Retired Air Force Col Carlyle “Smitty” Harris was shot down over Vietnam on 4 April 1965. He spent nearly eight years as a Prisoner of War.
He recently published a book entitled Tap Code, based on the method of communication the POWs employed in the Hanoi Hilton. In an interview with the local Daily Journal in Tupelo, Harris said
There were times – too many to count – when a Read more
Peter Vlaming, a Virginia school teacher fired for using female pronouns for a female student who wanted to be male, has sued over his improper termination:
Vlaming’s termination in December as a French teacher at West Point (Virginia) High School came after he agreed to call a transgender ninth-grader by a new male name but declined to use male pronouns to reference the student, according to the lawsuit filed September 30 in Virginia state court. Instead, he never used pronouns in the student’s presence—except for one accidental slip-up.
Worse, of course, is the fact it appears to not be in dispute that Vlaming treated all of his students with respect.
Yet, that is not enough. It cannot Read more
President Trump recently called out the intolerance of the self-described “tolerant” [emphasis added]:
“Too often people in power preach diversity, while shunning or silencing the faithful,” Trump said. “True tolerance means respecting the rights of all people to express their deeply held religious beliefs.”
As noted at the Religion Clause, a Federal District Court in Arizona found that a plaintiff did not have standing to sue over Flagstaff’s annual “Grand Menorah Lighting” held at the City Hall. It turns out the plaintiff, Jack Taylor, only even knew about it because he’d read about it in the paper. As quoted at the Religion Clause [emphasis added],
Plaintiff did not allege that he has had direct contact with the Grand Menorah Lighting at City Hall, or any other religious ceremony purportedly held in City Hall. According to the Complaint, Plaintiff’s contact with the Grand Menorah Lighting at City Hall has, at most, been via newspaper articles Read more
Task & Purpose reports on a “leaked” US Naval Academy email that announced the advent of Satanic services to be held on the Academy grounds. (The story was subsequently picked up by the Military Times and FoxNews.) It turns out the email was “premature” and inaccurate:
a group of midshipmen “with beliefs aligned with those practiced by The Satanic Temple”…had requested a space for a “study group” to discuss their satanic beliefs — and not, as the email in question indicated, for holding satanic religious services.
The problem, of course, is The Satanic Temple isn’t a religious group. It’s an anti-religious group. From their own webpage [emphasis added]:
DO YOU WORSHIP SATAN?
No, nor do we believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. The Satanic Temple believes Read more
Much of the national US leadership has spoken recently in support of religious freedom and the value of their Christian faith.
US Attorney General William Barr spoke a particularly salient truth when he addressed the Notre Dame Law School last Friday [emphasis added]:
Barr, a devout Catholic, told students and faculty at the university’s law school that “the problem is not that religion is being forced on others, the problem is that irreligion is being forced — secular values are being forced on people of faith.”…
“I can assure you that as long as I am attorney general, the Department of Justice will be at the forefront of this effort, ready to fight for the most cherished of all American liberties: the freedom to live according to our faith,” he concluded.
Mike Pompeo was addressing the American Association of Christian Counselors when he spoke on Christian leadership: Read more
Michael “Mikey” Weinstein and his research assistant, Christine “Chris” Rodda have long claimed they fight for “religious freedom” in the military. The name of their charity, after all, is the Military “Religious Freedom” Foundation. They’ve also said in the past that they’re not opposed to Christians’ free exercise. Weinstein himself even once said he’d “give [his] last drop of blood” to support Christians’ rights to their beliefs.
Except, it seems they’re not telling the truth.
Weinstein has repeatedly Read more
Members of the US military aren’t permitted to engage in partisan politics in uniform, nor are they supposed to permit others use them for that purpose. They are also not permitted to “use contemptuous words” against the Commander-in-Chief — in or out of uniform.*
Unless, of course, they’re LGBTQ.
For years the American Military Partner Association blatantly paraded uniformed military members around in support of its political agenda, and it did so even while engaging in outright political lobbying. Its successor, the oddly named “Modern Military Association of America” (apparently “modern” now means non-heterosexual), now Read more