Tea is not your brew? Tired of weak tea? Don’t like tea parties? Looking for a tastier brew? Looking for a good, strong, honest cup of coffee, good till the last drop? Well, look no more. Annabel Park has founded “Coffee Party USA,” a grassroots online network which “advocates cooperation among elected representatives and promotes civil public discourse,” a movement which “gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government” and who recognize that the federal government...

Earlier this week, the U.S. Navy announced that it has decided to lift the ban on female submarine crew members. Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed a letter a week ago last Friday, notifying Congress of the Navy’s policy change, a change which both the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, and the Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Gary Roughead support. Congress can block the policy change by passing legislation doing so within a 30-day period following the date Gate’s letter was delivered to Congress. Bonnie...

Almost exactly five months ago I wrote: Women in the military have been—by tradition, by law, policy or regulation—excluded from various duties. One of the last remaining exclusions is women serving in “front-line combat jobs.” But, even here, according to the Navy Times, “combat roles have become blurred during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in which irregular warfare marked by insurgent roadside bombs and a lack of the frontlines evident in traditional warfare have brought women assigned...

A friend, who is a fellow tennis player and a bird watcher, just returned from a cruise to and around Antarctica and had some fascinating stories to tell about the “White Continent” with its spectacular ice, rugged mountais and fjords, aggressive seals and awesome whales, and—of course—the unique birds that inhabit the various islands, including the first Snow Petrel he has ever seen. Jim—that’s my friend’s name—describes the huge King Penguin colony he and his wife, Linda,...

Short Title: “The Dutch Government Collapse, No Yawning Matter” Judging from the number of comments in response to my “Back-to-Back Dutch Government Crises: First Iraq, Now Afghanistan,” and to subsequent updates on the collapse of the Dutch coalition government over the weekend, the reaction was one big yawn. On the surface, such indifference on our part might be justified. The politics in the Netherlands, some will say, don’t have that much of an impact on the rest of the world,...

It seems that the Dutch government has survived the political crisis caused by the “Davids Report” on the Netherlands’ involvement in the Iraq war, to almost immediately become immersed in another crisis that threatens to topple the coalition government. This time, the crisis is over the possible extension of the Dutch military mission in Afghanistan. Back in 2007, the Dutch parliament agreed to extend the Dutch military mission in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan under the condition...

I have been watching and listening to the pundits and talking heads pontificate about the tragedy that struck my beautiful city yesterday—a tragedy that may have taken at least one innocent life and injured several other innocent human beings. I have also been watching these same experts wave, quote and expound on the killer’s so-called manifesto, as if it were some new Magna Carta of terrorism rights. And I have just had enough. I have had enough of the attempts to politically characterize...

The New York Times has just reported: Former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was hailed as a hero alongside former Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and nearly became chief of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was sentenced to four years behind bars Thursday for eight felonies. Read more here.

Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist, journalist, and author George F. Will is the kind if Conservative even Liberals have learned to like and respect. I don’t say that because he sometimes goes against the traditional Conservative grain, such as with his reservations and criticism over the Bush administration Iraq war policies and, more recently, with his proposal for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan and for fighting the war from “offshore.” (Will has also been a critic of...

As news about the Haiti earthquake tragedy is relegated to the inside pages of our newspapers, the suffering continues. But so do the humanitarian and reconstruction efforts. Our troops who were among the first to reach the victims and to provide search and rescue—then, recovery—are still there, albeit in fewer numbers. As the number of U.S. military in and around Haiti decreases, so have the outrageous allegations of a U.S. “invasion” and “occupation” all but disappeared. The...

I have written in support of giving women in our military equal responsibilities, duty assignments and advancement opportunities as their male counterparts. (Here and here) I have also been a consistent supporter of permitting gays and lesbians to serve openly and honorably in our military. (Such as here and here) Finally, I have written admiringly of the Israel Defense Forces. In my opinion, the Israeli military are among the finest fighting forces in the world. As I have also written, gays and...

Richard Norton Smith is a distinguished presidential historian and former head of six presidential libraries. He has published numerous books and articles on our presidents and is a nationally recognized expert on “most anything and everything related to the presidency.” His books include “An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover” (1984), “The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation” (1986) and “Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation” (1993)....

In a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens lists some “excellent arguments for ending the U.S. military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy” and some “lousy ones.” As some of the “lousy ones” Stephens dismissively—even contemptuously—mentions the support of U.S. Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen to end DADT; the comparisons often made between repealing don’t ask, don’t tell and other civil-rights causes...

On my way to tennis this morning, I was listening to NPR and caught the end of an interesting conversation on an alleged correlation between the Super Bowl winner and the stock market. However, I didn’t catch the name of the professor who had done such a study. Curious as to how my stocks will be doing after tonight’s Super Bowl, I “Googled” the subject and hit the jackpot. The professor is finance professor George Kester at Washington and Lee University. In an article on Newswire.com,...

New York Times columnist Frank Rich must not read The Moderate Voice. In a column today in the Times, discussing the reaction to Adm. Mullen’s testimony on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Rich says: A funny thing happened after Adm. Mike Mullen called for gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military: A curious silence befell much of the right. If this were a Sherlock Holmes story, it would be the case of the attack dogs that did not bark. Rich contends that, perhaps with the exception...

ABC News has just reported that the Americans held in Haiti and charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy have fired their Haitian lawyer. For more details, background and updates please click here.

The catastrophic earthquake in Haiti has brought out the best in people, organizations and governments. In particular in the case of the thousands of existing orphans (some sources put this figure to be around 380,000) and newly orphaned children (tens of thousands more) in that devastated country, people, organizations and what was left of the Haitian government opened up their hearts, their homes and cut red tape in order to simplify and expedite the normally lengthy three-year Haitian adoption...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee to call for an end to the 16-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” law. While the Admiral’s words were eloquent, heartfelt and powerful, I doubt that the appearance and the words of our highest ranking active-duty officer— nominated to his present position by George W. Bush—changed many minds, especially among Conservative...

If the title sounds somewhat enigmatic, bear with me. It should soon become obvious that I am not talking about that much-dreaded U.S. “military invasion” of Haiti. While deployed overseas during my military days, sometimes the only newspaper in English, the only source of news from back home, was the venerable Stars and Stripes newspaper. I say venerable with good reason, for Stars and Stripes has been providing service men and women—wherever they may be, including while in combat operations—with...

According to the New York Times, the White House has just announced that the U.S. military will resume the airlift of seriously injured Haitians to American hospitals. “The humanitarian effort was suspended five days ago following complaints from the state of Florida that its hospitals were overwhelmed.” The flights, which have transported hundreds of gravely injured patients, all but a handful to Florida, were suspended Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida wrote a letter to Kathleen...

The New York Times reports that the Obama administration is abandoning plans to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 plotters in Lower Manhattan, “bowing to almost unanimous pressure from New York officials and business leaders to move the terrorism trial elsewhere.” The reversal on whether to try the alleged 9/11 terrorists blocks from the former World Trade Center site seemed to come suddenly this week, after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg abandoned his strong support for...

It wasn’t until nearly the end of his State of the Union address, when addressing civil rights, that President Obama said this: This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It’s the right thing to do. Of course he was talking about ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the1993 law that bans gays and lesbians from serving openly in our armed forces. I have...

I am not an economist, so I cannot comment in depth as to the “real” meaning and consequences of what I believe is some real good news that I read this morning about our economy, our country. The New York Times and several other publications report that the U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in over six years during the last quarter: Gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter, well above analysts’ expectations. It had grown at an annualized rate...

I was watching the State of the Union address last night and, as I saw half our legislators sit on their hands while their president tried to rally the nation, it dawned on me what a difficult task this man, this Mr. Obama—this mere mortal—has ahead of him. And for some reason I thought of the Creation. Now, don’t get me wrong. Trying to fix the mess our country finds itself in doesn’t even begin to hold a candle to the magnificent Creation. And, don’t get me wrong, I am not—by...

I am not very computer savvy, nor “Twitter,” “Facebook,” or other social-networking-sites-savvy. However, at the insistence of my “kids,” I joined Facebook. I use Facebook sparingly, mainly to look at photos of relatives and friends and, being concerned about privacy, I have kept my “Profile” very lean and my posting very limited. On the other hand, I notice that many include a lot of personal details in their “Profiles” and post copiously on just about all of their daily...