Tag Archives: USAFA

MRFF Rails Against USAFA, While Admitting There’s Nothing USAFA Can Do

According to Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, a US Air Force Academy cadet recently sent him an email to let him know one of his academic instructors had asked him if he had accepted Jesus as his Savior. The next day, the instructor (perhaps jokingly) asked the cadet not to run to Mikey Weinstein.

With that information – and only that information – Weinstein employed former USAFA department head Marty France (who had previously been Mikey’s inside man in the USAFA leadership) to engage the Air Force Academy and demand…nothing. Said Marty to USAFA:

I’m not sure you can do anything about this particular case–the cadet won’t provide enough information to identify the instructor and we won’t divulge any information about the cadet without their permission, of course.

So, to recap, the MRFF is contacting USAFA so they can do…nothing.

Despite the MRFF’s own admission that they didn’t have enough information to do anything, Weinstein’s public response was typical of “Mikey’s Mad Libs” (a name given to his alliterative and Read more

Mikey Weinstein Ties Capitol Riot to Military Christians

In his latest effort to ride the coat tails of trending news, Michael “Mikey” Weinstein contends he has warned for years about what led to the riot at the Capitol in early January.

In Weinstein’s words to the US Air Force Academy: “We told you so.”

We warned you that this radical, right-wing influence found not only at USAFA, but tolerated or even endorsed by senior officers throughout the Air Force, caused a toxic leadership environment and eroded unit cohesion, good order, morale, and discipline. We constantly worried and warned that these seemingly (to some) innocuous events would lead to embarrassment for our Air Force Academy or worse — and that’s exactly what’s happened.

As proof, Weinstein cited retired LtCol Larry Brock, who was prominently photographed in the Capitol building during the riot.

As with some of Weinstein’s prior claims of validation, however, this one also requires a time machine to be true. Brock graduated with the USAFA Class of 1989 – more than Read more

Air Force Celebrates Officers Career without Mentioning Race

In a rare event for an Air Force press release, an article celebrated the long and storied career of Col Patrick “Phantom” Campbell, without once mentioning the color of his skin.

Campbell had an interesting career – rejected by the US Air Force Academy initially, he went to the Prep school and then to USAFA. He washed out of pilot training, but then excelled at Navigator training. He was an F-4 EWO in the early 1980s; after a break in service, he eventually returned and would become the Ops Group Commander and finally the 22nd Air Force Director of Operations at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Georgia. He now retires and plans to continue to live a full life, as well as spend more time with Kimberly, his wife of 38 years.

In an era in which status and physical traits seem Read more

Mikey Weinstein Gets Marine Corps to Cancel Speaker Because of Christianity

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein recently celebrated the fact the US Marine Corps acceded to his demands in only “64 minutes” and canceled the scheduled presentation of Jay Lorenzen, a retired US Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. The presentation was to be on the Gettysburg battlefield. Weinstein’s criticism of Lorenzen was stark, as described by his research assistant Chris Rodda:

Last night when an email came in to MRFF from a Marine Reserve JAG, reporting that 120 Marine Reserve JAGs were to be required to virtually attend a “battle-study” training of Gettysburg tomorrow led by a Jay Lorenzen, the name was very familiar to us at MRFF as a staff member of none other than Campus Crusade for Christ.

One look at the website for Lorenzen’s “High Ground at Gettysburg” training confirmed that the JAG’s concerns that this was to be a Christian proselytizing event were well founded.

Or, as Weinstein put it (in his characteristic poor grammar and ellipses flair): Read more

The Air Force Song Gets a Gender-Neutral Update

US Air Force Chief of Staff General Dave Goldfein has announced that the third verse of the Air Force Song — most often sung alone, during memorials or at the end of Service Academy games — is now officially gender neutral:

At the Air Force Association’s conference in Orlando, Florida, Thursday, Goldfein recalled attending a women’s volleyball tournament at the Pentagon last year, when the U.S. Air Force Academy thoroughly beat the other service academy teams.

As Goldfein sang the Air Force Song with the female cadets, it was apparent that the lyrics left them out…

So, Goldfein said, he’s ordered the song to be tweaked slightly, to reflect that fact that women serve in the Air Force.

“These are the women we will ask to go into combat and fight, just as women have done for a generation…Yet this version of the song, their alma mater, was not about them…It is time for us to change.”

This is far from the first time the Air Force has neutralized Read more

MRFF: “Listening to Mikey Weinstein Violates the Constitution.”

Last Friday the MRFF made a rather shocking accusation, accusing a Navy installation of violating the US Constitution — for doing exactly what its founder, Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, said they should do.

According to the press release picked up by the AP, US Navy Chaplain (Cmdr) Richard Clay Smothers sent an email out Naval Station Newport advertising an upcoming leadership series entitled “Lead Like Jesus.”

Marty France — a retired USAF BG who joined the MRFF board — decried the “violations” to

the base commander, [US Navy] Capt. Ian L. Johnson, urging him to “move quickly on this blatant violation of the Constitution (that we both swore to uphold) as well as DoD regulations.”

Remember, the email came from the chaplains, not any commander. Here’s the kicker: This is the quote from Mikey Weinstein just a couple of years ago:

“There’s no problem with this [religious campaign] if it’s done through the chaplain’s office,” Weinstein said.

That was a reference to Operation Christmas Child, but it Read more

Chris Rodda, Gen Marty France “Malign” ChristianFighterPilot.com

Christine “Chris” Rodda is Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s research assistant for his “charity,” the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. She wrote a blog late last Friday and posted it on Daily Kos and Medium, attacking ChristianFighterPilot.com by claiming retired Air Force Captain Cole “Twitch” Holloway was “maligned” in an article posted here on Thursday.

It’s odd that Weinstein and Rodda chose to go after that article.  It’s a short piece, and its tone is benign.  There are many more articles here of more direct impact to the MRFF — say, those noting Weinstein is a charity millionaire or that Rodda’s outrage is quite selective — yet they chose to go after one that didn’t even mention them.  Presumably, Rodda thought they could get emotional value out of the topic — so long as people didn’t bother to read the original article, and instead only saw her “interpretation” of it.

(Why not engage over an article that actually discusses the MRFF and religious freedom? For all his bluster and bloviating, Mikey Weinstein is scared. But that’s a topic for another time.)

As is typical, Rodda struggled with the truth.  She titled her blog “The “Christian Fighter Pilot” Sinks to New Low — Maligns Pilot with ALS for Not Being Christian”. Despite the fact she intentionally didn’t link to the article, many are aware of it, and even some of Rodda’s own readers were unable to find where anyone had been “maligned” within it. In her defense, Rodda did Read more

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