Top 10 Veterans News from Around the Country 10-08-09

What’s Inside Today’s Local News for Veterans

1. Organizations In Several States To Receive Homeless Vets Assistance Funds.
2. High Court Hears Arguments In Mojave Cross Case.
3. Budget Delays Said To Be Hurting VA Hospitals In State Of Washington.
4. Government Contractor Touts Benefits Of A Veteran-Owned Business.
5. VA Urged To Re-Fund Gulf War Illness Research At UT-Southwestern.
6. Jindal Awards Honor Medals To Over 200 Veterans.
7. Volunteer Bequests Large Sum To VA.
8. Flu Shots Available To Vets In DC, Louisiana.
9. Afghanistan Vets Take Part In Long Bike Ride.
10. Vet Recycled Cans To Make Ends Meet As He Waited For GI Bill Payment.

1.      Organizations In Several States To Receive Homeless Vets Assistance Funds.  In continuing coverage, the Aurora (CO) Sentinel (10/8) reports, "Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki announced that the Aurora Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center will be one of a wide group of national organizations to receive about $17 million to fund about 1,155 beds for homeless veterans. The Aurora Comprehensive Community Mental Health Center will receive about $46,000 in grant funds awarded" by the US VA "to create housing and support services for veterans across the country. Local lawmakers praised the Aurora facility’s recognition by the VA." The Sentinel notes that in a statement, US Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) said, "Providing more veterans with shelter this winter is another step in fulfilling our promise to those who bravely sacrificed for our nation."
      The Eugene (OR) Register-Guard (10/8) notes that as "part of more than $17 million in grants to community groups in 19 states to create 1,155 beds for homeless veterans this year," the US VA "has awarded a $506,527 grant to Sponsors Inc., the Eugene nonprofit agency that serves ex-offenders, to pay for 10 beds to serve homeless veterans." Sponsors, the only grant "recipient in Oregon," broke ground "last spring…on a new $5.5 million facility on Highway 99 that will house approximately 72 men and include a warehouse to store donations, food and sundry goods."
      Burr Praises VA For Awarding Grant To North Carolina Group.  The Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times (10/8) notes that on Wednesday, US Sen. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), "applauded the decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs…to award First at Blue Ridge, Inc. in Ridgecrest, North Carolina, more than $125,000 to establish housing and support services for homeless veterans." The grant is "part of the more than $17 million in grants to community groups to create 1,155 beds for homeless veterans this year throughout 19 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico." The Citizen-Times adds, "Burr authored the bill that authorized grants to address the issue of preventing veteran homelessness." His "legislation was signed into law last year as part of the Veterans’ Mental Health and Other Care Improvements Act of 2008."
      Shinseki’s announcement of the VA grants is also mentioned by Ed Wilkinson, in the second item for his Craig (CO) Daily Press (10/8) "Veterans Hotline" column, and in a Delaware County (PA) Times (10/7) editorial, which pointed out that Wednesday was the "second day of a summit" in Washington, DC, "hosted by the National Coalition for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans to share expertise in delivering support and services to members of the military, veterans, their families and survivors. Hopefully they will have much to offer" as the Obama Administration "works to improve services for our veterans, many of whom are reservists whose lives were unexpectedly interrupted by these wars."
      VA Sponsoring Event For Homeless Vets.  On its website, KRIV-TV Houston (TX) (10/8) reports on the Stand Down for Homeless Vets event in Houston, Texas, noting that the "two-day event at Emancipation Park in southeast Houston is sponsored by the Department of Veterans Affairs." KRIV added that on Wednesday, veteran Clarence Brown "said he came to the Stand Down to get help finding employment or new job training. ‘I’m just trying to get my
life back together again and get my feet back on the ground right now,’ Brown said." The "event resumes Thursday from 8:00 am until 3:30 pm."  

2.      High Court Hears Arguments In Mojave Cross Case.  Wednesday’s arguments before the Supreme Court in Salazar v. Buono, involving a cross erected on Federal land in the Mojave Desert to honor war veterans, generated extensive media coverage. The coverage generally focused on the apparent divisions on the Court about the case, noting that the Court seemed inclined to avoid the larger issue of separation of church and state and focus instead on narrower, procedural issues.
      USA Today (10/8, Biskupic) reports that the arguments "turned tense Wednesday, revealing the divisions among justices regarding religious symbols on public grounds." USA adds, "One of the most heated exchanges came when an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer emphasized the power of the cross – erected to honor U.S. soldiers killed in World War I – as a symbol of Christianity. Justice Antonin Scalia challenged him on the implication that the cross was not honoring all the war dead. ‘I have been to Jewish cemeteries,’ attorney Peter Eliasberg said. ‘There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew.’ ‘I don’t think you can jump from that to the conclusion that the only war dead the cross honors are the Christian war dead,’ Scalia shot back angrily. ‘I think that is an outrageous conclusion.’" USA notes, "Though the legal question before the court Wednesday was narrow, it showcased familiar ideological divisions between conservatives such as Scalia and liberals such as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg."
      The AP (10/8, Sherman) reports, "As the Supreme Court weighed a dispute over a religious symbol on public land Wednesday," Justice Antonin Scalia "made plain his view of the case, strongly suggesting that he sees no problem with the cross at all." The "court is considering whether the cross’ presence on
the land violates the Constitution, despite Congress’ decision to transfer the land on which the cross sits to private ownership." Veterans groups "are on both sides of the case, with some worrying that other religious symbols that serve as war memorials could be threatened by a ruling against the Mojave cross," but Peter Eliasberg, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the "former National Park Service employee who sued over the cross, said their fears are misplaced." Eliasberg "said two prominent symbols in Arlington National Cemetery, the Argonne Cross Memorial and Canadian Cross of Sacrifice, are different. Context matters, Eliasberg said, noting that the Veterans Administration offers a choice of 39 different emblems and beliefs on tombstones at Arlington."
      The Washington Post (10/8, Barnes) reports that the case "raises a host of complicated issues about which religious displays violate the Constitution’s ban on government establishment of religion and who may challenge them" but the Court "seemed disinclined to answer most of them," instead spending "nearly half of the oral argument in the case deciding what they were deciding" in the case and appearing "to settle on a rather narrow question: whether Congress had the right idea for solving the problem by trying to transfer the land on which the cross sits to private ownership." Solicitor General Elena Kagan "told the justices that lawmakers did the best they could in 2004 to preserve the memorial built by veterans more than 75 years ago and to abide by the decision of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that a cross on public land is unconstitutional. ‘Congress had a choice,’ Kagan said. ‘And the choice was to take down that memorial, which meant an enormous amount to veterans in the community, or to completely dissociate the government from that memorial. And what Congress did was to completely dissociate the government from that memorial.’ But the ACLU’s Eliasberg "said Congress, in fact, did the opposite: It designated the site a national memorial, putting it in the same rarified category as the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore."
      The New York Times (10/8, A16, Liptak) reports that the justices "largely avoided the most interesting question in the case: whether the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion is violated by the display of a cross as a war memorial," noting that "only Justice Antonin Scalia appeared inclined to reach the establishment clause question" while other justices "were interested in the narrower issue of whether the land transfer would be proper."
      The Washington Times (10/8, Conery) reports that Eliasberg argued "that the transfer is merely an attempt to circumvent the lower courts’ rulings that the cross is an establishment of religion." Justice John Paul Stevens "expressed skepticism about a requirement of the land transfer that stipulates the war memorial must be preserved. ‘Say they abandoned or destroyed it, the property would come back to the government,’ Justice Stevens said. ‘If I read the designation of the national memorial statute correctly, the Department of Interior would have to rebuild the old cross and put it up.’" Kagen "disputed that, saying the only requirement of the transfer is that some type of war memorial remain at the site."
      In his "Washington Sketch" column for the Washington Post (10/8), Dana Milbank writes that as Justice Ginsburg "pointed out — and as representatives of both sides agreed — the whole First Amendment problem could be avoided if the government merely took down the cross, transferred the land to the Veterans of
Foreign Wars and let the veterans put the cross back up on newly private land." But "avoiding the problem wasn’t the goal: When it comes to church-and-state cases, both sides are looking for a fight, as the list of organizations filing amicus briefs made apparent." Milbank notes that the justices "seemed determined to decide the case on what Justice Stephen Breyer called ‘a very technical, boring issue’ of whether a lower court’s injunction was violated. The argument became so technical that, toward the end of the government’s case, Roberts interrupted to say that ‘before your time expires, we would like to spend a couple of minutes on the merits.’"
      Bloomberg News (10/8, Stohr) reports that Justice Scalia "took the firmest stance in support of the display, saying the cross was constitutional, even on federal land, because it was the ‘most common’ symbol used to commemorate the dead." Other justices "grappled with procedural aspects of a case that has bounced up and down the court system since 2001, leaving open the possibility that they won’t directly address the constitutional questions. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing vote on church-state issues, asked no questions about the substantive issues, leaving the case’s outcome in doubt."
      CNN (10/8, Mears) reports that conservative justices "suggested that Congress acted properly when it tried to transfer land around the Mojave Memorial Cross to veterans groups, an effort to eliminate any Establishment Clause violation. "Isn’t that a sensible interpretation’ of a federal court injunction banning the display on government property, Justice Samuel Alito asked. But Justice Stephen Breyer was adamant that the government had not acted in good faith. ‘You are violating this injunction’ that ordered removal of the cross, he told" Kagan.
      The Wall Street Journal (10/8, A5, Bravin) reports that the Court seemed to lean toward permitting the cross to stand while not reaching the broader constitutional issue of religious symbols on government property.
      The Los Angeles Times (10/8, Savage) reports that Kagan "said the ‘sensible action by Congress’ to give the VFW control of the cross and the land under it solves the 1st Amendment problem. The cross is no longer on government land and under government control, she said. ‘It’s VFW’s choice’ how to preserve it and maintain it now, she said. Not all of the justices sounded convinced." Justices Ginsburg and Stevens "noted the Mojave cross was designated as a national memorial and that Congress said it must be preserved as a cross to honor America’s war dead. If not, the land and the cross will revert to government control, they said." The Times notes, "By the end of the hour, it was not clear what issue the justices will decide. They could decide whether the transfer of the cross to the VFW solved the legal problem. Or they could go further back and decide whether it was constitutional to erect the cross on public land."
      McClatchy (10/8, Doyle) reports, "Even though one crucial issue is whether Buono has the legal ‘standing’ to challenge the cross, the nine justices largely avoided asking questions Wednesday about the standing issue."
      The Christian Science Monitor (10/8, Richey) reports, "Kagan told the justices that the federal preserve in the Mojave Desert is riddled with about a thousand private land owners. Ten percent of the surrounding region is privately owned, she added. ‘Tomorrow, 1,000 crosses could go up and no one would know if they were on private land or not,’ she said, suggesting that it’s difficult for an average observer to attribute a government message to a cross on a hill." Reuters (10/8,
Vicini) also reports on the arguments.
      WPost Says Land Swap Idea A "Ruse."  The Washington Post (10/8) editorializes, "The government should not be in the business of favoring one religion over another, and we would object to a move today to create permanent displays of crosses or any other religious symbols on public lands. Yet the Mojave cross, erected as it was to honor the war dead, seems in context more a historical marker of a bygone era than a government embrace of a particular faith." However, "f the cross doesn’t belong on federal land, the swap proposed by the government won’t cure the problem. Transfer to the VFW clearly favors one group by shutting out others from a chance to own the property. It favors the cross, too, because the terms of the deal call for the government to reclaim the parcel if the VFW fails to maintain it as a public memorial." The Post concludes that the "swap seems more of a ruse to avert a federal court order than a principled solution."

 3.      Budget Delays Said To Be Hurting VA Hospitals In State Of Washington. 
      Congress To Take Up Several Veterans-Related Matters.  In its "Today at a Glance" column, CQ (10/8) notes that on Thursday, the House is "expected to pass a bill to provide advance budgeting for certain veterans’ health programs," while at 1 p.m. in 334 Cannon, the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity is scheduled to "mark up pending veterans’ bills (HR 2696 , HR 1182 , HR 2416 , HR 2461 , HR 2614 , HR 2874 , HR 1168 )." CQ also notes that at 9:30 a.m. in 562 Dirksen, the Senate Veterans Affairs is scheduled to hold a "hearing on the exposure of servicemembers to toxins, hazards and health risks."
      Hearing To Examine Soldiers’ Chemical Exposure Claims.  NPR (10/8, Brown) also notes the hearing, stating the committee "will examine the claims of hundreds of soldiers who say they were exposed to a dangerous chemical while guarding employees" of KBR, a "private contractor in Iraq. The contractor and the military are both accused of hiding the dangers that the soldiers faced." NPR noted that US Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) "says the Federal government hasn’t done enough. ‘You know, we have a responsibility to look closely at these exposures and to make sure that the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs administration can maintain something called a collaborative relationship – that is, they talk to each other where medical information is shared,’ Rockefeller says." NPR added, "After what happened during the first Gulf War, when the Pentagon initially dismissed thousands of returning service members’ illnesses, Rockefeller says it is inexcusable now for the military to ignore veterans suffering from the effects of chemical exposure once again."
  

4.      Government Contractor Touts Benefits Of A Veteran-Owned Business.  While being interviewed by the New York Times (10/8, McLoone), Sharon Brown, who with her husband co-founded a company called Environmental and Occupational Safety Services, "spoke…about the challenges of being a government contractor." Brown told the Times that her company "just got" its "veteran-owned certification." She added, "I was in the Naval Reserve for almost 15 years, although I was never active duty. My husband was in Desert Storm but since I own 51 percent of the company, the certification really depends on me." Brown went on to say the Department of Veterans Affairs "buys differently than other government agencies, but it buys everything from hospital gowns to paper cups," and it gives "service-disabled vets the highest preference. There are a lot of people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and with the employment situation not so great, starting a business isn’t a bad idea."  

5.      VA Urged To Re-Fund Gulf War Illness Research At UT-Southwestern.  In continuing coverage, the Dallas Morning News (10/8) says in an editorial that if the US Department of Veterans Affairs "truly wants to find out why so many Gulf War veterans returned home with unexplained illnesses after the 1990-91 conflict, then its senior executives need to re-fund local researchers who might have the answer." According to the Morning News, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center "researcher Robert Haley has been studying sick Gulf War veterans for 15 years, the last three under a $75 million, five-year research contract with the VA until the department recently terminated the contract for procedural violations. The VA’s decision is unbelievably shortsighted, as illustrated in a front page story on Sunday by Dallas Morning News reporter Scott Parks, who documented some of the significant progress that Haley’s research team of more than 200 colleagues from eight universities has made in linking Gulf War illnesses to brain damage from exposure to chemicals on the battlefield." So, the Morning News concludes, if the VA "sticks by its decision," years of "diligent scientific work will go down the drain, and sadly Gulf War veterans will be no closer to an answer."  

6.      Jindal Awards Honor Medals To Over 200 Veterans.  The Bastrop (LA) Daily Enterprise (10/7, Helbling) noted that on Tuesday, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal "awarded the Louisiana Veterans’ Honor Medal to 210 Morehouse Parish veterans at the Bastrop Municipal Center." Jindal "was joined by Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Lane Carson." The Daily Enterprise added, "Jindal signed legislation in 2008 creating the Veterans’ Honor Medal Program, which is managed by the state" VA. Jindal "said one of his greatest honors as governor is to meet real heroes throughout the state."  

7.      Volunteer Bequests Large Sum To VA.  In continuing coverage, the Urbana/Champaign (IL) News-Gazette (10/7, Phillips) said John P. Wright, "who served in the Army during the Korean War," was a "volunteer extraordinaire with the Veterans Affairs Illiana Health Care System. Before his death in March 2008 at age 74, he had logged 49,668 hours at the facility over nearly 40 years."
Wright’s "days were spent in the recreation hall of the VA, and the staff became his family and the hall his home away from home." That is "probably why he named the department the sole heir of his estate. Last week, director Michael Hamilton and Filicsky unveiled an oversized check, which was appropriate considering the estate settlement amount of $1,559,227.66." The News-Gazette added that Wright "was buried in the Danville National Cemetery near the hospital." 

8.      Flu Shots Available To Vets In DC, Louisiana.  The last item from the "Shaft Notes" section of the syndicated "Sgt. Shaft" column, appearing in the Washington Times (10/8, Fales), notes, "There are two ways for veterans to receive their seasonal flu shots: Those who have appointments" at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Washington, D.C., "can now receive their flu shots during their next primary care visit or beginning Oct. 13. Enrolled veterans may visit the free flu shot clinic located in the atrium" of the medical center, "50 Irving St. NW in Washington. The vaccine against the H1N1 flu strain (swine flu) is not yet available, but when this vaccine is released, likely in November, the Washington VA Medical Center will work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and VA to vaccinate individuals as recommended by guidelines."
      The Alexandria (LA) Town Talk (10/8) reports, "A drive-up flu vaccination clinic for veterans will be held from 8 a.m. to noon and from 4 to 6 p.m. daily through Friday, Oct. 9, at Building 3 of the Alexandria VA Medical Center in Pineville. The clinic also will be available from 8 a.m. to noon" on Saturday, October 17th. A flu vaccination clinic has also "been established inside the medical center which will provide vaccinations through the end of flu season in April 2010. The clinic is in Building 7, 1st floor, Team B and C area." 

9.      Afghanistan Vets Take Part In Long Bike Ride.  On its website, KCOY-TV Santa Barbara, CA (10/7) reported, "Veterans of the war in Afghanistan are among the 120 cyclists taking part in this year’s" Ride 2 Recovery Golden State Challenge, a seven-day, 480-mile "cycling event." Wednesday "marked the eighth anniversary of the war in Afghanistan," and as vets participating in the ride cycled "to Pismo Beach, they pledged never to forget the sacrifices being made overseas." The "cyclists are spending the night in Pismo Beach. They plan to arrive at the Veterans Administration headquarters in Los Angeles on Saturday."  

10.    Vet Recycled Cans To Make Ends Meet As He Waited For GI Bill Payment.  The Whittier (CA) Daily News (10/8, Velazquez).