{"id":25664,"date":"2013-09-26T00:30:56","date_gmt":"2013-09-26T03:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=25664"},"modified":"2016-11-26T00:44:07","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T03:44:07","slug":"group-sues-us-military-for-weinstein-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/26\/group-sues-us-military-for-weinstein-records\/","title":{"rendered":"Group Sues US Military for Weinstein Records"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>Update<\/strong><\/span>: Also at OneNewsNow, where Judicial Watch claims Michael Weinstein has had an &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.onenewsnow.com\/legal-courts\/2013\/09\/30\/so-pentagon-%E2%80%93-how-%E2%80%98bout-your-chummy-relationship-with-anti-christian-activist\">adverse affect on religious freedom in the military<\/a>,&#8221; and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifesitenews.com\/news\/pentagon-refuses-to-turn-over-records-of-communications-with-controversial\/\">LifeSiteNews<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Judicial Watch <a href=\"http:\/\/www.standardnewswire.com\/news\/944038661.html\">announced<\/a> it has filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Defense seeking information about its relationship with Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein, following his <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/29\/reports-us-air-force-consults-michael-weinstein-on-religious-policy\/\">now-infamous meeting<\/a> with Pentagon officials in April:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Judicial Watch&#8230;filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit&#8230;against the Department of Defense seeking &#8220;all records and communications&#8221; between the Pentagon and Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) founder Mikey Weinstein, a controversial activist who has compared evangelicals with the Taliban and al-Qaeda and has called for the court martial of Christian chaplains (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:13-cv-01372 )).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.judicialwatch.org\/\">Judicial Watch<\/a> said they\u00a0<!--more-->filed their FOIA in May, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.judicialwatch.org\/document-archive\/jw-v-department-of-defense-mikey-weinstein-documents\/\">their lawsuit indicates<\/a> the DoD has not been responsive, as required by law.\u00a0 For those unfamiliar, the lawsuit simply demands records; it makes no claim regarding\u00a0the actual relationship Weinstein has with the US military.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, the Pentagon reportedly downplayed Weinstein&#8217;s role, and even the MRFF&#8217;s Chris Rodda claims reports of Weinstein&#8217;s influence over the military have been fabricated by &#8220;right-wing [<em>sic<\/em>] Christian[s].&#8221;\u00a0 But Judicial Watch cites none other than <em>Chris Rodda<\/em> to support their claim:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In a Huffington Post article entitled &#8220;The Pentagon Most Certainly is Listening to Mikey Weinstein,&#8221; Chris Rodda, the senior research director at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, reinforced Weinstein&#8217;s relationship with the Pentagon, boasting that he forced Idaho&#8217;s Mountain Home Air Force Base to remove an inspirational piece of artwork from its dining facility with a single phone call&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It seems Chris Rodda put her foot in the MRFF&#8217;s mouth, which <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/03\/mrff-sticks-its-foot-in-its-mouth-again\/\">isn&#8217;t unusual<\/a> at the &#8220;charity&#8221;.\u00a0 [The artwork incident was <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/06\/02\/weinstein-says-jump-air-force-asks-how-high\/\">discussed here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<p>Judicial Watch joins the ADF in its efforts to publicize\u00a0Weinstein&#8217;s behind-the-scenes &#8220;influence&#8221; of the US Air Force.\u00a0 The ADF <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/07\/religious-freedom-group-investigates-military-chaplain-censorship\/\">previously filed a FOIA<\/a> over Chaplain (LtCol) Kenneth Reyes&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/25\/air-force-pulls-chaplain-column-atheist-article-remains\/\">&#8220;banned&#8221; article<\/a>.\u00a0 As more groups obtain information about Weinstein &#8212; and publish it &#8212; Weinstein&#8217;s influence will likely wane\u00a0if his relationship with the military becomes so stigmatized he becomes toxic to the &#8220;senior military leaders&#8221; he calls by first name.<\/p>\n<p>For his part, Weinstein has little ability to criticize Judicial Watch&#8217;s action, as he frequently uses FOIA as a club against the military &#8212; and a convenient way to learn non-public information about those with whom he disagrees.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update: Also at OneNewsNow, where Judicial Watch claims Michael Weinstein has had an &#8220;adverse affect on religious freedom in the military,&#8221; and LifeSiteNews. Judicial Watch announced it has filed a FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Defense seeking information about its relationship with Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein, following his now-infamous meeting with Pentagon officials in April: Judicial Watch&#8230;filed a Freedom of [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5284,175,1190,2160,3258,85,2,5218,7,63,10,171],"class_list":["post-25664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-chaplain","tag-chris-rodda","tag-dod","tag-foia","tag-judicial-watch","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-pentagon","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}