Military death benefit hike plan lauded

Tracy Miller used to have a nightmare in which she drove up to find a pair of Marines parked outside her Towson home, waiting with the news that her son had died in Iraq.

As it turned out, she was already at home on the November night when the Marines came to say that her 22-year-old son, Cpl. Nicholas Ziolkowski, had been killed.

"They stayed as long as I wanted them to stay," she said. But "there was nothing they could do except sit and tell me how sorry they were."

Still, said Ms. Miller, the Marines who came to her house "really were wonderful."

As Congress and the White House push for a sizeable increase in...