Every Memorial Day is different. In peacetime, the urgency of the day can fade as it becomes about parades and barbecues, road trips and long weekend getaways. In years of conflict, the kickoff to summer is a bittersweet reminder of what it costs to enjoy such simple freedoms as those parades and barbecues and carefree long weekends. Every year, too, more names are added to the long list of those to be honored and remembered: A nation’s servicemen and women, fallen in the line of duty.

This year’s Memorial Day falls in a week of two big milestones. One was the movement by Congress to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The other was hitting — and then exceeding — the grim milestone of 1,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” came about during the Clinton years as a compromise. It was a way to maximize enlistment, an attempt to deflect sexual politics away from the public sphere and keep private matters private (and yes, there’s a “private’s privates” joke in there somewhere).

Over the past decade and a half, the policy has become more and more outdated, and more and more controversial. For almost half that time, the U.S. has been involved in a war in two nations — plus a stateless and global war on terror. The justifications for keeping qualified but out personnel from military service seemed dated at best and ridiculously, self-destructively stupid at worst. Never mind the other worst: Homophobic, intolerant and discriminatory.

By 2010, it was high time to repeal it, and, under the Obama administration, it will finally be done. It won’t be easy, of course. But growing pains only happen when there is growth.

This week’s two milestones are, of course, related — not causally, despite the coincidence of timing. But they are linked as reminders of what it means to sign up for the military and fight for your country, and what is at stake for every person, in every quarter.

Who wants to tell a soldier in Afghanistan sorry, but your mission just got that much more dangerous because a translator was turned away owing to an unfortunate case of gayness? And, by the way, how tired does that example seem already? I’d be embarrassed to even use it except that it’s still sadly and ridiculously relevant in 2010. It pales in relevance next to the somber reality of this week’s other milestone.

As I write this, outside the sun is shining and summer has officially begun with picnics, beach days, blowout sales and the latest “Shrek” sequel. It’s Memorial Day weekend, and it’s meant to be enjoyed and appreciated. But we shouldn’t forget to appreciate who this day was meant to remember, and appreciate the freedoms they signed up to fight for.

This Memorial Day, those freedoms include the freedom to ask and to tell.

• Remind.org — Supporting wounded returning service men and women, and their families, through the Bob Woodruff Foundation.
• IAVA – Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America supports servicemen and women at home and abroad.
• Operation Gratitude — Assembles and ships care packages to United States service members deployed overseas.
• Homes for our Troops — Providing specially adapted and accessible homes for severely wounded service members across the country.
• Fisher House — Provides accommodation for family members of injured service members so they can stay close during hospitalization and rehabilitation. One of the charities to which President Obama donated his Nobel Prize winnings.

Day 40: BP ‘top kill’ still not stopping flow

msnbc.com - ‎1 hour ago‎

A nation mesmerized: Can BP plug the Gulf gusher? The Associated Press

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ABC News

Actor and Director Dennis Hopper Dies at 74

ABC News - Michael S. James - ‎1 hour ago‎

Dennis Hopper, director of “Easy Rider,” dies San Francisco Chronicle

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MiamiHerald.com

Illegal immigrants gravitate toward Arizona border

Washington Post - Peter Slevin - ‎55 minutes ago‎

Thousands descend on Phoenix to protest immigration law CNN

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Do you live near the Oil Spill? We want to see what you are seeing. Contact us today an email pictures to geekiefreak@aol.com.

(May 29) — Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck has apologized for a segment on his radio program in which he made fun of President Barack Obama’s 11-year-old daughter, imitating her in a childish high-pitched voice and criticizing her intelligence.

Beck issued an apology on his website Friday after bloggers and parents objected to the tirade from Beck, who in the past has argued that the media should “leave families alone.”

In his radio show, “The Glenn Program” on Premiere Radio Networks, Beck mocked Malia Obama for asking her father if he’d managed to stop oil from continuing to spill out into the Gulf of Mexico. At a news conference Thursday, the president recounted how his daughter had asked him, “Did you plug the hole yet, Daddy?” — in an effort to illustrate how all Americans are anxious about the BP oil rig that’s now become America’s worst oil spill in history.

Afterward Beck made fun of the anecdote, imitating Malia in a squeaky voice.

“Daddy? Daddy? Daddy, did you plug the hole yet? Daddy?” he said. Then Beck’s co-host Pat Gray responded as if he were the president.

“Honey, not yet… Not time yet, honey. Hasn’t done enough damage,” Gray said.

Then Beck took his argument a step further, saying the exchange reveals something about Malia’s education. The 11-year-old and her 9-year-old sister Sasha go to Sidwell Friends, and exclusive and high-performing academy that’s sometimes called “the Harvard of Washington’s private schools.”

“‘Did you plug the hole yet, daddy?’ Is that’s their — that’s the level of their education, that they’re coming to — they’re coming to daddy and saying ‘Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?’” Plug the hole!” Beck said on his Friday morning radio show.

Later in the 4-minute segment, Beck turned the routine toward Obama’s race. “Why do you hate black people so much?” he said, still imitating Malia in a baby voice.

“I’m part white, honey,” Gray responded in the voice of the president.

Friday’s segment ran just two days after another piece on Beck’s radio program in which he decried critics of Sarah Palin’s family. “Leave people’s families alone. I don’t think I’ve ever… We’ve never done anything but protect families… Leave families alone,” he said at the time.

Under criticism from liberal blogs like Media Matters and others, Beck issued an apology saying, “I broke my own rule about leaving kids out of political debates.”

“The children of public figures should be left on the sidelines,” Beck wrote. “It was a stupid mistake and I apologize — and as a dad I should have known better.”

After years of allowing corporations to withhold vital safety information, the Environmental Protection Agency screamed “stop” on Thursday. In the Federal Register, the agency said it will no longer permit the obstruction of safety evaluations by allowing firms to hide behind age-old claims of business secrecy.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson had told Congress earlier this year that the heavily lobbied for “confidential business information” protection was keeping the agency’s risk assessors from obtaining vital health and safety data on chemical substances awaiting approval. Thousands of chemicals were not properly evaluated because of the withheld information, she told lawmakers.

The agency’s new stance has real-world implications.

Earlier today, AOL News published a story on scientists in the U.S., Canada, South America and elsewhere pleading with the EPA to not approve the use of an oil dispersant that contains unidentified and possibly untested nanoparticles.

The company, Green Earth Technologies, insists its product is safe for use in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and says federal law allows it to conceal information on the composition of the nanodispersant and precisely what nanoparticles it contains because those facts are confidential business information.

The EPA’s move means that protection may no longer exist, at least within that agency. Other federal safety agencies, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Food and Drug Administration, apparently still allow the corporate obfuscation.

“Yesterday’s notice is the latest in a series of actions the new leadership at EPA has taken to make good on a much-neglected aspect of its mission,” wrote Richard Denison, senior scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund.

In announcing the new policy, the EPA said it took the action “to promote public understanding of potential risks by providing understandable, accessible and complete information on potential chemical risks to the broadest audience possible.”

A careful legal interpretation of the long maligned but vital Toxic Substance Control Act convinced the agency that it could provide more valuable information to the public by identifying data where information may have been claimed and treated as confidential in the past but is not and was not in fact entitled to confidentiality under the TSCA.

The EPA says it expects to begin reviews of confidentiality claims — both newly submitted and existing — on Aug. 25.

Breaking News: Gary Coleman has been hospitalized in Utah, and according to a report by TMZ, the actor is in critical condition. The report, citing Coleman’s brother-in-law, claims that the ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ star fell and injured his head, which led to his hospitalization. There is little other information at this time, but stay tuned to PopEater for updates.
Coleman’s health has been an issue of late, as the 42-year-old actor has suffered two seizures this year. The first occurred on January 6, while the second took place in late February while he was on the set of ‘The Insider.’ During the 911 call from the latter incident, an ‘Insider’ staffer who called it in told the operator: “We have someone having a seizure right now on our stage … we just need someone as soon as possible.”

Health woes aside, Coleman has also found himself in legal trouble in recent years. In January, Coleman was arrested at his Utah home after failing to appear in court for a domestic violence warrant. The domestic violence charges were eventually dropped, and he pled guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief charge. He was ordered to take a domestic violence class and pay a $595 fine.

Breaking News: Gary Coleman has been hospitalized in Utah, and according to a report by TMZ, the actor is in critical condition. The report, citing Coleman’s brother-in-law, claims that the ‘Diff’rent Strokes’ star fell and injured his head, which led to his hospitalization. There is little other information at this time, but stay tuned to PopEater for updates.
Coleman’s health has been an issue of late, as the 42-year-old actor has suffered two seizures this year. The first occurred on January 6, while the second took place in late February while he was on the set of ‘The Insider.’ During the 911 call from the latter incident, an ‘Insider’ staffer who called it in told the operator: “We have someone having a seizure right now on our stage … we just need someone as soon as possible.”

Health woes aside, Coleman has also found himself in legal trouble in recent years. In January, Coleman was arrested at his Utah home after failing to appear in court for a domestic violence warrant. The domestic violence charges were eventually dropped, and he pled guilty to misdemeanor criminal mischief charge. He was ordered to take a domestic violence class and pay a $595 fine.