New Hampshire welcomes home Charlie Company
Yesterday New Hampshire welcomed home 46 members of Charlie Company, third unit of the 172nd/Infantry (Mountain) Division, after a year long tour of duty in Afghanistan. What an emotional homecoming this must have been as our heroes were reunited with their families after such a long time away in service of our country.
It is times like this that make me realize that while our soldiers are heroes, we often forget about the unsung heroes–the families which our soldiers leave behind, they are heroes also. They sacrifice as much as those who are deployed as they are left alone to raise their children and make a living while their minds must always be elsewhere; how these military families are able to function on a daily basis while their loved ones are in harm’s way is beyond me.
We owe a debt of gratitude to all of those who have chosen to defend our country, as well as their loved ones who live with an anxiousness and nervousness on a daily basis that we can never truly understand.
I thank you all for everything that you do for this country! Welcome home Charlie Company, you have made New Hampshire proud and you have made America proud. Congratulations on a job well done!
Below is the Union Leader article about this homecoming, reprinted in full.
THE SIGN FOR Spc. Brandon D. Smart read: “A piece of my heart is back from Afghanistan.”
Hugging his two sons to him — 4-year-old Jason and 2-year-old Landon — the Stratham dad and National Guardsman joined in the joyous reunion at the Manchester Armory shared by 45 other members of Charlie Company, third unit of the 172nd/Infantry (Mountain) Division. The soldiers returned Thursday after a year-long deployment.
“It’s emotional,” Smart said. “No words could capture how I’m feeling right now.”
The New Hampshire group was attached to a Vermont battalion overseas and saw some action while stationed there, according to Spc. Courtney Selig, a member of the 114th Public Affairs Division.
“Their job was interacting with civilians, building partnerships — though they were outside the ‘safe zone’ more than in it, and engaging the enemy if they needed to,” Selig said.
Nancy Glidden of Londonderry said she “felt like a kid” waiting to see her husband, Spc. Dustin Glidden.
“It’s stressful, not having him here,” she said. “But I would call him (on the cell phone) and we’d keep in touch on Facebook.”
Julie Rogers of Barrington was all smiles waiting for her husband, Sgt. Dustin Roberts. She said they were able to talk on the cell phone, but the service was not as dependable as it had been on a previous deployment in Iraq.
The roughest part for her?
“Just raising four kids on my own,” she said and laughed. She said her youngest daughter was about to celebrate her 1st birthday.
Her oldest child was not in the Armory. “She doesn’t know he’s coming. We’re going to pick her up after school and surprise her,” Rogers said.
Meanwhile, Dustin’s mother, Deb Budney of Peterborough, confessed to being more than a little tense.
“You keep a lot inside,” she said. “You’ve got to be a rock for them (his wife and children). He has a sister, too, and you keep everything inside as a mom.”
She added: “I just want to see him, make sure all his fingers and toes are there . . . like when he was born.
“The first time he was deployed, a colonel said to me, ‘Thank you very much for your son.’ And I said, ‘He’s only on loan. Just bring him back in the same condition you got him.’ “
And here are a few pictures:
Ovide Lamontagne to form the Granite Oath PAC
As some of my regular readers may remember, I endorsed Ovide Lamontagne in the New Hampshire primary in his bid to replace the retiring Judd Gregg. Ovide Lamontagne lost to Kelly Ayotte by about 1,600 votes, but instead of calling for a recount, he conceded the election to KellyAyotte for the good of the Republican party claiming that the people are the sovereign and he accepts the will of the people. In his defeat he showed me the character that made me support him in the first place.
Out of all the New Hampshire candidates that I endorsed there was none that I was more excited about than Ovide Lamontagne, and while I think that Kelly Ayotte will turn out to be a very good senator for my state I still feel as if we missed an opportunity to send the person with the most conservative credentials running for any office in New Hampshire to a position of leadership.
Harry Reid to push four different versions of the DREAM Act in the lame duck Congress
Emboldened by his re-election, and feeling vindicated by it, Harry Reid appears hellbent on passing some version of the DREAM Act by whatever means necessary.
Harry Reid has introduced four different versions of the DREAM Act in an attempt to force one of these versions through the lame duck Congress, and he has done so without holding a hearing on any of these versions. This is exactly the type of political maneuvering that the American people rejected when they sent the Democrats home in last month’s midterm election, but Harry Reid does not give a damn what the American people want, so he will continue to push for the radical agenda that the American people have already rejected.
This has angered Jeff Sessions, who is the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee which Harry Reid is trying to bypass, and rightfully so.
We now may have a fourth version of the DREAM Act,” Sessions said Wednesday. “We haven’t had a hearing on that in seven years
While promising to fight the DREAM Act with “with every strength and every ability that I have,” Jeff Sessions released a statement which included the following: Read more…
It appears as if one of the first casualties in the new Republican controlled House of Representatives will be Nancy Pelosi’s House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Needless to say, the goal of this committee was to promote a cap and trade system while at the same time trying to convince the American people on the asinine notion that taxing every single American on their energy usage would not hurt the economy.
Today it was learned that Republicans would eliminate this committee when the new Congress convenes in January. Not all Republicans wanted this committee to be abolished because they felt with a new Republican majority in the committee this committee could be used to challenge Barack Obama’s radical cap and trade agenda and help to shed new light on the contradictions that abound in the global warming, cap and trade energy tax. Michael Steele disagreed with this assessment: Read more…
During the campaign Republicans introduced their “Pledge to America.” One aspect of that pledge was to do away with comprehensive spending bills by requiring each government department to appear before the Congress individually and make their case for the level of future funding. John Boehner is now looking to make good on this promise:
The move would facilitate cutbacks in government programs and, GOP aides say, enhance oversight and accountability for individual agencies, fulfilling promises made by Republicans on the campaign trail and in their Pledge to America.
Let’s do away with the concept of ‘comprehensive’ spending bills. Let’s break them up, to encourage scrutiny, and make spending cuts easier. Rather than pairing agencies and departments together, let them come to the House floor individually, to be judged on their own merit,” he said at AEI more than a month before the midterm election. “Members shouldn’t have to vote for big spending increases at the Labor Department in order to fund Health and Human Services. Members shouldn’t have to vote for big increases at the Commerce Department just because they support NASA. Each department and agency should justify itself each year to the full House and Senate, and be judged on its own.”
Yesterday the Senate passed S 510–the Food Safety Modernization Act–and it seemed as if this bill was destined to become law, all that was left to send this bill to the president was to reconcile the Senate and House versions of this bill. On the surface this bill seems benevolent enough, after all who does not want to ensure the safety of the food they will be eating? But once you delve into the bill you find that there are some very troubling issues related to this bill which you can read in one of my previous posts here.
But there is one small problem with the Senate version of the bill according to this article:
Section 107 of the bill includes a set of fees that are classified as revenue raisers, which are technically taxes under the Constitution
Virginia judge strikes down healthcare reform law challenge
A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that the mandates in the healthcare reform law fall under the commerce clause in the constitution and are therefore legal.
U.S. District Judge Norman Moon ruled that the law requiring individuals to buy health insurance coverage as well as requiring employers to buy coverage for their employees was legal under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
This ruling is a setback to all of us who feel the government has no right to tell the American people that they have to purchase a product which they either do not want or cannot afford, but it is just that, a setback. The fight is far from over, in fact it is just beginning. The lawsuit in question here was brought forward by the Christian Liberty University, and while this one attempt failed, there are still many more challenges to be heard. There are a total of roughly twenty states that have filed challenges to the healthcare mandate–Virginia included–and I find it extremely hard to believe that there will not be at least one justice that will allow this affront to our constitutional liberties to move forward.
Lame duck senate passes controversial new food safety bill: S 510
By an overwhellmingly bipartisan vote of 73-25 the Senate passed S 510–the Food Safety Modernization Act. I have already gone into detail about the controversy surrounding this bill–from the FDA being placed under the Department of Homeland Security, to the unfair regulations that will be suffered by small, local growers–here, so I am not going to go into the details again.
I will however quickly recap one point on this issue: this bill is being promoted in response to the recent food contamination outbreaks yet the large companies who are responsible for these outbreaks have been exempted, while the small growers who had nothing to do with the outbreaks are the ones who are going to suffer because of this bill.
This fight is still not over, while the House passed a version of this bill last year, the Senate bill and the House bill still need to be reconciled before this bill can be sent to the president for his signature, and there is the very real possibility that with all of the other pressing issues facing the lame duck session, this bill may fall by the wayside. But we cannot take that chance; we must call, write, and email our senators and representatives to voice our displeasure and concerns with this bill.
At the very least this bill must be delayed until the new Congress convenes; there are just too many questions surrounding this bill and the American people need to have the opportunity to see what is actually in this bill. The people did not have the chance to see what was in the healthcare reform bill before it passed–in fact Nancy Pelosi said that the Congress had to pass the bill in order to see what was in it–and we have seen some early returns on the healthcare bill and they are not encouraging.
The Congress has tried to slip this bill through before the American people could realize what was happening, and there must be a reason why they were being so secretive on this bill. We cannot afford to let the Congress make the same mistake with our food supply as they did with our healthcare coverage! Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Mark Ruffalo placed on terror watch list for supporting a documentary on natural gas
I am really beginning to wonder what the hell is going on in this country! We have the Department of Homeland Security and ICE seizing and shutting down websites for copyright infringement–expanding the power of both of these agencies far beyond what the original scope of their authority was, without the okay from the Congress–while WikiLeaks is a threat to national security and is allowed continue its operation. And now we have an actor–Mark Ruffalo–being placed on a terror watch list because he organized screenings for a new documentary about natural gas.
I have to admit that I have no idea who Mark Ruffalo is, I had never even heard of him before I read this story, but he is obviously a leftist environmentalist and while normally I would not come to the defense of someone like him, I have to wonder what he did that would place him in suspicion with the Department of Homeland Security.
WikiLeaks releases more top secret United States documents
By this time everyone has heard about the recent WikiLeaks “document dump” of top-secret United States documents, and anyone who cares already knows what was in those documents so I am not going to recap what the contents of those documents were.
I have to say that I find this most recent release of top-secret documents to be troubling and deeply concerning, as well as infuriating–not for the contents revealed in these documents, but rather in the fact that these documents were stolen in the first place.
Julian Assange–the man behind the WikiLeaks “document dumps” is either stealing this information or he has an informer on the inside who is providing him with these documents. I personally believe the latter it true, but either way I find it astonishing that we are facing such a threat to national security and this website is still allowed to operate.
America's Watchtower 