By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Volunteers have pulled on their Santa hats and are answering phone lines and monitoring wall-size tracking screens as NORAD Tracks Santa begins its 57th annual goodwill mission.
Volunteers at a Colorado Air Force base monitoring maps showing Santa Claus' progress have answered more than 41,000 phone calls from children asking about the jolly old elf.
A Houston traffic stop ended with a gunman shooting and killing a police officer and a bystander on Christmas Eve in the parking lot of a body shop, police said.
Volunteers at a Colorado Air Force base monitoring maps showing Santa Claus' progress have answered more than 41,000 phone calls from children asking about the jolly old elf.
Most of the thousands of children who call the annual Santa-tracking operation at a Colorado Air Force Base on Christmas Eve ask the usual questions: "Where's Santa, and when will he get here?"
Volunteers at a Colorado Air Force base monitoring maps showing Santa Claus' progress are several hours into their goodwill mission and have answered more than 24,000 phone calls from children wanting to know everything from old Saint Nick's age, to how reindeer fly, to when they can expect their presents.
Air Force C-130 tankers will resume firefighting flights Tuesday after the crash of another tanker plane over the weekend that left four crew members dead and two others seriously injured, the military said.
Wildfires damaged more than a dozen Colorado homes over the weekend and forced evacuations for thousands more while shrouding top state tourist destinations in smoke and emptying hotels and campgrounds ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.
Santa-tracking volunteers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado said they fielded about 102,000 telephone queries beginning early Saturday on his progress.
Santa already is piling up big numbers on social-networking sites this season, so the volunteer Santa-trackers at NORAD are bracing for tens of thousands of calls and emails when their operations center goes live on Christmas Eve.
A $5.5 billion upgrade to the Global Positioning System moved a step closer to launch this week when a prototype arrived at a Lockheed Martin complex in Colorado to begin months of tests.
A small piece of cloth stuck in a fuel line may be the reason a military communications satellite hasn't reached its planned orbit since it was launched in August, government auditors said Thursday.
Border agents said Wednesday that they arrested an unusually large group of illegal immigrants crossing through the western Arizona desert in what authorities said is proof that increased border technology is working.
