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Homeland Security: Immigrant Family Members Of U.S. Military Members Will No Longer Be Deported

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Photo Credit: opposingviews.comMillions of members of the U.S military were born abroad. Many of these people have undocumented family members living in the United States.

For years, U.S. military service member advocates have argued that the nation’s current deportation policy often places undue stress on these members. The idea of deporting the loved ones of someone serving their country just doesn’t quite seem right.

Today, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security made an announcement that should alleviate some of these stresses. Undocumented family members of U.S. military members will no longer be deported. Instead, they will be given a “parole in place” permit that will allow them to apply for permanent legal status while remaining in the U.S.

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What In the World Is Happening to Our Senior Military Officers?

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Photo Credit: Linas Garsys for The Washington TimesWhat in the world is happening to senior military officers under the Obama administration?

It seems that every week since President Obama took office in 2009, we’ve been hearing that another top leader has been summarily fired, despite his decades of loyal service and valuable experience in protecting the nation. Statistically speaking, it’s actually closer to one every 8.8 days, a staggering 200 military brass shown the door in less than five years.

The Pentagon has offered up a grab bag of reasons for these dismissals — from a simple “loss of confidence,” to more descriptive “insensitive remarks,” “sexual misconduct,” and even “counterfeit poker chips.”

The latest two to fall from grace, Navy Vice Adm. Ted “Twig” Branch, director of naval intelligence, and Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless, director of intelligence operations, were stripped of their security clearances last week, effectively ending their careers. They allegedly engaged in “inappropriate conduct” over a Navy contracting scandal related to scheduling port visits in Southeast Asia during the past decade. According to Navy officials, the probe into Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia is expected to widen — meaning, we’ll likely see other senior officers terminated in the weeks ahead.

Though firing senior military leaders was routine in different eras, including World War II and the Civil War, it was mostly related to lack of success on the battlefield. The battlefield has changed considerably since then, though, and those same metrics are harder to measure today.

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Military Members, Veterans Missing Out on Key ObamaCare Provision

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsOne of the most touted benefits of President Obama’s health care overhaul law is the provision allows parents to keep their adult children on their health insurance until age 26.

However, Trace Gallagher reported on “The Kelly File” Monday, this benefit is not being extended to a significant group of Americans: members of the U.S. military.

TRICARE, the Department of Defense program that provides health coverage to active duty and retired military members and their families, only covers young adult dependents up until age 21, or age 23 if they are enrolled full-time in college.

TRICARE recipients can then purchase a plan for their young adult dependents, according to their website.

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Veteran Affairs Sued for Harassing Christian Chaplains

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Photo Credit: WND Two military chaplains are suing Eric Shinseki, secretary of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, or VA, for allegedly being harassed and drummed out of a training and placement program because of their Christian faith.

Chaplains Major Steven Firtko, U.S. Army (Retired) and Lieutenant Commander Dan Klender, U.S. Navy, claim they were mocked, scolded and threatened for their faith while enrolled in the San Diego VA-DOD Clinical Pastoral Education Center program, which trains and distributes chaplains to military and VA medical centers in the San Diego area.

According to their lawsuit, Firtko and Klender allege the Center’s supervisor, Ms. Nancy Dietsch, a VA employee, derided them in classrooms and even had one of them dismissed for failing to renounce his Christian beliefs.

For example, on Sept. 24, 2012, the lawsuit claims, during a classroom discussion, Dietsch asked Firtko what he “believed faith was.”

Firtko responded by quoting Hebrews 11:1 – “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

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Military Must Do More with Less

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner We live in oxymoronic times. Everyone recognizes the need for a streamlined, more efficient Pentagon. Yet Congress won’t let the Department of Defense close another base or increase the copayments military families make for their very generous health insurance plans. Continuing resolutions and sequestration prevent weapons makers from doing a deal with the Pentagon that sticks.

The defense budget is in free fall by some measures, facing $492 billion in possible sequester cuts over nine years, or roughly $55 billion annually. These come on top of earlier cuts by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates and in addition to huge reductions in war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the U.S. military budget still totals $600 billion. That is 40 percent of what the entire world spends on defense, and substantially more than the Cold War average in inflation-adjusted terms.

President Obama wants to do nation-building at home, end the country’s wars and avoid involvement in Syria. Yet he is also committed to “rebalancing” the military to put greater emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region and preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Meanwhile, he still maintains 50,000 troops in Afghanistan, nearly double than when he took office.

The secretary of defense said last year that sequestration would be catastrophic for the military, yet half a year into sequestration the sky has not fallen. The sequester, which went into effect in March, has not yet fundamentally jeopardized our national security or the state of our armed forces, and some of the $40 billion in defense cuts in 2013 reflected reasonable pruning.

But other savings will be far more perilous. Dramatically reducing training for many military units, as was done this summer, is tolerable — but only for a short period. It would be debilitating if this continued, particularly to young troops who have never had intensive training.

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Fort Hood Soldiers say Army Warned them Off Tea Party, Christian Groups

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Photo Credit: AP/Jack PlunkettDon’t donate to the tea party or to evangelical Christian groups — that was the message soldiers at a pre-deployment briefing at Fort Hood said they received from a counter-intelligence agent who headed up the meeting.

If you do, you could face punishment — that was the other half of the message, as reported by Fox News.

The briefing was Oct. 17, and about a half-hour of it was devoted to discussion about how perceived radical groups — like tea party organizations and the Christian-based American Family Association — were “tearing the country apart,” one unnamed soldier said, to Fox News.

Among the remarks the agent allegedly made: Military members who donate to these groups would be subject to discipline under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the soldier reported.

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Nine Generals Fired, Two Military Leaders Suspended

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Photo Credit: Ben Swann Nine commanding Generals have been fired, and two other leaders are on suspension, in a historic military shake up…

“I think they’re using the opportunity of the shrinkage of the military to get rid of people that don’t agree with them or not tow the party line. Remember, as (former White House chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel said, never waste a crisis,” a senior retired general told TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity because he still provide services to the government and fears possible retribution…

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, said the White House fails to take action or investigate its own, but finds it easy to fire military commanders “who have given their lives for their country.”

“Obama will not purge a civilian or political appointee because they have bought into Obama’s ideology,” Vallely said. “The White House protects their own. That’s why they stalled on the investigation into fast and furious, Benghazi and Obamacare. He’s intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”

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DoD Refuses to Say If It Would Stop Priest from Giving Last Rites to Dying Serviceman—‘We Are Currently Litigating’ Matter

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Photo Credit: AP/Carolyn KasterLt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman in the Office of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, is refusing to say whether the Department of Defense would attempt to stop a civilian Catholic priest, who had been a contract chaplain for the military, from administering the last rites to a serviceman on a U.S. military base.

“I feel no particular compulsion to answer outlandish, hypothetical questions in a yes/no fashion nor does the Department, generally, answer hypotheticals at all,” Breasseale said in an email.

“Further, it is a matter of long standing Department policy to not address matters that are currently under active litigation,” Breasseale continued.

Prior to Breasseale sending this email declining to say whether DOD would try to stop a priest from administering the last rites to a serviceman, a spokesman for the National Security Staff at the White House, had responded to the question, by saying: “We’d refer you to our colleagues at DOD for comment.”

“I’m sorry that the NSS sent you to us, but I suspect they might not have known that we are currently litigating,” said Breasseale. “The Department of Justice handles the litigation for all agencies of the Executive, so my recommendation is that you contact them.”

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US Soldier Shot Dead in ‘Insider Attack’ in South-Eastern Afghanistan

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Photo Credit: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft MediaAn Afghan man wearing an Afghan army uniform shot at US soldiers in south-eastern Afghanistan, killing at least one serviceman on Sunday, local officials and the Nato-led coalition said.

The so-called “insider attack” in Paktika province is the fourth in less than a month and is likely to strain already tense ties between coalition troops and their allies, with most foreign troops scheduled to withdraw by the end of next year. A Reuters tally shows Sunday’s incident was the tenth this year, and took the death toll of foreign personnel to 15.

“A man wearing an Afghan army uniform shot at Americans in Sharana city [the provincial capital] near the governor’s office,” said an Afghan official, adding that two soldiers had been hit by the gunfire.

The Nato-led coalition confirmed one soldier had been shot by a man in security forces uniform, but did not comment on his nationality or whether the Afghan was wearing a army uniform.

Insider attacks threaten to further undermine waning support for the war among Western nations sending troops to Afghanistan. A similar flurry of attacks last year prompted the Nato-led force to briefly suspend all joint activities and take steps to curb interaction between foreign and Afghan troops.

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America’s Warning About Jihadis in the Military

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Photo Credit: WNDRet. Command Sergeant Major Bart E. Womack says it was golfer Tiger Woods who saved his life when a grenade landed at his feet.

Womack was stationed in Kuwait before the coalition’s invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power in 2003.

He said he was awake in the middle of the night because he is a golf fan, and Woods was competing in the Bay Hill Invitational and Womack knew a campaign was coming so every swing could have been the last one he would see for a long time.

Then it happened.

“As I concentrated on Tiger’s swing and listened for the sweet THWACK of a ball, I heard the tent flap flutter again and a scraping sound as something rolled toward me,” he writes in his new book “Embedded Enemy: The Insider Threat.”

“The hand grenade rolled between Tiger and me, resting at the tent’s edge,” he reports. “It is amazing how quickly thoughts can ping through your mind. I knew grenades only took five seconds to blow, and I think I wasted two seconds coming to the shocking realization of what was happening.”

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