by Navy Capt. (Ret) Peter O'Brien We all know that NORAD (The North American Air Defense Command) traces Santa every year. But, here at the...

We created a Constitution - a remarkable feat, a document that was the envy of the world for 220 years - and still is if you want the root explanation of why millions of people are trying to get into the US and not so much anywhere else. (How many people tried to sneak into China last year?) 

In the news this week, Alexei Navalny, the dissident Russian politician who was serving 30 years in an Arctic Gulag, died. Navalny was a longtime rival of Tsar Vlad, had campaigned against corruption - Putin’s corruption - and after returning to Russia in 2021, had been found guilty of “extremism” and “fraud” - what were clearly nonsense charges, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. 

Memorial Day is the day we stop and think about the 1,355,000 Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen, and Coast Guardsmen who have died while in service to the nation. But, one of the things about Memorial Day that always bothers me is that, while the Soldiers and Sailors and Airmen and Marines who died in the major wars are remembered (though even then the focus is on the major battles, not the lesser known ones), the casualties in lesser wars and skirmishes are mostly forgotten and the Sailor or Marine who dies in some skirmish outside of a war is nearly completely forgotten. 

In practical terms, sincerity is the opposite side of the coin of trust. To be trusted you must be sincere, you must try to do what's right and you must tell the truth. Further, once trust is lost it cannot be easily regained. Those who have had their trust violated rightly should be exceptionally demanding in trusting such an individual ever again in even the most minor of matters. 

The attempted assassination of former President Trump has now had a chance to settle in just a bit, and in capitals around the world I would suspect that there are senior planning teams taking out their portfolios and looking at their assumptions.