Free Republic

Fifty years ago, 899 young men gathered in the then-new Naval Academy field house to hear a graduation address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. After four grueling years of military and academic training, their numbers had dwindled by a quarter,but for those who had survived, promising futures stretched out ahead. [snip] "We're not going out looking for another job, especially one that's as overwhelming as being president of the United States," said Potter, who planned to travel from California to attend the reunion. "Many of us wonder, 'Where does he get the energy to do this?' But those who knew...

A recent Washington Post profile of John McCain’s years at the Naval Academy portrayed him as an unruly, fun-loving, under-achieving Midshipman struggling with his obligation to live up to his family’s brilliant military legacy. It was “a four-year course of insubordination and rebellion,” McCain later wrote. McCain graduated 894th out of 899 in 1958, five spots above the “Anchorman,” the lowest-ranking midshipman. In this respect he did uphold one family tradition; his similarly rebellious father Jack, who would rise to the rank of Admiral and was the Pacific Command CINC while his son was being held prisoner in Hanoi, had...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - The U.S. Naval Academy is building on efforts to increase student diversity with the help of a new commercial and a graphic novel. ... Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, the academy's superintendent, wants to make the academy's student body as diverse as the Navy's enlisted force, in which minorities make up about 47 percent.

Remember Idris Leppla? You may recall about 6 months ago, Barnard Senior Idris Leppla became an internet celebrity after the publication of her incoherent diatribe in The Columbia Spectator entitled The Truth About The Academies. You can access this article and some of her other Spectator articles at this link. http://www.columbiaspectator.com/node/25716 Well, it seems that the field for Fullbright Scholarships must have been a bit thin this year, since Ms. Leppla has been awarded a Fullbright to study heroin addiction and prescription drug addiction in France. Judging from the clarity of her writings, this may be an autobiographical work. And...

The ACLU is threatening to sue the U.S. Naval Academy because they say prayers before lunch.

ACLU tries to halt mealtime prayer at Naval Academy By Josh Mitchell | Sun reporter 8:09 PM EDT, June 25, 2008 A national civil liberties group is renewing a push to end mealtime prayer at the U.S. Naval Academy, where a group of midshipmen recently complained to officials that they felt pressured to participate in the longtime practice. The tradition, believed to date back to the college's founding in 1845, now involves a chaplain's leading grace before a noon meal that all 4,200 midshipmen must attend at King Hall. Midshipmen are not required to pray, though they must stand during...

Three years after a scandal at the Air Force Academy over the evangelizing of cadets by Christian staff and faculty members, students and staff at West Point and the Naval Academy are complaining that their schools, too, have pushed religion on cadets and midshipmen.

Mullen said he was inspired to write the essay after receiving a constant stream of legitimate, if troubling, questions while visiting U.S. military personnel around the world, including, "What if a Democrat wins?" and, "What will that do to the mission in Iraq?" "I am not suggesting that military professionals abandon all personal opinions about modern social or political issues," Mullen wrote. "What I am suggesting - indeed, what the nation expects - is that military personnel will, in the execution of the mission assigned to them, put aside their partisan leanings. Political opinions have no place in cockpit or...

ANNAPOLIS, Md., May 23, 2008 – Michael Ursetti was a high school sophomore living in northern New Jersey when the terrorist planes attacked the World Trade Center towers in New York, killing more than a dozen of his neighbors. Members of the U.S. Naval Academy Class of 2008 walk onto the field at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Md., during graduation and commencement ceremonies May 23, 2008. Defense Department photo by Donna Miles  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “I had known since I was about 16 that I wanted to be in the military, but that pretty...

President Bush held a meeting this morning with his cabinet to discuss the economy and the Columbia Free Trade Agreement This afternoon, President Bush presented the Commander-In-Chief's Trophy to the United States Naval Academy Football Team in the Rose Garden Transcript First Lady Laura Bush and Jenna Bush visited first grade students at Martin Luther King Elementary School in Washington, Monday, April 14, 2008 To mark the tenth anniversary of 'Teach for America Week' Enoy your visit to Sanity Island

Hundreds of Naval Academy plebes attempt to climb the Herndon monument in an annual tradition marking the end of their freshman year in Annapolis. (Sun photo by Doug Kapustin / May 17, 2007) It's one of the Naval Academy's most enduring traditions: Hundreds of shirtless plebes mark the end of their first year by swarming a grease-slicked, 21-foot-obelisk, climbing over one another in a race to the top. Now, academy officials are asking: Is this safe? In a terse statement this week, academy officials said they will assemble a student committee to study changes to the Herndon Monument Climb. "Like...

A Day in the Life of President Bush (with photos): 12-01-07 Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island PHOTO (s) OF THE DAY ~~Cardboard cutouts of President Bush are represented on both sides of the field at the annual Army/Navy Football Game today. Army cadet Andrew Batule from Honolulu, Hawaii, cheers while standing along side a cardboard cut out of President George W. Bush during the first half of Army's NCAA college football game against Navy in Baltimore, Maryland December 1, 2007. A group of Midshipmen from the United States Naval Academy hold a cardboard cut-out of U.S. President George...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — It took 44 years and three overtimes for Navy to beat Notre Dame again. The Midshipmen snapped an NCAA-record 43-game losing streak to the Fighting Irish on Saturday with a 46-44 victory in triple overtime. Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada threw a 25-yard TD pass to Reggie Campbell on the first play of the third overtime, then found him again in the end zone for the 2-point conversion. Notre Dame (1-8) cut the lead to two on a 5-yard TD run by Travis Thomas. But after a pass interference call gave Notre Dame a second-chance at the 2-point...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2007 – Nearly 100 U.S. Naval Academy graduates from the class of 1995 are dedicating their participation in the Oct. 28 Marine Corps Marathon to the memory of six fallen comrades. Left to right: Dr. Mike McClung and his wife, Dr. Re McClung, and Suzanne Kristensen, with her husband, retired Navy Rear Adm. Edward Kristensen, discuss their departed children, Marine Maj. Megan M. McClung and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erik S. Kristensen at the “Run to Honor” reception in Washington, D.C., Oct. 25, 2007. Photo by Gerry J. Gilmore   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. About...

The Real ‘Truth’ About the Academies By Michael Podberesky PUBLISHED OCTOBER 15, 2007 In its series on the Service Academies, Spectator has published two submissions: an ignorant, invective piece titled “The Truth About The Academies” by Idris Leppla, whose brother attends the Naval Academy; and a very fair and honest account by Emily Haney-Caron, a self-described anti-war liberal whose fiancé attends West Point. To these voices I would like to add my own—as a graduate of the Naval Academy and a current student at Columbia. Leppla’s unfounded accusations against my alma mater cannot go unanswered. I do not question Spectator...

<p>Could the US dollar be destined to join the D-Mark and the franc in the graveyard of defunct national currencies? Vicente Fox, former Mexican president, told CNN this week that he had talked to US president George W. Bush about the possibility of a regional currency for the Americas.</p>

Rutgers University is known as the birthplace of college football, but in the last few weeks it's seemed more like the deathplace of sportsmanship. On Sept. 7, Rutgers hosted Navy's football team. What respect was shown in the wake of the midshipmen's forthcoming service to the country and the approaching Sept. 11 anniversary? The rowdy student fans of Rutgers hurled obscenities at Navy, thoroughly embarrassing their college and their town. Rutgers won the game but lost any sense of honor and decency. Navy was booed and peppered with "You suck!" chants when they stepped on the field to start both...

It pays to be on the media’s approved victims list. After Don Imus made his “ho” comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team on April 4, the media went into a feeding frenzy. In the first week after the story broke, the three major networks aired a total of 19 segments. On cable, CNN had 60, with Fox News at 21 and MSNBC at 13. The New York Times ran 12 articles, USA Today and The Washington Post each ran nine, and Newark, New Jersey’s Star-Ledger ran 11. But after the Sept. 7 Navy-Rutgers football game, at which Rutgers fans...

It pays to be on the media’s approved victims list. After Don Imus made his “ho” comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team on April 4, the media went into a feeding frenzy. In the first week after the story broke, the three major networks aired a total of 19 segments. On cable, CNN had 60, with Fox News at 21 and MSNBC at 13. The New York Times ran 12 articles, USA Today and The Washington Post each ran nine, and Newark, New Jersey’s Star-Ledger ran 11. But after the Sept. 7 Navy-Rutgers football game, at which Rutgers fans...

A likely upshot of President Bush's meetings with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in Canada, will be a further impetus to the effort to engage in what is euphemistically called the "harmonization" of the three countries' economies, regulatory systems and policies. The effect will be to contribute to...a significant, and possibly irreversible, erosion in the nation's sovereignty. ... the essence of the most successful political experiment in history — the United States of America — is the sovereign power entrusted by the people via our Constitution to our elected, accountable representatives. Unfortunately, such sovereignty is endangered by those who believe...

"Jason Tomlinson should be a commissioned officer preparing to begin a Naval career in surface warfare..." "Tomlinson elected not to graduate from the Naval Academy last May, a personal decision that stunned his coaches and fellow players with the football program. By all accounts, Tomlinson was on course - both academically and militarily - to graduate and simply chose not to do so."

The debate over illegal immigration is a "diversion" to distract Americans from government efforts to enter into a North American Union with Canada and Mexico, in the view of activists protesting in Washington, D.C., on Friday. "The illegal alien problem is a mechanism for leveraging what is yet to come," Daneen Peterson, a researcher who studies the North American Union issue, said at the rally. "If you continue to believe that the illegal alien invasion is the biggest threat to America, you will never understand that there is something far more dangerous to our country called the Security and Prosperity...

The border is an expensive barrier, new study concludes Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun Published: Thursday, June 14, 2007 The Canada-U.S. border is not our friend. That's the conclusion of a new Fraser Institute study written by author and Simon Fraser University political scientist Alexander Moens. Canadian nationalists traditionally argue that the border is our last defence against cultural and economic absorption by the all-powerful, politically domineering U.S.A. But Moens presents a different, more pragmatic perspective, which has resonance in view of the panic associated with long waits for passports to enable Canadians to keep flying freely to their favourite...

Sources close to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper tell Canada Free Press that he is firmly against Canada being part of the North American Union (NAU).Canadian sovereignty, they say, is everything in the opinion of the Canadian prime minister. As the proverbial `i’s’ and `’t’s are being dotted and crossed in a binding document that forces Canada, the United States and Mexico into one massive borderless entity, pockets of patriots are popping up in the U.S. to fight such a union. When officials convene well outside the disinfectant of sunlight, they gather under groups with names apt to confuse the...

Some charge that such a union would eventually override our Constitutional government, our economic system, and even our currency. Can it be possible? On March 23, 2005 President Bush met with Mexican President Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin in what was officially described as a "Summit." The initiative is called the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). Yet there has been no Congressional oversight or authorization. No funds appropriated. The major debate in the U.S. today is over border security. Our nation is being flooded with hordes of illegal aliens. They are over-burdening our schools, hospitals and social services....

North American CEO group recommends Canada import temporary workers Canada and Mexico should accelerate efforts to import temporary Mexican energy workers to alleviate the skills shortage in Alberta and other provinces as oil sands development ramps up, top North American CEOs will recommend today. They will also call for Canada, the United States and Mexico to start work on harmonizing regulations and standards in three sectors: financial services, transportation, and food and agriculture, The Globe and Mail has learned. The 30 chief executive officers make up the North American Competitiveness Council, formed last year to advise political leaders on strengthening...

OTTAWA (AP) -- Senior officials from the United States, Canada and Mexico opened talks Friday to hash out ways to thwart cross-border security threats, cope with a potential bird flu outbreak and boost North American trade. With growing Mexican and Canadian concerns about U.S. border restrictions imposed since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez were meeting their counterparts from the two countries to consider cooperation on the issues. Hosted by Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay, the gathering of the two-year-old Security and Prosperity...

Minutemen Go Inside Latino Immigration Meeting - Racism Espoused, Calls for Violence Against "Whites"by Linda Muller - Minuteman Project - ForTheCause.us There are many radical Latino groups calling for the violent overthrow of their "white" oppressors and the return of the American west to the mythical Aztlan from which they believe their land was stolen. Many Americans do not believe these fringe groups have any power and influence, so they dismiss them as harmless. Yet these groups continually draw U.S. Congressmen and staff members to their meetings. Corporate benefactors and foundations contribute funds and other means of support that enable...

Astronaut Arrested Over Love Spat Last Edited: Monday, 05 Feb 2007, 9:47 PM EST Created: Monday, 05 Feb 2007, 7:24 PM EST ORLANDO, FL (WOFL) -- -- U.S. Navy Commander and Discovery Astronaut, Lisa Nowak, 43, was arrested early Monday morning at Orlando International Airpot following an altercation with another woman. Police say Nowak drove from Houston to Orlando to meet Colleen Shipman. According to reports, once Shipman arrived at the airport, Nowak followed her to a nearby lot where she had parked her car. As Shipman entered her car, Nowak approached Shipman, slapping on the window and trying to...

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released documents obtained November 2006 under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM). The documents concern the participation of NORTHCOM Commander, Admiral Timothy Keating, NORTHCOM Political Advisor Deborah Bolton, and Plans, Policy & Strategy Director Major General Mark Volcheff in a meeting of the “North American Forum” at the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Canada on September 12-14, 2006. A similar request for records concerning forum participation by then-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and his entourage is still pending with the Pentagon......

Rebellion is brewing among conservatives on the Republican National Committee over President's Bush's attempt to "impose" Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida as "general chairman" of the party, who favors "amnesty" for illegal aliens. "I will be voting against Senator Martinez if he is nominated for any chairmanship of the RNC," Tina Benkiser, Texas Republican Party chairman, told The Washington Times yesterday. Bill Crocker, the elected national committeeman from Texas, says that when the RNC convenes here tomorrow, "Absolutely, I will vote against Martinez." The conservatives -- one of whom accused the Bush White House of "outsourcing" party leadership -- say...

On the day the North American Monetary Union is created--perhaps on January 1, 2010--Canada, the United States, and Mexico will replace their national currencies with the amero.1 On that day, all American dollar notes and coins will be exchanged at the rate of one US dollar for one amero (). Canadian and Mexican currencies will be exchanged at rates that leave unchanged their nations' competitiveness and wealth. In all three countries, the prices of goods and services, wages, assets, and liabilities will be simultaneously converted into ameros at the rates at which currency notes are exchanged.

SAN DIEGO -- The Pentagon released the name Monday of a 34-year-old Camp Pendleton-based Marine whose battle death last week made her the first female USMC officer killed in combat in Iraq. Maj. Megan McClung of Coupeville, Wash., died Wednesday in Al Anbar Province, where she was serving as a public affairs officer with I Marine Expeditionary Force Headquarters, according to the Department of Defense. McClung enlisted in the Marine Corps in May 1995, following her graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy. She deployed to Iraq in January. Her personal awards include a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, National...

About 1,000 documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America show the White House is engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada outside the U.S. Constitution, says WND columnist and author Jerome Corsi. "The documents give clear evidence that the Bush administration has created a 'shadow government,'" Corsi said. The documents can be viewed here, on a special website set up by the Minuteman Project. Bureaucrats from agencies throughout the Bush administration are meeting regularly with their counterpart bureaucrats in the Canadian and Mexican governments to engage in a...

Drivers willing to pay to leave Interstate 35 in the dust could have an alternative as early as the summer of 2013. For 15 cents a mile, drivers could cruise the proposed Trans-Texas Corridor for nearly 100 miles, from Hillsboro to the north Austin suburbs. The rest of the 370-mile corridor could be running in 2017, the report said. That is according to a new 1,600-page master plan for the tollway, railroad and utility corridor that the firm Cintra-Zachry developed as it prepares to build the controversial project. The report said the company’s investment will increase by $3.5 billion, construction...

North Texas grows by 150,000 people a year – about the population of Richardson and Rowlett combined. McKinney and Frisco each add 200 newcomers a week. Keeping pace with the mobility needs of the mushrooming region is a losing proposition if we use only traditional means: state fuel taxes and leveraged federal funds. Yet most positions taken by candidates for governor are unrealistically wed to yesterday's formulas for financing roadways. Here's the size of the North Texas funding gap over the next 25 years: a nearly $28 billion shortage for new highways and related projects, according to the Regional Transportation...

A closed-door meeting of high-level government and business leaders that discussed the merger of North America was designed to subvert the democratic process, charged an attendee of the confab in Banff, Canada. Mel Hurtig, a noted Canadian author and publisher who was the elected leader of the National Party of Canada, provided WND the agenda and attendee list of the North American Forum at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta, Sept. 12-14. Hurtig said the "secret meeting was designed to undermine the democratic process." "What is sinister about this meeting is that it involved high level government officials...

ANNAPOLIS, Md., Sept. 12, 2006 – This colonial city, Maryland’s capital and home of the U.S. Naval Academy, commemorated the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks yesterday morning with its first Maryland Freedom Walk. More than 100 area residents joined Gov. Robert Ehrlich and Annapolis Mayor Ellen Moyer at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, walking together through a light drizzle to the Maryland Fallen Firefighters Memorial. The Annapolis City Color Guard led the procession along Rowe Boulevard, the main thoroughfare into the city center, to the memorial. There, fourth graders from St. Mary’s Elementary School led participants in...

DALLAS — Republican Gov. Rick Perry's former liaison to the Legislature is working once again for the Spanish company that won the rights to develop the state's $7 billion Trans-Texas Corridor toll road project. Lobbyist Dan Shelley worked for the firm as a consultant just before he went to the governor's office, a connection first revealed in 2004. State officials denied any connection between that circumstance and the decision, three months later, to award Cintra-Zachry the huge highway contract. Now Shelley has left the governor's office, and he and his daughter have large contracts to lobby for the road builder,...

After missing a deadline, the U.S. Department of Commerce finally has granted a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain complete disclosure of a congressionally unauthorized plan to implement a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada that critics say could lead to a EU-style alliance in North America. The plan is being implemented through an office within the Department of Commerce called the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America," under the direction of Geri Word, who is listed as working in the agency's North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, office.As WorldNetDaily previously reported, the White House has established...

A military jury Thursday acquitted a former Naval Academy quarterback of raping a midshipman in her dormitory room. But Lamar S. Owens Jr. was convicted on two lesser charges: conduct unbecoming an officer and disobeying a lawful order.

WASHINGTON -- A military jury on Thursday acquitted a former Naval Academy quarterback of raping a female midshipman in her dormitory room. But jurors convicted Lamar S. Owens Jr. on charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and disobeying a lawful order. "They have determined, obviously, that the consensual act took place," said Cmdr. John Maksym, the trial judge. He added that the jury of five Naval officers found that Owens "wrongfully entered the room without permission and wrongfully engaged in consensual sex." Owens, standing at attention as the verdicts were read, showed no emotion. He remains free without bond. He...

With virtually no mention in the mainstream media, Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez convened on June 15, the first meeting of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), an apparently extra-constitutional advisory group organized by the Department of Commerce (DOC) under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). A March 31 press release on the White House website, under the title “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America: Progress,” announced the formation of the NACC. The press release noted that the NACC would meet annually “with security and prosperity Ministers and will engage with senior government officials on an...

CNN Show Host Lou Dobbs brings us a segment on a proposed "North American Union"

The Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC) is ready to begin construction in 2007 building the first segment of what is planned to be a NAFTA Super Highway stretching from Mexico to Canada. As we have previously written, the NAFTA Super Highway is planned to begin at Laredo, Tex., proceeding north to Kansas City via Oklahoma City, and ulitmately connecting with Canadian limited-access highways north of Duluth, Minn.

Saturday June 17, 2006 By MARK STEVENSON Associated Press Writer TUXTLA GUTIERREZ, Mexico (AP) -- Leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said for the first time Saturday he would not honor Mexico's commitment under NAFTA to eliminate tariffs on U.S. corn and beans if he is elected. Tariffs on all agricultural products must be removed in 2008 under the North American Free Trade Agreement. But Lopez Obrador said he opposed eliminating tariffs on U.S. white corn and beans, showing no allegiance to a deal he sees as harmful to Mexican farmers. ``We are not going to accept this...

The idea to form the North American Union as a super-NAFTA knitting together Canada, the United States and Mexico into a super-regional political and economic entity was a key agreement resulting from the March 2005 meeting held at Baylor University in Waco, Tex., between President Bush, President Fox and Prime Minister Martin.

Quietly but systematically, the Bush Administration is advancing the plan to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn. Once complete, the new road will allow containers from the Far East to enter the United States through the Mexican port of Lazaro Cardenas, bypassing the Longshoreman’s Union in the process. The Mexican trucks, without the involvement of the Teamsters Union, will drive on what will be the nation’s most modern highway straight into the heart of...

Sweeping changes in America’s immigration policy may be directed by hidden hands. Although free trade agreements like NAFTA and CAFTA have softened America’s borders considerably, the latest Congressional immigration revamp comes about one year after the Council on Foreign Relations released a 59-page document titled, “Building a North American Community.” Founded in 1921, the CFR is an independent, membership organization “dedicated to producing and disseminating ideas … on world and foreign policy choices affecting the United States and other governments. In an overview of the 2005 CFR document, Illinois watchdog group Eagle Forum, reported a March 2005 meeting held in...

new system of screening travelers entering the United States significantly would enhance U.S. defenses against terrorism, says Paul Rosenzweig, acting assistant secretary for policy development at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) would require anyone crossing into the United States by land, air or sea first to present secure documentation that shows identity and nationality, Rosenzweig told the House Judiciary Committee's Immigration Subcommittee June 8. The initiative would require U.S. and Canadian citizens to do what citizens of most countries always have had to do when crossing national borders, he said. By requiring that...