One of the most notable outcomes of the dramatic news that Osama bin Laden has been killed is the feeling of unity across the American political and social spectrums. The event has triggered a shared sense of achievement, pride and common purpose. It is a mood that the U.S. has not felt for years as increasingly polarized political debates, on both serious and trivial issues, gradually gutted the operational middle of the country's political system. After initial excitement, ...

In 1867, former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest became the first Grand Wizard of a newly formed organization called the Ku Klux Klan. Forrest had been a slave trader before the Civil War; he was also the commanding officer during a battle known as the "Fort Pillow massacre" in Tennessee at which some 300 black Union troops were killed in 1864. Now, in honor of the Civil War's 150th anniversary, the Sons of Confederate Veterans ...

You don't need to tell John Boehner about the lethal damage a government shutdown can do to his party; he's seen it firsthand. In November 1995, Boehner was a young lieutenant to the mercurial Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who was trying to jam huge GOP budget cuts down the throat of the Clinton White House. Congressional Republicans believed the public supported the cuts on their merits but worried that Gingrich's public antics were costing them the ...

Doctors have learned to make no rash claims about treatments for multiple sclerosis. This baffling disease of unknown origin afflicts an estimated 250,000 in the U.S. with varying degrees of incapacity, usually in the legs and arms, often involving speech and vision. Damaging the nerve sheaths in the brain and spinal column, multiple sclerosis may take many forms, from a quickly fatal attack to a 30-year lingering illness punctuated by long periods of relative freedom. Histamine, vitamins and a variety of drugs have aroused high hopes ...

Driving along a pockmarked road amid rocks and Joshua trees in a lonely southern California desert, religious controversy might be the last thing you'd expect to encounter. And if you don't look too closely, you're likely to zip right past the focus of a hotly contested Supreme Court battle. A federal judge has ordered the Mojave Cross, a war memorial erected by a veterans group 75 years ago, to be covered. It's boxed in plywood. The issue is less about ...

An American Airlines flight out of Florida made an emergency landing Thursday night after a written bomb threat was found in a bathroom, officials said. Scam artists are calling veterans and posing as VA workers who need credit card information to update prescription information, as part of a scheme that fraudsters have recycled over the years. "America's veterans have become targets in an inexcusable scam that dishonors their service and misrepresents the department built for them," said Dr. Gerald Cross, ...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano apologized Thursday after some veterans groups were offended by a department report about right-wing extremism. The report said extremist groups may try to attract veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also said extremists also may use the recession and the election of the nation's first African-American president to recruit members. The American Legion was among those who objected to the report's mention of veterans. "I think it is important ...

Fifteen years after his death, and after his family fought a very long bureaucratic battle with the government, Enrique Valdez's name was added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Valdez was a Marine gunnery sergeant wounded by shrapnel in August 1969, combat that left him a quadriplegic. Since his death in 1994, his family has been waiting for the Defense Department to answer their requests that Valdez be included on "The Wall." On Memorial Day, his family finally got ...

As President Obama reminds Americans that Memorial Day is more than the casual start of summer, many veterans advocates are eagerly waiting for more details about his plans for a revamped veterans program. Monday is "a time to reflect on what this holiday is all about; to pay tribute to our fallen heroes; and to remember the servicemen and women who cannot be with us this year because they are standing post far from home -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and ...

Erik Roberts, an Army sergeant who was wounded in Iraq, underwent his 13th surgery recently to save his right leg from amputation. Imagine his shock when he got a bill for $3,000 for his treatment. "I just thought it was bull---- that I'm getting billed for being wounded in Iraq doing my job. I always put the mission first, and now that I was wounded in Iraq, they're sending me bills," he said. "I put my life on the line ...