Brigade

We're still legislating and regulating private morality, while at the same time ignoring the much larger crisis of public morality in America. In recent weeks, Republican state legislators have decided to thwart the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to have an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy. Legislators in North Dakota passed a bill banning abortions after six weeks or after a fetal heartbeat had been detected, and approved a fall referendum that could ban all abortions by defining human life as beginning with conception.

We're still legislating and regulating private morality, while at the same time ignoring the much larger crisis of public morality in America. In recent weeks, Republican state legislators have decided to thwart the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to have an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy. Legislators in North Dakota passed a bill banning abortions after six weeks or after a fetal heartbeat had been detected, and approved a fall referendum that could ban all abortions by defining human life as beginning with conception.

The black cloud that's been hanging over the Severn lifted yesterday.The Navy basketball team won the Patriot League title, providing a diversion for the brigade of midshipmen."

Flying over Iraq this week, Maryland National Guard Col. David W. Carey surveyed miles and miles of emptiness. Where 500 U.S. bases once housed as many as 170,000 troops, the American military footprint had shrunk to two bases and 4,000 soldiers - all with orders to pack up and move out by the end of month. "It's as if you're going to a ghost town," Carey, commander of the 29th Combat Aviation Brigade, said Thursday from Iraq. "I have instructed and encouraged my soldiers to take it all in, take pictures, write stuff down, keep a journal," he said.

Since 1942, midshipmen have been squaring off in the Naval Academy's annual brigade boxing tournament, trying to win on of eight spots on a squad that represents the academy at regional and national competitions. This year, 87 boxers laced on gloves at the beginning of the season in search of the brigade title in their weight divisions.The midshipmen who will represent the academy this year are Colin Keenan, a 139-pound junior from Brooklyn, N.Y.; Liam Huin, a 147-pound junior from Dennis, Mass.

The Whining Negro Brigade is now in glorious disarray. The brigade's poster boy, one Mike "Munchy" Tyson, is in deep and well-deserved trouble.Before I go further, let me state there is a difference between normal black Americans and the members of the Whining Negro Brigade. Normal black Americans have decent jobs, work hard, cry racism only when they are legitimate victims of it and can immediately recognize a genuine scamboogah -- say, like Mike Tyson -- when they see him. They actually make up the majority of black folks in the country, though you'd never know it if you listened to the members of the Whining Negro Brigade.

In the words of renowned ring announcer Michael Buffer, it's "let's get ready to rummmmmmble" at the Naval Academy's Halsey Field House tonight.Navy boxing coach Jim McNally and staff are ready to turn loose the contestants for the 57th annual, always-thrilling Brigade Championships.The semifinals will be at 7: 30 tonight with the finals next Friday at Halsey.As a bonus for those at the yard and local boxing fans, the Brigade champions will duke it out in a Navy Invitational Feb. 28, also at Halsey.

BAGHDAD -- The final troop contingent in President Bush's plan to improve security, a brigade that includes 152 attack and transport helicopters, will arrive in the Iraqi capital soon, a U.S. commander said. With the arrival of the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, 3rd Infantry, based in Savannah, Ga., the addition of 28,500 troops begun in mid-February will be complete. The brigade will be based at Camp Victory near the Baghdad airport, Maj. Gen. James Simmons, deputy commander of multinational forces, said Friday.

An article Thursday in the Anne Arundel County edition incorrectly described whether the Naval Academy Band's Electric Brigade performs at weddings. Some members of the Electric Brigade perform on their own at weddings, but the Electric Brigade does not, according to a band spokesman. It's a Tuesday afternoon inside the granite walls of the Naval Academy's Mitscher Hall, and nine musicians are rehearsing. Frank Dominguez, a clean-cut Navy enlisted man, steps to the microphone and closes his eyes.

Baghdad -- A brigade of 3,700 U.S. troops arrived in Baghdad this week, part of the Bush administration's troop buildup aimed at quelling sectarian violence. The soldiers from the 4th Brigade, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team from Fort Lewis, Wash., are part of a troop buildup ordered by President Bush in January that is expected to amount to 28,500 combat and support personnel. The last combat brigade of 3,700 troops is due by late this month.

Fifty trips to New York to honor some of the 343 firefighters who died in the aftermath of 9/11 helped ignite an idea in the mind of Howard County Assistant Fire Chief J. Mark Richards, resulting in a mission he is carrying out today. Standing at attention several dozen different times while listening to bagpipers play as pallbearers carried the caskets of those New York firefighters, he knew what he wanted to do: Help form a pipe band back in Maryland. Richards made those trips a decade ago with other county firefighters during off-duty hours to Staten Island and Manhattan to attend funeral and memorial services held in the vicinity of the World Trade Center's twin towers.

Charles L. Hammond Jr., a retired office manager and senior buyer who had fought during World War II with the famed Devil's Brigade, died Monday of complications of heart disease at Carroll Hospice's Dove House in Westminster. He was 88. Mr. Hammond, the son of farmers, was born and raised in Reisterstown. As a teenager, he became a noted cattle judge and traveled all over the country judging Holsteins, relatives said. After graduating in 1937 from Franklin High School, where he had been a varsity pitcher, he pursued a professional baseball career.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. military officials said yesterday that overall American troop levels in Iraq will drop by about 5,000 next month when a combat brigade completes its withdrawal from the country. The U.S. Army's 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry, which primarily has been operating in the country's volatile eastern Diyala province, would be the first of five brigades to depart Iraq without being replaced during the next several months, officials confirmed. The pending departure of the 3rd Brigade was announced earlier this month, but the number of soldiers was reported as 3,000 and the withdrawal was said to be scheduled for January.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. and Iraqi army units supported a citizen policing group in a daylong battle that repelled an al-Qaida in Iraq assault on a town south of the capital, the U.S. military said yesterday. Between 30 and 45 attackers on foot and in vehicles mounted with machine guns stormed two checkpoints manned by a citizens' group that had recently formed to protect Adwaniya, about 12 miles south of Baghdad. The untested residents, fighting with their personal weapons and minimal combat gear, held their positions until help arrived first from the Iraqi army and then U.S. ground and aerial forces.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- If you had never heard what Capt. Peg Klein's voice sounded like, last night under the stands at Notre Dame Stadium was not the time to find out. There wasn't much left of it, and she was trying her best to lose what remained. "I told the brigade at the start of the game," said a hoarse Capt. Klein, the Naval Academy commandant of midshipmen, "that the brigade was not allowed to have any voice at the end of the game. And they don't." Navy @North Texas Saturday, 4 p.m., 1090 AM

BAGHDAD -- In Maryland, she's a state trooper. In the National Guard nine years, she's also a trained Army medic. But in the center of a war zone, Spc. Marta Koock has become a tour guide. And it isn't what she expected to be doing in Iraq. Koock's largely administrative job assignment overseeing morale, welfare and recreation at the largest American base in Iraq illustrates the challenge of her Maryland National Guard's 58th Infantry Brigade Combat Team headquarters company, which arrived here two months ago. "I'm a field rat," Koock said back at her office after directing a recent weekly group through two of Saddam Hussein's former lakefront palaces, which had been pummeled by American missiles.

LUKAVAC, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- In the morning they run nine miles in formation, sounding off like U.S. Marines."Allahu Akbar!" they cry, "Glory to God." In cadence, they shout short, inspirational verse from the Koran, the holy book of Islam. Some days, the imam visits, talking of martyrdom for the jihad.Such is a soldier's life in the Bosnian army's 9th Muslim Liberation Brigade, a strict, secretive unit of home-grownmujahedeen, encamped about 10 miles from U.S. Army headquarters at the Tuzla air base.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. military officials said yesterday that overall American troop levels in Iraq will drop by about 5,000 next month when a combat brigade completes its withdrawal from the country. The U.S. Army's 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry, which primarily has been operating in the country's volatile eastern Diyala province, would be the first of five brigades to depart Iraq without being replaced during the next several months, officials confirmed. The pending departure of the 3rd Brigade was announced earlier this month, but the number of soldiers was reported as 3,000 and the withdrawal was said to be scheduled for January.

Khaki. By definition: drab, yellowish-brown, originating from the Persian word khak, which means dust or ashes. Used predominantly in military uniforms around the world and, more recently, as a color on pants and skirts that can go with pretty much anything, except maybe gray, depending on whom you ask. But at the Naval Academy, khaki is officially acquiring a new meaning: leadership. Instead of the dark blue working uniforms that midshipmen wear in classes or attending to everyday matters on the campus - and which, fashion police might add, are a bit drab in their own right - seniors have begun donning khaki.

BAGHDAD -- The final troop contingent in President Bush's plan to improve security, a brigade that includes 152 attack and transport helicopters, will arrive in the Iraqi capital soon, a U.S. commander said. With the arrival of the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, 3rd Infantry, based in Savannah, Ga., the addition of 28,500 troops begun in mid-February will be complete. The brigade will be based at Camp Victory near the Baghdad airport, Maj. Gen. James Simmons, deputy commander of multinational forces, said Friday.