Category: Defense, National Security
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Stop All Aid to Palestinians and Other Terrorists. Every Bit of It
by Kerry Dougherty On Saturday morning Hamas terrorists unleashed Hell on innocent Israelis. As Israel’s ambassador to the US pointed out, given the population of Israel 600 dead Israelis is the equivalent of 20,000 dead Americans. This was Israel’s 9-11. Their Pearl Harbor. Some say it was the most deadly day in history for the…
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Navy Ditches Drag Queen Recruiting Videos
by Kerry Dougherty Whoa. Stop the presses. Big news out of Washington. Navy brass has confirmed that it’s scrapped its ingenuous recruiting tool. You know, the one we wrote about last spring: drag queens. Yep, Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, a non-binary sailor who likes to dress up like a woman and prance around on…
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The Enduring Value of Arlington’s Endangered Monument to Reconciliation
by Donald Smith Jim Webb, former U.S. Senator from Virginia, former Navy Secretary, and certified badass (Navy Cross, Silver Star and two Purple Hearts from his service as a Marine officer in Vietnam) grabbed quite a bit of attention last week. On August 18 he called for the Confederate Memorial at Arlington Cemetery to be…
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Every Day is Memorial Day in Normandy
by Kerry Dougherty My most memorable Memorial Day did not take place on Memorial Day at all, but a few weeks earlier. In May of 1982. But then again, every day is Memorial Day when you stand on those beaches at Normandy. It was a glorious spring morning on the coast of France. The sky…
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Why They Fought — and Deserve to be Remembered
by Donald Smith Soldiers go to war for many reasons — home, country, duty, glory, personal adventure. But, in the midst of battle, soldiers fight for their comrades — “the man to the left of me, the man to the right of me,” as the saying goes. Good soldiers are driven by an intense desire…
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Strategic Insanity Off the Coast of Virginia
by James C. Sherlock As I warned in three columns in late December, the Pentagon has now objected to Department of the Interior plans to develop offshore wind farms along the central U.S. coast. It has warned that almost all of the areas planned for development of the huge turbines conflict with current military operations.…
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Naming Commission is Stripping History
by Donald Smith The week of January 16, 2023, was a big one for Virginia heritage issues in the Richmond area. Connor Williams, the chief historian for the Congressional Naming Commission (CNC) came to the American Civil War Museum to explain and defend the commission’s sweeping recommendations toward, and its disparagement of, Confederate memories on…
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The Naming Commission’s Diktats
by Donald Smith The Congressional Naming Commission (CNC) was authorized as part of the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act. Its eight commissioners included two retired Army generals, a retired Navy admiral and a retired Marine Corps general. It also had academics with imposing credentials. One commissioner is a professor emeritus at United States Military Academy…
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Offshore Wind Turbines in International Waters Raise Big Defense Issues
By James C. Sherlock The Department of the Interior (DOI) is unlikely to be expert in the diplomatic issues and defense vulnerabilities inherent in building wind turbine farms in international waters. The DOI is, however, greatly concerned with “viewscape” – whether the turbine blades can be seen from shore. By the wealthy who live there…
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Dominion’s Planned Offshore Wind Farm Need Not – and Must Not – Be Built Where Planned
by James C. Sherlock I am referring in the title, of course, to Dominion Power’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project to be located in the hatched area below. It is planned for one of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s (DI) Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) offshore wind farm lease areas. Lease areas…
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Offshore Wind Turbines and Submarine Warfare
by James C. Sherlock Upon investigation of open source literature, I find that offshore wind turbines are less noisy than I imagined. But they present obstacles nonetheless, both physically and acoustically. United States submarine and anti-submarine efforts, operationally, in Navy labs, and in industry are led by some of our best and brightest. That is…
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Junior ROTC – Important to Students, High Schools, Society and the National Defense
by James C. Sherlock Richmond Senior High School (RSHS) is a 1,200-student grades-10-to-12 school in the Sandhills Region of North Carolina. Its mission, vision and belief statements genuflect at none of the shrines of progressive dogma. Not a single one. Minority enrollment is 57% of the student body (majority Black), which is higher than the…
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Virginia Needs Better Information Sharing to Provide Mandated Public Services to Illegals Efficiently and Effectively
by James C. Sherlock I am on record as a persistent advocate of improving the quality of both schools and medical services for poor and minority citizens. It has been the main focus of my work for years. In a directly related matter, we read, with different reactions depending upon our politics, of the struggles…
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Virginia Republican Congressmen Do It Again
Virginia’s Republican representatives in Congress have again embarrassed the Commonwealth. The House of Representatives recently approved a resolution supporting the applications of Sweden and Finland to join NATO. The vote was 394-18. Three of those 18 “no” votes were from Virginia Republicans: Morgan Griffith (9th District), Ben Cline (6th District); and Bob Good (5th District). …
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America’s Petroleum Refining Capacity in the News – What is Going On?
By James C. Sherlock This is a note about perhaps the highest profile national inflation issue, the price of gasoline and diesel. The President is demanding more supply from U.S. refineries. Headlines like this one blare at us today: Biden threatens oil companies with ’emergency powers’ if they don’t boost supply amid inflation spike. The…