The Latest

Revisiting some recent stories.

Boy Scouts:

If not for Cub Scouts in Houston, Army Spc. Joseph Lowit would find it next to impossible to celebrate Hanukkah.

As part of a service project, Pack 1190 from Congregation Emanu El prepared care packages with Hanukkah candles, menorahs and dreidels ? giving Spc. Lowit and 150 other troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait a way to mark the holiday.

"Thanks to them I can, and I am very grateful," wrote Spc. Lowit, a 26-year-old infantryman from Miami who is the only Jewish soldier on his base in Iraq.

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The boys of Pack 1190 talked about what it might be like to be a Jewish soldier at Hanukkah and decided to make greeting cards and assemble goody bags for troops.

"I thought it was a worthy cause because ... it was giving greetings to people without any family to celebrate," said 8-year-old Jordan Todes, who crafted many of the cards from construction paper.

Two Scout musicians ? Jarrett Taxman on guitar and Mitchell Chaiet on the cello ? played classical tunes outside a Houston bagel shop to raise money for Hanukkah supplies and toiletry items such as razors for the troops' care packages.

"There's some Jewish troops in Iraq that are maybe the only ones in their unit," Jarrett, 11, said. "It's really hard to celebrate if you're the only one. I'm just really glad I could help."

The ACLU, as readers here are aware, is demanding military installations stop sponsoring Scout groups because of the requirement for Scout members to have religious faith of some sort.

Don't know if these guys were ever Scouts or not, but the Army has decided to offer 'Article 15s' (Non-Judicial Punishment) to the troops who refused to convoy in Iraq recently:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 6 - The American military has ordered punishment, but not courts-martial, for 23 Army Reserve soldiers who refused in October to deliver fuel to a base in Iraq, claiming that it was too dangerous, military officials here said Monday.

The soldiers are receiving nonjudicial punishments under Article 15 of the military justice code, which could include reduction in rank, loss of pay and restricted movements depending on their commander's discretion, said Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a military spokesman.

Article 15 punishment can be quote harsh, to say the least.

And last but not least,

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 7 -- Three years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's first popularly elected president, Hamid Karzai, was sworn in Tuesday in a dignified, heavily guarded ceremony attended by hundreds of Afghan and foreign guests, including Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld, of course, was an Eagle Scout.