Pat Alviso of Military Families Speak Out called to tell us how it went for her at Saturday’s Long Beach Veteran’s Day Parade. Alviso’s group was one of three excluded from participating in the parade by organizers who said they were concerned that the groups just wanted to stir up trouble by protesting the war [...]

The decision by organizers of the Long Beach Veteran’s Day Parade to exclude veterans groups that oppose the war in Iraq has been in heavy news rotation the past couple of days. We’ve run nearly 10 stories about the affair and its been the Press-Telegram’s lead story the past two days.
So, it was a bit [...]

Counting the cost in Iraq and Afghanistan
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that 2007 has been the deadliest year for American troops in Iraq. Today, the Associated Press reports that 2007 has also become the deadliest year for American troops in Afghanistan.
Of course, it’s not just Americans who are dying in Afghanistan. As the [...]

Not giving peace a chance
Last Thursday, a group of Illinois high school students used their lunch hour to stage a peaceful sit-in protest against the war in Iraq. “We were holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ and the song ‘Give Peace a Chance.’ ” one of the students tells the Chicago Tribune. According to school officials, [...]

Homeless vets will watch Vets Day Parade from sidewalk
Like war itself, the skirmish over the Veteran’s Day Parade makes for weird alliances. We find ourselves suddenly warming to flag-waving Tom Hennessy; his P-T column today delicately takes on parade organizers for their decision to ban anti-war veterans groups. On the other hand, while we’ve said [...]

The Supreme Court sided with “private” parade organizers in 1995 decision

Anti-war groups seeking to participate in Saturday’s Veterans Day Parade in Long Beach will have to contend with a 1995 Supreme Court decision that found private organizers of a St. Patrick’s Day parade in that city could not be compelled to allow gay-rights activists to [...]

On the heels of three anti-war groups being banned from Saturday’s Veterans Day Parade, the AP reports that veterans now make up 25% of the country’s homeless population. What’s worse is that according to the study cited by the AP, younger soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are already finding their way into soup kitchens and  [...]

The Press-Telegram reports today that three groups have been denied access to march in Saturday’s 11th Annual Long Beach Veteran’s Day Parade. Those groups–Veterans For Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War and Military Families Speak Out–were excluded from the parade because, organizers said, they did not “fit the spirit of the parade. The spirit being [...]

Sandow Birk gets ugly

SANDOW BIRK’S “THE LIBERATION OF BAGHDAD”
Poor Lynndie England! If you’re Paris Hilton, you can move past the night-vision sex scenes—or at least flood the universe with other images of yourself to make the night-vision recede into the unending tide. But Ms. England can’t show up on a thousand red carpets until we [...]

Letting loose with nukes
When Dick Cheney assured the pubic in 2002 that it was “a bit over the top” to suggest that the Bush administration was considering “preemptive nuclear strikes” as part of its overall defense strategy, it seemed a safe bet that he was being “a bit less than honest”. It was, and he [...]