By Jennifer Hlad
Published: October 9, 2012
The Navy kicked off its birthday week Tuesday morning, not with a buttercream-frosted submarine to rival the Army’s cupcake-covered tank, but with a celebration of the Naval Academy football team’s overtime win Saturday over Air Force.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert also reassured the sailors gathered in the Pentagon’s auditorium that it is “perfectly acceptable” shout “Beat Army,” even in a formal setting.
By Leo Shane III
Published: October 5, 2012
WASHINGTON – The nation’s positive jobs report on Friday included good news about veterans, with the unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan era dropping below 10 percent for the sixth month this year.
Bureau of Labor Statistics officials estimate the September unemployment rate for that group at 9.7 percent, more than one percent less than the August rate. For 2012, the monthly average unemployment rate sits at 9.8 percent for those veterans, well below the 12.1 percent rate of 2011 and on pace for the lowest mark since 2009.
By Chris Carroll
Published: October 4, 2012
WASHINGTON – A new threat of cyberattack from an “unusual source” is reigniting congressional interest in hardening U.S. online defenses, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said Thursday.
The House of Representatives passed, with bipartisan support, a bill to promote sharing of information on cyberattacks earlier this year. But the Senate effort to craft cyber legislation is stalled mostly along party lines, and the Obama administration is weighing an executive order to protect the country from attempts to steal secrets online, scramble computer networks or destroy critical infrastructure.
By Leo Shane III
Published: October 4, 2012
WASHINGTON – Wednesday’s debate between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney featured plenty of discussion on government spending and looming budget cuts, but only a few passing comments on defense funding and no mention of veterans programs.
That’s not a big surprise, considering that jobs and the economy have dominated the campaign trail. The two men spent the first half of the debate focused mainly on tax rates and the national debt, trading barbs over whose plan was better suited to fix the country’s fiscal challenges.
By Chris Carroll
Published: October 1, 2012
WASHINGTON – Just how involved should the U.S. military be when it comes to protecting civilian government and private computer networks from cybervillains and terrorists?
That was a key question for panelists – who included the heads of the Pentagon’s shadowy National Security Agency and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has often been at odds with the electronic spying agency – at a discussion Monday at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
By Leo Shane III
Published: September 27, 2012
WASHINGTON — Army officials saw a drop in suicide cases in August, but remain on pace for another grim record this year.
Army officials said 25 soldiers – 16 of them active-duty troops – are believed to have killed themselves last month. That’s down from July, when the figure hit an all-time high of 38 suicides among the active and reserve forces.
By Joyce Tsai
Published: September 27, 2012
WASHINGTON — After fielding a slew of questions ranging from insider attacks in Afghanistan to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, it was the final question of a nearly hourlong press conference Thursday that got Defense Secretary Leon Panetta the most fired up.
He was asked if he’d support “a short-term deal” by Congress to stave off sequestration. His retort? “I’ll take whatever the hell deal they can make right now.”
By Jennifer Hlad
Published: September 26, 2012
The United States does “not appear to be learning from the past,” and may be in a “pre-9/11-mindset,” eight senior House Republicans wrote in a letter to President Obama this week.
The letter addresses the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and asks the president for a joint briefing to address their classified questions. Reps. Buck McKeon, Ileana Ros Lehtinen, Mike Rogers, Lamar Smith, Hal Rogers, C.W. Bill Young, Frank Wolfe and Kay Granger signed the letter. McKeon is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Ros Lehtinen is chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Rogers is chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
By Leo Shane III
Published: September 24, 2012
WASHINGTON – Just two days after Congress left town without solving the problem of sequestration, Democratic and Republican leaders on the Senate Armed Services Committee promised publicly that they’re still working on the issue.
In a “don’t panic yet” letter to Senate leadership on Monday, committee chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., ranking member Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and four other top committee lawmakers said they are “working together to help forge a balanced bipartisan deficit reduction package to avoid damage to our national security” and stated that “all ideas should be put on the table and considered.”
Rendering of the Eisenhower Memorial from the historic Maryland Avenue cartway by Gehry Partners, LLP. Eisenhower Memorial Commission
By C.J. Lin
Published: September 18, 2012
Critics of the planned memorial honoring former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Washington D.C. continued their assault on the design by famed architect Frank Gehry on Tuesday, calling instead for a smaller memorial within an urban park dedicated to the former general.
The plans for the $112 million memorial, slated for a four-acre plot south of the National Mall and near the National Air and Space Museum, drew criticism for the depiction of the Kansas landscape of Eisenhower’s boyhood on steel tapestries supported by 80-foot columns.
