The Washington Times

Critical Lecture Raised Red Flag ; Spy Suspect Called 'Wrong'

Nearly three years before he and his wife were arrested on charges of spying for Cuba, Walter Kendall Myers raised the ire of his superiors at the State Department after delivering a lecture that criticized U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Myers, who was a high-ranking State Department analyst and part-time professor at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the time, told a gathering at the university in 2006 that the relationship between the U.S. and Gr...

O'malley Gears Up in Bid for 2nd Term

Facing only a handful of challengers with virtually no name recognition, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley is kick-starting his 2010 re-election campaign, sending out fundraising letters, setting lofty goals beyond his current term, and eyeing a possible rematch with former Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich. Although Mr. O'Malley, a Democrat, says he will not be making an official announcement until next year, the 45-year-old Rockville native is not denying his intentions to run for Maryland's to...

Obama Pays Homage to D-Day Veterans ; Hails Heroism On the 65th Anniversary

President Obama - standing above the Normandy beaches where tens of thousands of Allied soldiers stormed ashore 65 years ago to begin an operation that cost nearly 10,000 American soldiers' lives - said Saturday that the D-Day invasion helped defeat Nazi Germany's "evil" ideology bent on ruling the world. Before a throng of elderly heroes - some stooped, some in wheelchairs, nearly all white-haired - the president said World War II brought a "clarity of purpose," unlike the troubled state of ...

Refugees Doubt Army Victory Over Taliban ; Senior Insurgent Leaders Escape Swat Offensive

Pakistan's claims that it has defeated the Taliban and regained control of the Swat Valley ring hollow for many of the 3 million refugees and others who fear the government is exaggerating its battlefield successes. Despite claims by the military it had secured 90 percent of the territory in Swat that was previously under Taliban control, officials were forced to concede that every senior Taliban commander had escaped.

U.S., China Discuss Carbon Gap ; Aim to Shrink Differences for Climate Treaty

U.S. officials were due in China on Sunday to try to narrow differences between the world's top carbon emitters in advance of December's climate-change summit in Copenhagen. The gap is large at the moment.

Will Obama Take Page From the Gipper's Playbook?

It was Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 1981, and President Ronald Reagan's first day in office. Surprisingly, one of his first official acts was to notify Congress of his intention to fire all of his inspectors general (IGs), stating that it was essential for him to have the "fullest confidence" in the ability and integrity of each inspector general. James S. Brady, the White House press secretary, said at the time that Mr. Reagan was looking for people who were "meaner than a junkyard dog" when i...

'Realists' Challenge Claim of Consensus On Warming

Several hundred scientists, politicians and activists participated in the third annual International Conference on Climate Change on Tuesday, marking another stage in the timeline of a scientific social movement. The conference, sponsored by the nonprofit Heartland Institute, hosted panels of climatologists and meteorologists as well as members of Congress to address questions surrounding global warming and climate-change legislation.

Weaving Life of Giving, Learning

"I'm a bit of a showoff about this," Washington philanthropist Evelyn Stefansson Nef says as she springs up and down from her salon chair and intermittently raises her arms high above her head like a ballerina to demonstrate her atypical agility. "How many 95-year-old people have you seen get up from a chair without having to bend way over, hold on and move up very slowly?" this extraordinary nonagenarian asks as she mimics her contemporaries' stiff movements.

Next Phase of the Challenge ; Re-Engineering Processes for Greater Efficiencies

Now that the financial stress tests in the United States are over, the capital parameters set and the fundraising well under way, many bankers are breathing sighs of relief. Alas, they should not, and neither should the regulators or investors. Raising the required capital, though necessary, is not enough. Looked at in an objective manner, raising required capital is merely a temporary solution for financial engineering and will prove to be dilutive to the shareholder. It is a quick fix and a...

Bat Talk in Egypt

President Obama has shown again that he is competent at reading from two teleprompters, thus enabling him to speak out of both sides of his mouth. He reminds me of the bat who, when talking to rats, shouted, "I'm a rodent!" but when surrounded by buzzards, pleaded, "I'm a bird! I'm a bird!" VANCE GARNETT

Don't Hide Cni Baggage

In The Washington Times article "Fulbright widow: U.S. should press Israel on Gaza" (World, Tuesday), essential details about the Council for the National Interest (CNI) were missing. CNI is an anti- Zionist group that has vilified Jews and Israel for years through propagandistic articles and ads, as, for instance, in a 2006 New York Times ad blaming Israel for the war in Iraq. Because the opinions of Stephen Buck, a participant in the CNI "political pilgrimage," occupy much of the article, i...

If Talk Is Cheap, Listening Can Be Costly

Greg Pierce affords conservative talker Bill O'Reilly a remarkably uncritical forum in which to deny any complicity in the murder of Dr. George Tiller ("O'Reilly's Response," Inside Politics, Nation, Thursday). I find this odd because Mr. O'Reilly has become a very wealthy man thanks in large part to his regular screeds decrying what he perceives to be the pernicious influence of rap music. According to Mr. O'Reilly, lyrics he considers to be obscene, violent and racist must have a destructiv...

Ignoring the Public On Traffic Cameras

Your editorial pointing out the difficulty of a grass-roots effort to qualify a referendum for the ballot was right on target with the Maryland and Virginia referendum processes ("Undemocratic traffic cameras," Friday). When fighting Virginia's infamous abusive- driver legislation, I found out the hard way that the commonwealth has no citizen-initiative process available to overturn such ill- conceived pieces of legislation. It is worth pointing out that the District does have a formal refere...

The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc ; Ronald Reagan On the 40th Anniversary of D-Day, 1984

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy, the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. We stand on a lonely, wi...

Valor at Normandy ; Lt. Jimmie Monteith, Heroic Virginian

Lt. Jimmie "Punk" Monteith was a big, bluff, fun-loving 26-year- old from Low Moor, Va. He had been in the Army since a few months before Pearl Harbor and had seen action in Sicily, where he received a field promotion. On the morning of June 6, 1944, he was in a landing boat with his men of Company L, 3rd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, destination Normandy. Company L was slated to land in the Fox Green sector of Omaha Beach in the first wave, but the fog of war push...

Inconsistent Interrogation Tales ; Responsibility As Well As Information Must Be Shared

As the controversy continues over what and when Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation methods (EIM), there is a significant overlooked dimension to this Washington melodrama. If the speaker, as she admits, was informed as early as 2002 of the program, including the possible use of waterboarding, but was powerless to challenge that policy - except by using it as a political tool in the 2006 congressional elections - the entire web of practical, legal and insti...

Urgent Need for Action ; Avoid Lighting a Fuse for Regional Catastrophe

The Islamic Republic of Iran is on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon. It already is spinning enough centrifuges and has nuclear facilities spread out in such a way as to infer a weapons- production program. Iran's ties to terrorist organizations such as the Lebanese- based Shi'ite group Hezbollah make it a unique and even more dangerous threat where nuclear weapons are concerned. Below are two very possible scenarios - the first more possible than the second - that could occur in the wa...

Why a New Marine One? ; No. 1 Need: Protect the Commander in Chief

"Semper Fidelis," the official motto of the U.S. Marine Corps, means "Always Faithful" - an expression of loyalty and commitment to our Marine comrades in arms. In the spirit of our motto, "Semper Fi," I am concerned over the current plan to terminate the VH-71 Marine One Presidential Helicopter program. I had the privilege of flying the president of the United States during my time as commander of the Marine Helicopter Squadron One (HMX-1). The Marine One helicopter is no more a typical VIP ...

'Igniter' Sparks Lakers ; Odom's Effort Erasing His Negative Reputation

Lamar Odom has always been a player praised for his athleticism and rare versatility. At 6-foot-10, he has the size of a power forward, but he also possesses the skills that allow him to handle the ball like a point guard and knock down shots on the perimeter as well as any shooting guard. But a knock against him has always been a seemingly inconsistent internal drive. When he's focused, he's virtually unstoppable. When he's not, he can drive a coach mad.

Devil of a Time for Old College Rivals

At Washington Mystics media day last month, while the three Duke alumni on the team - Alana Beard, Monique Currie and Lindsey Harding - posed for a picture, a loud "Booooo" echoed from the other side of the Verizon Center practice gym. The source: a grinning Marissa Coleman. With the addition of Coleman and Harding to a roster that already featured Beard, Currie and Crystal Langhorne, Washington now features a quintet of players who earlier this decade battled for ACC and NCAA championships.