the upcoming San Diego gay pride parade, event organizers said on Thursday. The move, announced the day before the weekend festivities are to begin, comes in the wake of a repeal that went into effect last September of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law, under which homosexuals were allowed to serve in the military only if they did not divulge their sexual orientation. San Diego has a large military presence due to its naval...

I do not know Courtney Scaramella’s faith life. But I applaud the 23-year-old waitress for taking a stand against the owner and general manager of the Los Angeles sports bar where she worked when they decided to sex up the uniforms worn by female employees. When she was hired by the sports bar nearly five years ago, Courtney and her fellow female employees wore a uniform of shirt and pants. But that changed recently, when the ownership ordered waitresses to wear tiny little school-girl skirts. Courtney went so far as to try on the skirt, but the petite young woman...

The Army is changing clothes. Over the next year, America’s largest fighting force is swapping its camouflage pattern. The move is a quiet admission that the last uniform — a pixelated design that debuted in 2004 at a cost of $5 billion — was a colossal mistake. Soldiers have roundly criticized the gray-green uniform for standing out almost everywhere it’s been worn. Industry insiders have called the financial mess surrounding the pattern a “fiasco.” As Army researchers work furiously on a newer, better camouflage, it’s natural to ask what went wrong and how they’ll avoid the same missteps this time...

KABUL, Afghanistan – A man in an Afghan army uniform opened fire on a group of Americans at a base in the south of the country, killing a U.S. soldier and wounding another, an Afghan military spokesman said Monday. Spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the gunman was also killed in the shootout on Sunday. "Right now, an investigation is going on to determine whether he really was a soldier or someone using an army uniform. And if he was a soldier, what caused the shooting," Azimi said. Similar attacks have raised fears of increased Taliban infiltration of the Afghan...

BROWNSVILLE — A “suspicious object protruding from the brush” in Starr County led Border Patrol agents to a weapons cache that included an AK-47, three M4-style assault rifles, hand grenades, military-style uniforms and other related items, Customs and Border Protection said Monday. The seizure occurred Friday on the banks of the Rio Grande near Fronton, a small community about five miles west of Roma. Agents reported finding the four rifles, two hand grenades, a ballistic vest, two ammunition-carrying vests, three two-way radios, two uniforms, and 16 fully-loaded 30-round magazines. All weapons except the grenades were turned over to Immigration and...

Russia's sharp new military uniforms, created by a top fashion designer, have landed hundreds in hospital after proving too thin to withstand the ferocious winter cold, a state daily said Wednesday. Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that between 60 and 250 servicemen have been laid up with everything from flu to pneumonia as Arctic chills sweep through the country's northern reaches. "They literally felt naked outside," the paper quoted the mother of one soldier as saying. "Many of them ended up in hospital. Ours developed pneumonia," she said of her son. The government daily said defense officials have admitted not receiving complaints...

On Election Day 2008, Maruse Heath, the leader of Philadelphia's New Black Panther Party, stood in front of a neighborhood polling place, dressed in a paramilitary uniform. Within hours, an amateur video showing Heath, slapping a black nightstick and exchanging words with the videographer, had aired on TV and ricocheted across the nation. Among those who saw the footage was J. Christian Adams, who was in his office in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in Washington. "I thought, 'This is wrong, this is not supposed to happen in this country,' " Adams said. "There are armed men in front...

SNIPPET: "According to police, three baggage handlers were loading luggage on to a flight bound for Bermuda around 10:56 a.m. when two of the handlers noticed a third was not wearing an identification badge. When questioned about it, the third man took off and has yet to be found by police." SNIPPET: "Investigating agencies include the Philadelphia Police, the F.B.I. and Homeland Security."

During a campaign stop in Inglewood, California this past weekend, Barbara Boxer’s disrespectful attitude toward our armed forces was on full display when she equated the experiences of Members of Congress with the experiences of those who have put their lives on the line serving our country in uniform. Boxer said this, at an event during which she was supposed to help break ground on new housing for homeless veterans: “We know that if you have veterans in one place where they can befriend each other and talk to each other. You know when you’ve gone through similar things you...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) - Russian officials say two suicide bombings in the southern province of Dagestan have killed at least nine people including two policemen. The incident comes two days after a twin suicide bombing tore through the Moscow subway, killing 39. A regional Interior Ministry spokesman told The Associated Press that the blasts occurred Wednesday morning in the town of Kizlyar, near Dagestan's border with Chechnya. Police pulled over a suspicious-looking car, when the driver detonated explosives. As police officers and residents gathered at the scene there was a second blast. Rebels from the North Caucasus, which includes Dagestan...

BAMBERG, Germany — The Army has selected the MultiCam as its new uniform for soldiers heading to Afghanistan, the Defense Department announced, following four months of testing by units in the combat zone. MultiCams will be issued to units heading to Afghanistan starting in July. Those units include the 4th Brigade, 10th Mountain Division at Fort Polk, La.; the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo.; and the 2nd Brigade, 34th Infantry Division of the Iowa Army National Guard, according to the Program Executive Office Soldier Web site. Soldiers in Afghanistan had identified the need for a new...

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has told his military aides not to wear combat fatigues to work at the Pentagon anymore, reversing a symbolic change of protocol ordered in the harrowing days after the Sept. 11 attacks. There was no formal announcement about Mr. Gates directing his military staff to shed their fatigues in favor of business uniforms — the smartly pressed ones bedecked with combat medals and service ribbons that are the military equivalent of a civilian coat and tie, worn with dress shoes and not combat boots. But throughout the Defense Department, where every action by...

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — British and American soldiers soon could be hard to tell apart if the U.S. Army adopts a camouflage pattern similar to one that the British have already picked out to conceal their troops in Afghanistan. U.S. soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment in eastern Afghanistan are wearing new uniforms featuring the "MultiCam" camouflage pattern as part of a trial conducted by the Army to determine the best way to help troops blend in with their environment. Last week the British Ministry of Defence announced that its troops would soon start wearing a new uniform with a...

The uniform of the British Army is to be changed for the first time in almost 40 years. The new Multi-Terrain Pattern (MTP) will replace the traditional four colour woodland uniform known as No.8: Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM). Forces in Afghanistan will start to get the new uniforms in March next year, with the whole army upgraded by 2011. MTP is designed for a wide range of environments, including the volatile "green zone" of Helmand province. British troops in Afghanistan currently use a mix of desert camouflage and temperate DPM, depending on which area they are operating in. There are...

Title only. Breaking.

The Army will make an exception to a decades-old rule and allow a Sikh doctor to serve without removing his turban and cutting his hair, an advocacy group said Friday. The doctor, Capt. Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi of Riverdale, N.J., is the first Sikh to be allowed to go on active duty with a turban, beard and unshorn hair in more than 20 years, the New York-based Sikh Coalition said.The decision does not overturn an Army policy from the 1980s that regulates the wearing of religious items, the acting deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Gina Farrisee, wrote in a letter...

Sikhs Challenge U.S. Army's Ban on Turbans, Beards Sunday, June 14, 2009 NEW YORK — Military service is in Capt. Kamaljit Singh Kalsi's blood. His father and grandfather were part of India's Air Force. His great-grandfather served in the army in India under the British. So when U.S. Army recruiters talked to him during his first year of medical school, he readily signed up. But his plans to go on active duty in July are now on hold. An Army policy from the 1980s that regulates the wearing of religious items would mean he would need to shave his beard...

NEW YORK -- Military service is in Capt. Kamaljit Singh Kalsi's blood. But his plans to go on active duty in July are now on hold. An Army policy from the 1980s that regulates the wearing of religious items would mean he would need to shave his beard and remove the turban he wears in accordance with his religious precepts. Sikhs have a long history with the U.S. military, serving in World Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and in the Persian Gulf.