Category Archives: Government and Religion

MRFF Board Member Mike Farrell to Speak at USAFA

The US Air Force Academy is hosting its annual National Character and Leadership Symposium this week with the theme “Character overcoming Conflict: Individual Stories, Global Impact.”  One of the invited speakers is Mike Farrell, most famous for his role as BJ Hunnicutt in MASH. He’s also been an advocate for other causes, including opposition to the death penalty and a board member of the Cult Awareness Network. What Farrell is less known for is his advocacy for Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s MRFF, as a member of his “advisory board.”

It is unclear if the MRFF will be part of Farrell’s address at the NCLS, though it is fair to say Farrell has been discreet about his involvement with Weinstein’s outfit.

USAFA’s NCLS is an academic forum that has hosted a wide variety of speakers over the years — including Weinstein himself. This year is no different, and Farrell is hardly Read more

SMSgt Monk Awarded Meritorious Service Medal

The Liberty Institute, which has represented SMSgt Philip Monk in his allegation of religious discrimination against the US Air Force, announced that SMSgt Monk had been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for the time period covering his last assignment:

Monk’s attorney, Mike Berry of Liberty Institute, says the Air Force has recognized the outstanding job Monk did as first sergeant…

Berry sees the award as a testament to Monk’s courage and conviction…

“For a long time his future and even his military retirement and pension were kind of up in the air and we weren’t really sure what was going to happen to him,” Berry continues. “And yet now we have the Air Force coming out and awarding him this prestigious Read more

Former Soldier Gets Prison after Terrorism Charge

Former US Army Soldier Craig Baxam was arrested in 2012 as he attempted to enter Somalia from Kenya — allegedly in an attempt to join the terrorist group al-Shabaab.

To little fanfare and even littler press coverage, Baxam was sentenced in January to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to destruction of potentially incriminating records. Baxam pled guilty to

destroying his computer in an attempt to cover his tracks before flying to Africa in a bid to join the Somali militant group al-Shabaab.

Baxam converted to Islam just before leaving the US Army. He was arrested six months later.

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Mikey Weinstein: Its Not about Eliminating God

The Stars and Stripes repeated an article from the Newport News Daily Press noting Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s recent speech at the College of William and Mary. While Weinstein’s speeches are essentially verbatim at each venue, the article headlined and detailed an interesting quote:

“It’s not about eliminating God,” [Weinstein] said. “If that were to happen, we would be in someone’s face in two seconds. It’s about making sure you follow the procedures in deploying your version of God.”

His first sentence seems to be true. He has not advocated “eliminating God” — at least not the God he approves of — from the military or anywhere else. His second Read more

Update: New Religious Liberty Policies and Anti-Semitism

The Deseret News carries its own commentary by Amy Choate-Nielsen on the recent changes to the DoD’s rules requiring religious accommodation. Interestingly, it uses two Jewish Soldiers as the central points of its article — even though the two have nothing to do with the policy changes:

For [Michael] Handman, the new NDAA law comes too late. Five years ago, the private was called derogatory names because of his faith, ordered to remove his yarmulke and rebuked for reading Jewish canon. Then, a few days after his letter home, on Sept. 24, 2008, Handman was lured into a laundry room and beaten to the point of unconsciousness, an Associated Press story says.

That story was discussed in detail here at the time. Retired US Read more

The USAFA Paradox: Teaching Ethics without Morality

The US Air Force Academy published an article featuring cadets attending a seminar on “ethical dilemmas.”

Eight special operations captains from Kirtland and Cannon Air Force Bases, Academy active-duty Airmen and Air Force retirees shared ethical dilemmas that have occurred in their personal and professional lives with about 70 cadets, to engage in reflective conversation, focus on character and leadership, identify pressure that make ethical action challenging and how to improve them.

While the class was certainly long-scheduled, the timing of the public affairs piece is probably not coincidental, given the recent focus on ethics — more accurately, ethical failures — in the US military.

The cadets were introduced to the USAFA Center for Character Development’s ARDA model for decision-making: Awareness, Reasoning, Decision and Action. They then rotated through tables where they interacted with active duty officers who spoke to them about ethical dilemmas they had experienced.

The program certainly gained much credibility in Read more

USAFA Superintendent on Religious Freedom, Weinstein Accusations

LtGen Michelle Johnson, US Air Force Academy superintendent, recently sat down with perennial critic of her academic institution (and MRFF ally), regional newspaper columnist Pam Zubeck.

Among the several questions Zubeck reports in a Q/A format are one on religion and another on an accusation by Michael “Mikey” Weinstein:

[Zubeck:] Some cadets and staff are concerned there’s an atmosphere in which cadets are expected to have their first allegiance to God, not country. How do you deal with that?

LtGen Johnson’s answer was consistent with the same Air Force guidance that has been around for years, though she cited AFI 1-1 specifically [emphasis added]:

[Johnson:] Because we’re a college, we need to have open discourse, but we have to balance that with providing a successful climate. So what we have going in, it’s really kicked in well, is this religious respect training, not just for cadets but for permanent party. That’s really important, for permanent party to know the balance there. People are free to have their beliefs but not proselytize or impose them on someone else.

And we have the training to help Read more

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