Army Brigade Preps with Prayers, Pancakes
A Hawaii-based Army brigade prepared for their upcoming deployment to Afghanistan with a Prayer and Pancake breakfast attended by more than 150: Read more
Chuck Norris: Air Force “Airbrushes” Religious Liberty
Chuck Norris, a former Air Force Airman among other notable achievements, recently expressed disappointment at the Air Force’s decision to pull down a US Air Force Academy cadet’s Bible verse. He quotes and then agrees with retired General Jerry Boykin of the FRC, who noted
Once the academy allowed cadets to use these whiteboards for their personal use, censorship of religious commentary is unacceptable…
Norris then listed 10 examples of “prohibition of religious expression” in the military over the past few years, including USAFA’s Operation Christmas Child, Just War theory in ICBM training, the Camp Pendleton Cross, and the live Nativity in Bahrain.
He concluded the list with the perception that it gave him: Read more
Remarks by President Obama at Easter Prayer Breakfast
In these Holy Days, we recall all that Jesus endured for us — the scorn of the crowds and the pain of the crucifixion, in our Christian religious tradition we celebrate the glory of the Resurrection — all so that we might be forgiven of our sins and granted everlasting life…
None of us are free from sin, but we look to His life and strive, knowing that “if we love one another, God lives in us, and His love is perfected in us.
Read President Obama’s remarks here. Read more
Air Force Reverses, Will Review Religious Freedom Policy (Video)
View the video from approximately 4:10.
How’d you like to be the cadet who posted Galatians 2:20? You are personally responsible for influencing religious liberty policy in the US Air Force. Nicely done.
A few weeks ago the US Air Force Academy made the news when a Bible verse was stripped from a USAFA cadet’s dry erase board. The incident led Congressmen to question the Air Force leadership about the incident when they appeared for a budget meeting. Secretary James and Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh were initially defensive, citing AFI 1-1 as the justification for the command action against the cadet, though they did agree to provide a written explanation for the action. General Welsh famously expressed his “single biggest frustration” over what he called the untrue “perception [of] religious persecution” in the Air Force.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Secretary James seemed to have tweaked the Air Force reaction.
In response Read more
US Army Supports Air Force Plan to Cut A-10
The Air Force defended its decision to cut the A-10 from its inventory in a meeting with lawmakers last week:
Graham and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., suggested the Air Force has more work ahead to convince Congress that retiring the A-10 is a smart move.
“So for about $3.5 billion over the next five years, if [Congress] could find the money, could you afford to keep the A-10 on board?” Graham said.
Welsh said money wasn’t the only problem…
In an interesting twist, the US Army — which has traditionally been “accused” of wanting the A-10 and criticizing the Air Force for wanting to get rid of it — actually seems to be supportive of the decision: Read more
Air Force Leaders on Core Values
Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh, and Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force James Cody recently took to YouTube to explain the Air Force core values “matter.”
The video is interesting, but even more interesting is the way the official Air Force Facebook page intro’d the video [emphasis added]:
When you voluntarily raised your right hand and took the oath of enlistment to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against enemies foreign and domestic — you purposely gave up a piece of yourself. You were remolded and given a new set of core values, which are integrity first, service before self and excellence in all we do.
That statement seems to presuppose that men and women enter the Air Force without values of integrity, service, or excellence. While that is absolutely Read more
USAFA, Whiteboards, and Bible Verses, Part 2
The US Air Force Academy apparently determined it was “inappropriate” for a cadet to write a Bible verse on the dry erase board outside his room door (because his roommate was a “leader”).
No worries. USAFA still has a Bible verse in a far more public place: The center of its campus, at the bottom or a 9-foot tall statue of Robbie Risner:
Who will go? Send me! – Isaiah 6:8
Pres. Obama told Generals to Support DADT Repeal or Resign
Buzzfeed obtained a video of Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp speaking to US Coast Guard Academy cadets on January 8th. In it, he recounts a meeting with President Obama in 2010, in which the President told the “5 service chiefs” to support his plan for repeal of the policy known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — or get out:
Papp revealed that Obama was unwilling to compromise with service leaders over DADT during a meeting in 2010. “We were called into the Oval Office and President Obama looked all five service chiefs in the eye and said, ‘This is what I want to do.’ I cannot divulge everything he said to us, that’s private communications within the Oval Office, but if we didn’t agree with it — if any of us didn’t agree with it — we all had the opportunity to resign our commissions and go do other things,” he said.
The context of the answer was a question from cadets about Read more