Free Republic

Talk to anyone in my business and they'll all say the same thing: No matter how long you write stories and put them in the newspaper, you are never really sure which ones are going to strike a nerve. What you think might be a Pulitzer-quality epic might draw only a nice call from Mom, while a simple tale tossed off on deadline causes an uproar, or an avalanche of praise. One legendary former investigative reporter at this paper wrote scores of stories that changed laws and saved lives, yet never did he get more mail than when he wrote...

In what was described as the first occasion of its kind in the country, a memorial to the Southeast Asian forces who fought as allies of the U.S. during the Vietnam War era was dedicated at Fort Snelling on Saturday. The plaque, in the cemetery's Airborne Circle, memorializes the Hmong, Laotian and Khmer special forces units that served in Cambodia and Laos. "I believe that this is probably the first time that they have been recognized specifically in a place like this," Trudell Guerue, president of the Chapter XV 173rd Airborne Brigade Association, said during the dedication ceremony. For Khoa...