The famous yellow footprints at Parris Island.

Military.com reports that the dictates of the god Equality may force the Marine Corps into drastic contortions in order to meet Congressional decrees.

The Marine Corps is considering a plan in which it could close its two existing boot camp locations and funnel all recruits to a new base where men and women would train together.

Marine entry-level training is a long way off from being able to meet a congressional mandate to make its East and West coast training bases both able to support gender-integrated training in the coming years, the Corps’ top general said on Thursday.

That is leading the service to study the option of opening a third training base in a new location to which all new recruits would ship, rather than spending cash on construction projects at aging training bases.

“Nothing, the way we’re organized right now, lends itself to integrated recruit training,” Commandant Gen. David Berger said on Thursday. “If that’s our start point — and it is — we have to get to a place on both coasts, or at third location or whatever we end up with, that … there are male and female recruits around.”

Both the Marine Corps’ recruit training depots have storied pasts — particularly Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island in South Carolina, which was first used by Marines in the 1890s. Hundreds of thousands of Marines have stood on the famous yellow footprints on each base at the start of their careers before earning the coveted eagle, globe and anchor and title of Marine.

But with a new law bearing down on the service to make both locations support coed training — within five years at Parris Island and eight at San Diego — the Marine Corps is exploring different options, Maj. Eric Flanagan, Berger’s spokesman told Military.com.

“The question becomes, ‘Are we better off just using [military construction] dollars to create a new third site, or put that money into our existing sites?'” he said. “No decisions have been made. We’re not investing any money anywhere else. It’s just an option we’re talking about.”

The Marine Corps hasn’t yet identified a state where the new boot camp location might be located, Flanagan said.

RTWT

Doesn’t reading this San Diego Union-Tribune story make you happy you don’t live in San Diego County?

Around San Diego County, a hot, salty, buttered controversy has popped up.

Should hardware stores offer free bags of freshly popped popcorn?

While that may look like a warm, welcoming treat, free popcorn is a threat to public health — or so argue county officials. Last month, health inspectors raided La Jolla’s Meanley & Son Hardware, warning that its old-fashioned red popcorn machine is a germy outlaw.

“They explained we didn’t have the proper permits,” said Bob Meanley, whose shop had handed out 30 to 40 bags every day for about 25 years.

To comply with the 1984 California Uniform Retail Food Facility Law, Meanley & Son would need to install a three-basin sink to clean and sterilize the popcorn popper. Also required: regular inspections, just like a restaurant.

Meanley declined and instead rolled the offending machine into storage. Thus ended a tradition he had started 25 years ago.

“I hate to take away something that our customers really like,” said Meanley, whose grandparents founded the hardware store in 1948. …

The county Department of Environmental Health, for its part, has a long tradition of cracking down on these scofflaws. Three years ago, inspectors cited Encinitas’ Crown Ace Hardware and San Carlos True Value Hardware.

“The Health Department came in,” said San Carlos True Value manager Danielle Matheny, “and told us if we wanted to continue giving away free popcorn and coffee we’d have to install a bigger vent system, a bigger and better sink in the break room — a lot of rules and restrictions they put on us.”

In both Encinitas and San Carlos, the stores dropped the practice. Inspectors so far have ignored Payton’s, but El-Hajj figures it’s just a matter of time.

“I feel sad,” she said, “that some of the old traditions we have become so regulated.”

RTWT

Fox News.

San Diego assistant port director Al Hallor, also a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer, told local ABC affiliate Channel 10 News that authorities have uncovered “weapons of mass effect” in an interview that aired Feb. 11.

Hallor did not say where WMD had been located. He only denied that they had not been found at the port of San Diego. Hallor also did not identify the type of WMD he was referring to, but that reply strongly suggested that he was aware of the apprehension on US soil of at least one nuclear device or the components for a dirty bomb.

“At the airport, seaport, at our port of entry we have not this past fiscal year, but our partner agencies have found those things,” he said.

Reporter: Do you ever find things that are dangerous like a chemical agent or a weaponised device?

Mr Hallor: At the airport, seaport, at our port of entry we have not this past fiscal year, but our partner agencies have found those things.

Reporter: So, specifically, you’re looking for the dirty bomb? You’re looking for the nuclear device?

Mr Hallor: Correct. Weapons of mass effect.

Reporter: You ever found one?

Mr Hallor: Not at this location.

Reporter: But they have found them?

Mr Hallor: Yes.

Reporter: You never found one in San Diego though?

Mr Hallor: I would say at at the port of San Diego we have not.