Staff Sgt. Travis Strong, 30, and his wife, Misty, 29, on Thursday shoveled the first piles of dirt from a site in Golden that will become their new home in August.
The nonprofit organization Homes for Our Troops is constructing the home in conjunction with the Democratic National Convention Committee and the Credit Union associations of Colorado and Wyoming for the Iraq war veteran who lost both his legs during his second tour.
Strong sustained injuries during a rocket-propelled grenade attack on his Stryker vehicle in November 2006. The specially adapted home will provide greater mobility and ease of access for Strong with wider door frames, wheelchair ramps and a roll-in shower stall.
“We finally have a place that we can physically and emotionally call home,” Misty said, while her children, Brianna, 8, and Sean, 6, dug more dirt. Sheba Wheeler, The Denver Post
McCain tied with both Democratic candidates, poll shows.
Republican Sen. John McCain has erased Sen. Barack Obama’s 10-point advantage in a head-to-head matchup, leaving him essentially tied with both Democratic candidates in an Associated Press-Ipsos national poll released Thursday.
The survey showed the extended Democratic primary campaign creating divisions among supporters of Obama and rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and suggests a tight race for the presidency in November no matter which Democrat becomes the nominee.
McCain is benefiting from a bounce since he clinched the GOP nomination a month ago.
An AP-Ipsos poll taken in late February had Obama leading McCain 51-41 percent.
The current survey, conducted April 7-9, had them at 45 percent each. McCain leads Obama among men, whites, Southerners, married women and independents.
Clinton led McCain, 48-43 percent, in February. The latest survey showed the New York senator with 48 percent support to McCain’s 45 percent. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Against McCain, Obama lost ground among women — from 57 percent in February to 47 percent in April.
He also lost nine points or more among voters under 35, high-income households, whites, Catholics, independents, Southerners, people living in the Northeast and those with a high school education or less.
Obama won’t require Joint Chiefs to support gays in military.
Sen. Barack Obama says that if he’s elected president, he won’t require that his appointees to the Joint Chiefs of Staff support allowing gays to serve openly in the military.
The Democratic presidential front-runner favors repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays, which was instituted during the Clinton administration. He said his priority for the Joint Chiefs will be that they make decisions to strengthen the military and keep the country safe, not their position on the policy.
“I would never make this a litmus test for the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Obama said in an interview with The Advocate, a gay newsmagazine. “But I think there’s increasing recognition within the armed forces that this is a counterproductive strategy.
“We’re spending large sums of money to kick highly qualified gays or lesbians out of our military, some of whom possess specialties like Arab-language capabilities that we desperately need. That doesn’t make us more safe.”
