WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration on Thursday defended the National Security Agency's need to collect telephone records of U.S. citizens, calling such information "a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats."While defending the practice, a senior administration ...

WASHINGTON -- Parked around the airstrip at Lackland Air Force Base are more than a dozen massive C-5A Galaxy transport planes. There is no money to fly them, repair them or put pilots in the cockpits, but Congress rejected the Air Force's bid to retire them.So every now and then, crews will ...

PHOENIX — Volunteers set up a table outside a music festival one day last month to gather signatures for a drive to oust the notoriously polarizing sheriff of metropolitan Phoenix. The venue, with its largely liberal crowd, seemed the perfect place to drum up support.But it didn’t take long ...

The first round of a major, late-season winter storm winds down across Denver and the High Plains of eastern Colorado, the second round is waiting right on its heels.Snow on Monday fell mainly from Colorado Springs northward to Fort Collins. The lightest snow fell south of Denver. Areas between ...

NORFOLK, Va. -- The U.S. Air Force plans to ground about a third of its active-duty force of combat planes and a top general warned Tuesday that the branch might not be able to respond immediately to every event when needed.The Air Force didn't immediately release a list of the specific units ...

WASHINGTON -- The loud, insistent calls in Washington to rein in the rising costs of Social Security and Medicare ignore a major and expensive entitlement program - the military's health care system.Despite dire warnings from three defense secretaries about the uncontrollable cost, Congress has ...