Last September, the patriotic “God banners” in Poway teacher Brad Johnson’s classroom were ruled unconstitutional by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate decision reversed that of the district court, which had previously written a strong ruling finding in Johnson’s favor.
The Thomas More Law Center recently appealed to the Supreme Court, with TMLC president Richard Thompson saying Read more
US Army Major Ray Bradley wants military records to be altered so he can express his religion as “humanist,” which is not currently an option.
[Bradley] can’t be designated as a humanist on his official records or dog tags, although he can be classified as an atheist.
The distinction may not seem like a large one to those unfamiliar with humanism, but the Fort Bragg-based officer says it’s the equivalent of being told that “Christian” is an acceptable designation, but not “Catholic.”
“Humanism is a philosophy that guides a person,” Bradley said. “It’s more than just a stamp of what you’re not.”
As to the confusion about whether atheists are humanists, or vice versa: Read more
US Representative Randy Forbes (R-Va) appears to be holding Chief of Staff of the Air Force General Norton Schwartz personally responsible for “bowing too far to appease” critics of religious freedom within the US Air Force:
Rep. Randy Forbes, R-Va., said the logo change is the latest in an Air Force pattern that is having a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of airmen. Forbes said he partly blames Schwartz, who he said “has been as bad as I have seen…in defending religious liberties.”
The article notes the incident to which Forbes is referring — first reported at ChristianFighterPilot.com — was the “last straw” in a year Read more
The Liberty Institute has petitioned the US Supreme Court to reverse the ruling of the 9th Circuit, which held the 43-foot cross on Mount Soledad near San Diego was unconstitutional. The 9th Circuit denied an en banc review.
Last year’s ruling by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals capped two decades of legal challenges over the cross that was used for Easter celebrations in the early 1900s and later became a memorial to Korean War Read more
US Representative Randy Forbes (R-Va) has written a letter (PDF) signed by 35 members of the House asking the Air Force restore a unit’s motto that was changed after an atheist’s complaint. 
The incident to which Rep Forbes is referring was actually first reported on ChristianFighterPilot.com, with the Religion Clause and the ADF Alliance Alert subsequently citing this site.
As noted three weeks ago, the USAF Rapid Capabilities Office responded to “needling” from former Army Captain Jason Torpy, an atheist, and changed its motto from “Doing God’s work with other people’s money” to “Doing miracles with other people’s money.”
The letter, addressed to Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz, says:
It has come to our attention that the US Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) has modified the logo on its official patch to remove its reference to “God,” following a complaint from Read more
Update: The Army defended its actions, with FoxNews saying it was a “cautionary move to preserve “military order and discipline,”” not censorship.
In a surprisingly underreported story, the US Army reportedly censored — and then admitted the wrong of censoring — US military Catholic chaplains during their performance of their Catholic Mass. Catholic priests were apparently given letters to read to their parishes explaining the Catholic opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring insurance coverage for things that violate Catholic beliefs.
On Thursday, January 26, Archbishop Broglio emailed a pastoral letter to Catholic military chaplains with instructions that it be read from the pulpit at Sunday Masses the following weekend in all military chapels. The letter calls on Catholics to resist the policy initiative, recently affirmed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, for federally mandated health insurance covering sterilization, abortifacients and contraception, because it represents a violation of the freedom of religion recognized by the U.S. Constitution.
The US Army’s Chaplaincy office responded: Read more
The US House of Representatives passed two separate bills (previously noted) related to religion at US military war memorials — a point of controversy for about the past two decades in southern California, at least. Though they’ve been inaccurately described as “promoting” religion, the first does little more than officially authorize longstanding tradition, and the second adds a Presidential statement to a war Read more
Michael Weinstein recently wrote a scathing letter demanding retired LtGen William “Jerry” Boykin be prohibited from speaking to the US Military Academy (West Point) National Prayer Breakfast on February 8th. The reason: Boykin is, in Weinstein’s words, “rabidly Islamophobic.” (That’s the same word he used to describe Franklin Graham in 2010, when he was invited to a similar event.)
Simultaneously, Michael Weinstein has defended and is helping advertise Rock Beyond Belief — which last week received a significant amount of negative attention for inviting what he would seemingly describe as a “rabidly religiophobic” music group to perform. In fact, the “rabidly Christophobic” Michael Weinstein is scheduled to be one of the event’s speakers. Weinstein should probably look up the meaning of “phobia.”
Of course, it makes no sense for a person to use the “defense of religious Read more