Word: virginia
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Each year on Nov. 11, the U.S. celebrates Veterans Day in honor of those who have fought - and those who have died - for the country. Wreath-laying ceremonies take place at cemeteries across the land, including at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Though the commemoration officially began in Arlington as Armistice Day, with the burial of an anonymous World War I soldier at the Tomb of the Unknowns in 1921, the occasion didn't become a federal holiday in the U.S. until 1938. (In 1954 its name was changed to Veterans Day.) Accounts differ on when the tradition began...
...health services that should be investigated. And while these deficiencies in no way excuse Hassan’s actions, we do hope that his trial will allow for an examination of the system of mental-health offerings in the Army—much like the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007 caused many colleges and universities to reevaluate their mental-health support. The Army must consider the mental and emotional well-being of its soldiers to be just as important as physical well-being...
...state of Virginia has executed John Allen Muhammad via lethal injection on Nov. 10. Muhammad, known as the D.C. sniper, was sentenced to death for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers, one of 10 victims gunned down during a three-week rampage around the capital in 2002. Muhammad is the highest-profile inmate to die by lethal injection since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April 2008 that the state of Kentucky was not violating a statute prohibiting "cruel and unusual punishment" by executing prisoners using the controversial method. The ruling effectively allowed executions by lethal injection to recommence after...
...which executes more people than any other nation by far, is phasing out death by gunshot in favor of lethal injection; the government provides mobile execution vans, which travel to smaller cities and towns that don't have permanent death chambers. While that morbid procession wouldn't fly in Virginia, the state clearly considers lethal injection the most humane option. When prisoners - like Muhammad - decline to specify whether they want to be executed by electrocution or lethal injection, Virginia gives them the latter by default...
...first invoked in his election-victory speech a year ago before 125,000 people in Chicago's Grant Park. And though there was cheering and chants of "Fired up, ready to go!" this was no easy sell for Obama. The vote came the same week as Democrats lost the Virginia and New Jersey governors' mansions, and a day after the Labor Department reported a 26-year record unemployment rate of 10.2%. Preaching altruism in such a climate to politicians bent on self-preservation is tough. In the end Democrats lost 39 of their own - passing the bill 220-215 with...