Safe travels to the bikers heading in to Washington for the Rolling Thunder Memorial Day ride! I’ve never owned a motorcycle, but I always enjoy seeing the Rolling Thunder guys and gals rumbling by with their flags and their Harleys. God bless, and thanks for your service!

Last Wednesday, these three events took place at the same time: President Obama released his birth certificate to quell a fringe conspiracy theory–never supported by any facts–that he was not born in this country. Fans of Sony PlayStation were complaining because their network was down. And eight U.S. Air Force members, along with a civilian contractor,…

The lights of Tokyo glittered underneath our wings as my Air National Guard crewmates and I flew a recent airlift mission. As we arrived in our C-5 Galaxy, news reports spoke of a thousand-fold radiation increase in seawater at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. We landed at Yokota Air Base, about 150 miles south of…

To the layman, the recently announced Boeing contract to build aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force may sound exorbitant. At $35 billion, it ranks among the largest contracts in Pentagon history, and it comes at a time of steep deficits and government cutbacks. Commentator Robert Scheer called it “perverse.” In the Truthdig web magazine,…

A terrorist bombing strikes an Afghan police training center in Kabul, leaving dozens of critically injured blast victims. An Air Force transport plane takes off with some of the wounded, who are bound for a hospital in Germany. Once airborne, pilot Michael Parson learns terrorists have also placed a bomb on board the aircraft. The…

One of the neat things about becoming an author is meeting other authors at literary events. You get to exchange ideas and learn about their work. At one event recently, at the National Press Club in Washington, I ran into Matt Gallagher. He’s the author of the Iraq war memoir, KABOOM: EMBRACING THE SUCK IN…

The U.S. Justice Department might have difficulty defining Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The media also have trouble setting a name to what he has done. He has portrayed himself as a cyber-age muckraker, crusading against government secrecy and skulduggery. Assange’s Wikipedia page says he’s “an Australian journalist, publisher, and Internet activist.” But if those words…

 Imagine the following scenarios: You’re a sergeant riding shotgun with an Army convoy in Iraq. An IED explodes next to your vehicle and showers you with sand, rocks, and flames. Seriously burned, you pull yourself from the damaged gun truck and wonder what will happen next. You’re a crew member of a C-5 Galaxy lifting…

Some thoughts on the Air Force’s mobility fleet…. These observations are my own and do not represent official military policy. Tonight, in Air Force jets over a black Atlantic, bleary-eyed aviators will sip coffee and monitor instruments on the first leg of an airlift run to Afghanistan or Iraq. They’ll maneuver their C-17s or C-5s…

The Campaign for the American Reader is a great initiative to encourage more people to read more books. The program includes a number of blogs and columns. One of them is called “My Book, The Movie,” in which authors imagine the film version of their works. Writer and producer Marshal Zeringue invited me to offer…