M*A*S*H* Star on Religious Freedom in U.S. Military

To listen to the bloviators, "religious extremist" means Muslim, and too many Americans buy in this “God is (only) on our side” nonsense. Take a look at fundamentalist, Dominionist Christianity. They’re the bunch, per writer and researcher Chris Berlet, who "seek to dominate the political process as part of a mandate from God." Or, as sociologist Sara Diamond puts it, they “alone are biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns—and there is no consensus on when that might be.” Unless you’re comfortable with the idea of a hyper-Christian American military, do something.

By Mike Farrell at TruthOut

Raised in the Catholic Church, I was a pretty confused kid. Father O’Reilly, one of the priests at St. Peter’s, the church our family attended most of the time, spoke with such a pronounced brogue that I couldn’t follow him. But I didn’t understand the Mass either, so I smiled and pretended he made sense, just accepting him on faith along with the rest of it.

But at some point it all began to itch. Ours was the “One True Faith” and everyone else was damned to hell. Really? That was tough to think about, because some non-Catholics we knew seemed like pretty nice folks—well, most of them, anyway. And what about the people in Africa and other places who maybe never even had a chance to know about Jesus and Peter, The Rock Upon Which He Built His Church?

Hell for everybody but us? It clearly made some feel special, but I couldn't make it sit right.

"[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
U.S. Constitution, Article Six

Of course, that was a long time ago and things have changed in the church to some degree. Not soon enough to keep me, but I hope it’s less confusing for kids today—especially now, when religious extremism is all you hear about in the media.

To listen to the bloviators, “religious extremist” means Muslim, and too many Americans buy in without understanding that this “God is (only) on our side” nonsense infects elements in pretty much every belief system. But while violent fanatics are certainly dangerous and should be dealt with appropriately, it’s vital that we recognize extremism wherever it appears. Because in some cases fanatical belief puts on a benevolent face and encroaches through stealth; rather than fly planes into buildings or massacre nonbelievers on a train or in gas chambers, these adherents ease into institutions and infiltrate systems with the aim of gaining legitimacy and, eventually, control.

No, I’m not talking about Scientology, but that’s a good guess.

Take a look at fundamentalist, Dominionist Christianity. They’re the bunch, per writer and researcher Chris Berlet, who are called not only to be “active political participants in civic society, but also seek to dominate the political process as part of a mandate from God.” Or, as sociologist Sara Diamond puts it, they “alone are biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns—and there is no consensus on when that might be.”

A mandate from Godthat the adherents of this particular One True Faith should take over our nation’s institutions? Yup. And I’m afraid it’s easy to dismiss the idea as arrogant posturing and just laugh. OK, maybe wince when that clown in Florida burns the Quran, or shake our heads when a Christian organizer says gays are Nazis, or, per another more recent source, “barbarians.” Maybe you scoffed when a Christian leader said 9/11 was God’s punishment for creeping secularism, but these folks are serious.

For example, one of the secular institutions on which this bunch is working its wiles is our armed forces. Hard to imagine, isn’t it, that a cult-like extremist group could quietly weave its way into control of the command structure of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines? But think about it: Did the “Jesus rifles” just happen by accident? Remember the 800,000 high-powered rifle sights engraved with Bible codes proclaiming “Jesus as the light of the world” and other quotes that our troops unwittingly carried into battle in two primarily Muslim countries? Just a fluke? Ya’ think? Just an innocent mistake, the unfortunate mix of a zealous Christian manufacturer and a sleepy Pentagon acquisitions officer?

Hard to imagine, isn’t it? How could religious zealots possibly infiltrate and gain control over our military? Well, for one, you might start with the military academies in West Point, Colorado Springs and Annapolis, the institutions where young Americans train to become the commanding officers who control the kids carrying those rifles.

A friend called my attention to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and Mikey Weinstein, the Air Force Academy graduate who founded it. Going through the academy some years ago, Weinstein, who is Jewish, encountered some bias but nothing that seemed ingrained in the system. Going through the same academy in recent years, however, his Jewish sons and Christian daughter-in-law encountered a systemic level of anti-Semitism and fundamentalist Christian proselytizing that was insulting, infuriating and alarming.

A lawyer, a Republican who served as legal counsel to the Reagan White House, Weinstein is a strong supporter of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. Armed with his belief that the separation of church and state must apply to our nation’s military, he met with walls of denial and indifference from the academy’s leadership. Finally, frustrated at his inability to make those in charge understand that not only his kids but all cadets have a right to an education at the Air Force Academy free of religious oppression, indoctrination and intimidation, Weinstein formed the MRFF to ensure that all young Americans who choose to serve their country can do so without being coerced to buy into the Dominionist Christian belief system. It’s a tough fight.

On too many levels, it’s also a lonely fight. Upon seeing the degree of craziness—and personal danger—Weinstein, his family and the MRFF staff face on a regular basis, I offered a bit of help and am now a member of its advisory board. Though I’ve dealt with cults and their apologists in the past, working with the Cult Awareness Network (the original CAN that was put out of business and taken over by Scientologists), I was only vaguely aware of the degree of religious wackiness in the military. Now, I find the parallels striking. And dangerous. The level of vitriol directed at this work by so-called Christians, most of it at Weinstein himself, demonstrates a degree of loopiness I haven’t encountered since mixing it up with the Moonies, Scientologists and other groups back in the anti-cult days.

Aside from dealing with the everyday verbal and written assaults like “Kike”; leader of “the forces of Satan”; “devoted servant of Satan”; “… are all Jews just money-grubbing busybodies”; “… grind yourself into dust against the wave of Christianity that is sweeping this nation”; “… you and your atheist comrades’ days are running out”; “jew lawyer crybaby who sucks moslems (sic) c**k…”; and other such homilies from his Christian detractors, Weinstein and the MRFF (now including a security staff to deal with death threats and assassination attempts) work to safeguard the right to religious freedom of thousands of Marines, sailors, soldiers and airmen and women of all faiths (96 percent of them Christian—Catholics and Mainline Protestants), Academy staff, cadets, midshipmen, military personnel and others whose education, jobs and careers are in jeopardy if they fail to toe the line dictated by military superiors who claim to be the only true followers of Jesus of Nazareth.

So think about it. Please. Unless you’re comfortable with the idea of a hyper-Christian American military, do something.

Religious bigotry at the expense of a daughter

"It breaks my heart to see a father abandon his children for any reason. Religious bigotry, as a reason, is doubly disturbing."
- Richard Baker
Military Religious Freedom Foundation

The founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has another Christian taking shots at him in the Colorado Springs daily newspaper.

This would be one Paul R. Baranek whose daughter is married to MRFF's Mikey Weinstein's son.

Seems Weinstein's commitment to a secular American military earns him eternal enmity from the religious right, only this time from a dogmatist who says Weinstein is on a "crusade against Christianity."

Below is Paul R. Baranek's letter and three selected responses.

Who cares about Weinstein?

When will you guys at The Gazette get it that we don’t care what Mikey Weinstein thinks, says or does? In the June 21 article, you mention that he is not going away anytime soon. Not as long as you keep putting his name in the paper, he isn’t! He is not promoting religious freedom. He is trying to snuff out any expression of Christianity. He is looking for publicity. Do you just take your information from him or do you check out your sources? I happen to know the man. My daughter is married to his son.

This man’s motives are anything but noble, and the more publicity you give him, the more you encourage his crusade against Christianity. Please stop!

Paul R. Baranek
Colorado Springs

Saddened by Baranek

I was deeply saddened by the hateful comments by Mr. Baranek who is obviously so full of bile that he is willing to injure his own daughter just to spite a man with whom he disagrees.

As far as Mr. Weinstein is concerned, I concede bias on my part; you see, the man saved my life. I'm a disabled Veteran who faced discrimination and predatory Christian proselytizing at a V.A. Medical Center because I'm a Jew.

When I approached the hospital administration peacefully, accompanied by my rabbi, hoping to help them understand how offensive their conduct was to me, the hospital cut off all my medical treatment. I was at the time suffering from 7 kidney stones and was a very sick man. Not only did the hospital cut off all my medical care, but they blacklisted me with the other area hospitals. Mr. Weinstein learned of my plight and raised the money himself to fly me to another state where I was provided with the medical care I needed. That's the sort of man Mr. Baranek disparaged in his letter.

Akiva David MIller

Choosing his faith over his own daughter

While I have the pleasure of knowing Mikey Weinstein and his family, I have never met Mr. Baranek. Nonetheless, my heart goes out to him. Life cannot be easy for a man who believes that he must choose his faith over his own daughter, simply because she married a Jew.

Although I am not a Christian, I am familar enough with Christian doctrine to know that love is paramount, and that the Bible can offer guidance and support. Mr. Baranek might consider reflecting on Proverbs 11:29: "He who troubles his own house shall inherit the wind."

Barry Fagin
Colorado Springs

Religious Bigotry, Mr. Baranek

It breaks my heart to see a father abandon his children for any reason. Religious bigotry, as a reason, is doubly disturbing.

Mr. Baranek sees the world through the prism of narrow and archaic Christian doctrine; doctrine that would be far better suited for the Inquisition or Salem Witch Trials.

I have met Amanda. A young woman of Amanda's advanced intellectual abilities, drive, accomplishment and startling beauty would be enough to swell the chest of any father with pride.

Sadly, such parental pride has not and may never emanate from her natural father.

Fortunately, such a sense of pride has taken place in her life. Father-in-Law Mikey Weinstein and Mother-in-Law Bonnie Weinstein turned parents. There's enough love in Mikey's heart for all his kids, their wives, his parents and the rest of his family. Even with the tremendous amount of love expended on these family members, Mikey's love reservoir is still chock full of care, concern and desire to help our young men and women in the Armed Forces and Service Academies who have found themselves subject to the specter of command influenced and coercive Christian Proselytizing.

That's what the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is all about. Not abrogating the rights of Christians to the free practice guaranteed them by our constitution but to guarantee all of our troops have the equal opportunity to practice theirs. It is no coincidence that over 96% of the 18,000 complaints filed by young service members of all branches and academies that MRFF is now addressing are from Christians. A number of these young Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, Sailors, National Guard, Coast Guard, Reserve and Cadet Corps have said they were told they were not "Christian enough."

There is a time and a place for all belief systems in America, a secular nation in which all religions and non-beliefs may flourish but none , irrespective of its majority, dominate.

To Mr. Baranek: you have put out of your life the sweetest thing in it. You have squandered your golden years of Grand fatherhood on your stilted morality.

I imagine that even your God is scratching his head.

Richard Baker
Regional Coordinator
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
5205 Harrington DR
Colorado Springs, CO 80911

Obama Address to Shadowy Christian Group Draws Notice

Update: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) urges President Obama to skip rightwing religious fete; group runs infamous C Street House.

"[T]oo bad Muslims, too bad, Jews -- this event is not for you," writer Jeff Sharlet said. It's a private gathering attended by every American president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

President Obama’s address to the annual National Prayer Breakfast Thursday for the first time in this rite’s history is drawing widespread condemnation in the wake of revelations over the last two years that aggressive political programs by the religious right have targeted the liberties of the American people and entire religions that refuse to be affiliated with religious right groups such as Focus on the Family, the American Family Association and the super-secret The Family.

Though the religious right is scandal-plagued of late, it’s been a long time since the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, Republican nominee for president in 1964, said of Jerry Falwell, "Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass." That was in 1981.

No major GOP figure today feels empowered to offer a similar criticism of religious right figures, no matter the depths of inanity to which a Pat Robertson or James Dobson, for example, regularly sink.

Recent groundbreaking works by Jeff Sharlet (The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power); Max Blumenthal (Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party); Tom Krattenmaker (Onward Christain Athletes); and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have shed light on the scope of the contemporary religious right that exercises veto power over major policy spheres of the Republican Party, seeks to control foreign policy and the American military, and in all seriousness wants to transform American society into an only-through-Christ country under their God. The movement is known as Christian Dominionism.

So the questions remain: What is Pres. Obama doing at this exclusive, private gathering this Thursday? And will he challenge these anti-Semitic, bigoted whacks?

Adele M. Stan reports:

At National Prayer Breakfast, Obama to Address Shadowy Christian Group Tied to Uganda's 'Kill the Gays' Bill

The National Prayer Breakfast, an annual Washington exercise attended by politicians of all stripes who wish to demonstrate their piety, is one of those must-go events for the U.S. president, or so the conventional wisdom has it. Every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has attended.

But the prayer breakfast, however benign it may seem on the surface, is really a display of power for an underground religious group that often shapes U.S. foreign policy in ways not easy to see, and sometimes at odds the policy goals of the government itself. This Thursday, President Barack Obama is expected to address the gathering, as he did last year. But if there was ever a year for the president to back out, to have a sudden scheduling conflict, it's this one.

The breakfast draws leaders from all sectors of society, including a hefty contingent from the military. It's a coveted invitation.The event is usually the only public sighting of its sponsor,.the shadowy right-wing religious network known as the Family. Around the periphery of the event, the Family does what it does best: bringing together leaders from developing countries of special concern to U.S. business interests with members of Congress and people in government who hold the keys to the foreign aid kingdom.

'This is the bullying tactics of banality,' said Jeff Sharlet, author of the definitive book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, in an interview with AlterNet. 'This is not about a banality of evil, but the evil of banality. The breakfast itself is a very bland event, but it's surrounded by this week-long lobbying festival which isn't visible.'

Introductions are made and meetings arranged for foreign dignitaries through the auspices of a the Family, led for the past 40 years by Washington insider Doug Coe and comprising powerful men from all over the world, including a number of prominent members of Congress.

That group of powerful men also includes two behind a controversial anti-gay law in Uganda, proposed by two politicians with strong ties to the Family. The law carries the death penalty for something called 'aggravated homosexuality.'

The Prayer Breakfast is closed to the media, except for those in the press corps that travels with the president. 'It's a private event,' explained Joe Mitchell of the National Prayer Breakfast Committee via a voice mail left in response to AlterNet's request for access. Invitations to the Prayer Breakfast go out on congressional letterhead, Sharlet said, even though the stated purpose of the gathering is distinctly Christian and not ecumenical -- a violation of the spirit of the First Amendment. 'So, too bad Muslims, too bad, Jews -- this event is not for you,' Sharlet said.

So why does the president feel he must give his props to a group that often works against the national interest, and whose most prominent congressional members -- Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Sen. James Inhofe, R Okla., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to name a few -- have acted as his nemeses? Power. It's all about the group's perceived power in the very structure of the U.S. government. 'You don't want to alienate them,' one religious right leader explained to Sharlet.

Obama will seek to keep his own participation in the event low-key, Sharlet told AlterNet when he sat down with us in December. 'He'll give a bland, kind of useless address,' Sharlet predicted. Yet a spate of recent scandals and exposes of the group's coddling of anti-democratic heads of state makes this the perfect time for a U.S. president to step off the Familiy's bandwagon. Indeed, his very presence lends legitimacy to a group that enacts its goals through informal lobbying and back-room deals, all knitted together through 'prayer cells' of people with the power to effect the Family's right-wing, free-market agenda.

In his State of the Union speech, Obama decried the outsized roll of lobbyists in U.S. policy. But while the Family lobbies and lobbies hard, it does so without a license, so to speak. Because its influence is conducted through an underground network of people who hold positions of power in the government, its 'lobbyists' never have to register as such. They're just 'followers of Jesus,' in the group's own parlance, who have big jobs.

'I hope there will be defections at the edges,' Sharlet said -- at least in the private dinner parties and prayer meetings arranged with Congress members for the Family's key men.

Tough Year: Sex Scandals and Uganda's 'Kill the Gays' Bill

It's been a tough year for the Family (also known as the Fellowship). First, there were the very public sex scandals of powerful lawmakers involved in the Family -- South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada and Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi, all of whom lived, at one time or another, in the Family's infamous C Street house in Washington, DC.

Just as the noise about the sex scandals began to die down came word of Uganda's proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, a proposal introduced in the Ugandan parliament that would criminalize the advocacy of LGBT rights and punish certain acts by gays with death. The foremost advocates for the bill, which is still under consideration, are two politicians that Family members refer to as 'key men.' A key man is believed to occupy a position of worldly power because he was anointed by God to actualize the Family's socially conservative, pro business theology, which hangs on the notion of a supply-side Jesus. It doesn't matter if he's a murderous dictator or known adulterer: what matters is his power.

In the U.S., Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 has become known as the 'Kill the Gays' bill. Thanks to the persistence of bloggers like Sarah Posner of Religion Dispatches, Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin and Christian psychologist Warren Throckmorton, and the platform given the issue by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, leaders of the Family have been forced to distance themselves, at least publicly, from the two Ugandan key men behind the bill: MP David Bahati and James Nsaba Buturo, minister of state for ethics and integrity.

When Bahati told a Ugandan newspaper that he would attend and speak at the U.S. National Prayer Breakfast, the Family's Bob Hunter issued a statement saying that Bahati was not invited to the breakfast, and that he had declined an earlier invitation, issued before he introduced the bill, to attend as a volunteer. In response to a query from AlterNet, Hunter said Buturo 'has never been on any list and has no invitation.' However, Hunter could not confirm whether or not Buturo planned to be in the U.S. for the Family's lobbying fest during the week of the prayer breakfast, saying he'd had no communication with the Ugandan official and had never met him.

'I think if the Family could make that bill go away, they would. It's too extreme,' said Jeff Sharlet, who sat down with AlterNet last month to discuss where the shadowy network, now the focus of more attention than its leaders ever wished it to have, finds itself in the age of Obama.

Indeed, the unwanted light the Uganda bill has cast on the Family has forced the group to respond in the open; Bob Hunter has become a de facto spokesperson for the group on the issue, even appearing on 'TheRachel Maddow Show' (in an appearance Sharlet helped to arrange) to distance the Family from what Sharlet calls 'this genocidal bill.'

In essence, Sharlet explained, the situation with Uganda and the anti-gay bill is a case of the Family's own power getting away from it. Uganda has long been a special project of the group, which conducts its own ad hoc foreign policy through the influence of its members.

Uganda's present dictator, Yoweri Museveni, is another of the Family's key men, Sharlet said. Museveni introduced the Family to the formerSomalian dictator Siad Barre, winning him American aid and arms, which he used, according to Sharlet, to 'lay his country to waste.'

'And recently now, I've noticed that Museveni's becoming sort of an American proxy for dealing with Somalia, which is a big problem for us,' Sharlet said. 'Somalia is a haven for al Qaeda; it's a lawless state.'

The Family's presence in Uganda likely helped pave the way for other U.S. conservative Christian evangelical groups, such as Pastor Rick Warren's 'Purpose-Driven' group, and the anti-gay ministries of Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer, whose anti-gay rhetoric at a Ugandan seminar influenced the authors of the 'Kill the Gays' bill.

'I think the Family opened the doors to Uganda for what they consider [to be] an evangelical revival, and the result was to make this country sort of a guinea pig for experiments in the American culture war,' Sharlet said. 'This is a way foreign policy often works; political experiments happen at the fringes and policies that can't be implemented here at home are tried out there.'

The outrage over Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality bill is affecting official U.S. foreign policy.The State Department issued a statement decrying the bill, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (who, during her Senate term, participated in the Family's Senate prayer group) expressed her concern during a 45-minute telephone call with Ugandan President Museveni, after which he directed parliament to suspend action on the bill -- stopping short of killing it. President Obama has also condemned the legislation.

The Uganda bill, Sharlet said, is just one example of how the Family's off-the-shelf foreign policy impacts the U.S. national interest. 'From what my inside sources tell me, they drive the State Department crazy. This is a constant pain in the neck for the State Department -- you know, you've got a senator just sort of dropping in on a foreign leader without clearing it.'

The Family and the Tea Party Movement

Though the Family itself is non-partisan, its ideology appeals most strongly to conservative Republicans, a handful of whom have emerged as favorites of the Tea Party crowd: Senators Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Tom Coburn and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, to name a few of the Family's better-known congressional members. (Democrats in the news associated with the Family include Rep. Bart Stupak of Ohio and Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida; for more on the Family's influence on the health care debate, see AlterNet's October report here.)

'That's an interesting overlap. That's an interesting convergence of social movements,' Sharlet told AlterNet. 'The Family represents, as they have put it in the past, the avant-garde of American fundamentalism. They're an elite -- Tea Parties [as in Tea Party protests] are not their style. Doug Coe probably finds this the tackiest, most galling -- you know, just, oh, terrible.' Nonetheless, Sharlet said, 'You've got to look at the way these two movements work together. And when I say work together, I don't mean that they're getting together in a back room and coming up with a plan; I'm talking about a social movement. The left doesn't want to admit that over on the right they have social movements, too.'

Successful social movements find their strength in the 'convergence' of various streams of activism, Sharlet said. 'And those moments of convergence are where you see social movements sometimes making great strides. You go back to the 1960s, civil rights, you have a convergence between radicals, between people who have been in the trenches of civil rights forever, and white, middle-class liberals.' The right-wing elites of the Family, Sharlet explained, 'are going for that convergence.'

As evidence, Sharlet cited the Manhattan Declaration, a sort of right-wing Christian manifesto whose signers range from Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals to such populist Protestant evangelical figures as Harry Jackson, the right's point man on opposing same-sex marriage, and convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson, founder and leader of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Transparency -- Not Conspiracy -- Is the issue

While it's tempting to view the Family as a conspiracy of master manipulators who direct the every move of those affiliated with the group, Sharlet strongly cautions against taking this view. 'I get so frustrated with people on the left who want to look at the right as one great big Borg. Basically they think Shell Oil is sitting in their back room pulling all the strings, and that it's all related to one scheme. It's not.'

The Family's influence simply doesn't work that way, he said. And there are times when the Family's intervention may actually prevent bad things from happening to people in the nations led by the Family's key men. The real problem is the organization's lack of transparency.

'I think this really goes to the sore spot or the touchy nerve, which is the utilitarianism of American political thought, so that someone like Senator Coburn or Senator Inhofe -- they feel if they're over in Africa or the Middle East and trying to help these people, that one, they should be given tremendous credit for their good intentions,' Sharlet explained. 'And, two, if they do manage to avert a conflict through this kind of backroom dealing and rogue foreign policy, then the ends justify the means.

'Frankly, that's an idea that's seductive to a lot of people in the United States -- and not just on the right,' he continued. 'And we sort of forget about the whole conversation about democracy. We forget, as theFamily goes and works behind the scenes and works through its 'God-chosen elites' and 'anointed leaders' -- every time they do that, they are breaking down the democratic process.

'What if they're not the puppet masters?' he asked. 'What if their intentions really are good? And in fact, they have accomplished, here and there, some good things. They have averted a conflict. Do we then just drop our questions? Or do we say, you know what, good intentions are not enough, democratic process is what we need. And do we dig into the export of American political and economic religion? Because that's what it is. Free-market gospel. And say, look, what are the costs and consequences of that? Those are harder questions for us to deal with -- the more important questions.'

Embodied in the First Amendment are several complementary but competitive concepts: freedom of religion, freedom from government involvement in religion, and freedom of expression. The Family has every right to have its members express their religious views, and to act within the law as their faith informs them to do. But its insidious existence, at a cellular level, in the very muscle of American might infects U.S. policy with a theology shared by only a very few citizens. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, the cliche goes. Until the Family chooses to wield its power in the light of day, no president should grant it the glow of legitimacy.

Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief.

Madison Free Thought Org Hits Anti-Semitism in Air Force

The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation is among a group of notable signatories to a September letter demanding a new "investigation into charges of religious coercion and proselytizing at the United States Air Force Academy."

Foundation co-presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker join notables signing the letter, including Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, and Bobby Muller, Nobel Peace Prize winner.

The demand stems from Mikey Weinstein, president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and range of other activists objecting to what is typical conduct at the Colorado Springs-based Air Force Academy that includes Holocaust jokes and coercion of cadets to practice Christianity and display signs of fidelity to the Christian faith, "practices that discriminate against non-Christians in the military."

Incredibly, one Colonel Donald P. Higgins, Jr. (USAF ret), (recounted and documented by Weinstein) the "key, on-scene Inspector General investigator for the Department of Defence/United States Air Force" into the conduct at the Air Force Academy, transmitted "several outrageously denigrating and anti-Semitic emails" to Weinstein himself in an apparent attempt to harass and intimidate Weinstein. These emails can be found at the bottom of the page of this link: Letter Attachments - Electronic Version.

Who is this Higgins? And who is responsible for letting this guy operate in the capacity of an investigator for the DoD's Inspector General?

Weinstein has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Higgins and is considering legal action.

Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker should be proud to be the John Hancocks, the first signatories, of the demand letter calling for a serious investigation of this continuing outrage.

VA Battles Wounded Warriors at Home

Nice job CNN!

If you did not see CNN's piece (running now) on how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) screws our vets, you can link to it at: Wounded warriors face home-front battle with VA.

Atrociously. That's how our vets are treated. Can we shame this president?

Many vets just give up with the VA, frustrated with the all hoops they have to jump through.

Many end up homeless.

Many die, taking their unprocessed claims with them, with VA approval.

Many kill themselves.

An one Wisconsin vet lands up in jail for calling out the VA for the scum that they (or too many) are.

This all comes from the top - George W. Bush and his buddies at the veterans’ benefits-hostile American Enterprise Institute.

This is the Enron scandal of the many Bush scandals.

By the way, if you didn't catch the following in September, check it out:

Top VA Official: Bible Study "More important than doing [my] job."

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Scott Horton: A Politicized Military?

Everything else in the Bush administration is politicized and deprofessionalized, what not the military too.

Scott Horton at Harper's deliverers his usual incisive analysis.

Luckily, we have people like Horton and Mikey Weinstein (a former Air Force Judge Advocate (JAG)) at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to fight the rightwing forces, impervious to argument and contemptuous of religious minorities (like those Jews who are going to burn in hell for not accepting Christ), who believe that their version of Christianity trumps the rule of law, individual rights and pluralism.

I have often had a problem with Abe Foxman at the ADL for smearing opponents of Israeli militarism; but the fact of the matter is we need Foxman's passion against anti-Semitism because under Bush our military is becoming a de facto for-Christians-only force.

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