According to a US Naval Academy press release, the chapel communities at Annapolis donated $270,000 to charities in 2015.
Twice per year, in January and July, the United States Naval Academy (USNA) Chaplains Office spends down the religious offering fund to under $5,000 in order to ensure that Read more
When GOP Presidential candidate Ben Carson rose in the polls a couple of months ago, a buzz started — mostly among activists and agitators — about the religious statements made by his now-chief of staff, retired Gen Bob Dees. (Dees had long been on Carson’s staff, but Carson’s rise brought sudden attention to otherwise old information.)
Now that Ted Cruz has risen to be Donald Trump’s primary challenger, critics of faith and liberty have shifted the “religious analysis” to him.
At the liberal-leftist Daily Kos, Ian Reifowitz called on his readers to imagine if a Jew or Muslim had said what Cruz had. Citing Politico, Reifowitz quoted Cruz:
“I’m a Christian first, American second, conservative third and Republican fourth…I’ll tell ya, there are a whole lot of people in this country that feel exactly the same way.”
Reifowitz assessed:
Could you imagine, for example, a Jewish candidate for president saying that he or she was a Jew first and an American second? Now imagine the sheer outrage if a Muslim American of any prominence whatsoever declared that he or she was Muslim first and American second. People’s heads would explode.
Reifowitz’s argument was almost immediately Read more
[For] the zealot…the real recompense is probably the obsession itself… Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic’s world view, a narcissistic sense of self-assurance displaces all doubt. A delicious rage quickens his pulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture…
This quote is from Jon Krakauer’s Huffington Post article on his book about “violent faith,” which he said helped explain the motivation behind the ranchers at the heart of the Oregon standoff.
Michael “Mikey” Weinstein called this quote and Krakauer’s work “amazing,” apparently without realizing how accurately those same words described him.
Irony, projection, hypocrisy — call it what you will. It’s Read more
In a seemingly rare occurrence, the US Air Force Academy received a bit of positive press when the American Family Association asked people to sign a petition thanking USAFA for protecting the religious liberty of its cadets. Noting the faux-controversy of USAFA football players taking a knee in the end zone, the AFA first quoted the official USAFA response:
The United States Air Force Academy places a high value on the rights of its members to observe the tenets of their respective religion or to observe no religion at all. Recently, the United States Air Force Academy received a complaint about its football players kneeling in prayer. An inquiry was initiated, which found the football players’ actions to be consistent with Air Force Instruction 1-1 and its guidance on the free exercise of religion and religious accommodation.
The United States Air Force Academy will continue to reaffirm to cadets that all Airmen are free to practice the religion of their choice or subscribe to no religious belief at all. The players may confidently practice their own beliefs without pressure to participate in the practices of others.
The AFA concluded with: Read more
Ed Brayton is a prolific and progressive atheistic blogger who is also a longtime ally of Michael “Mikey” Weinstein and his research assistant, Chris Rodda. Unlike Rodda, Brayton occasionally shows a rare streak of principle and holds his own ideologues to the same standards he demands of the “right wing fundamentalists” he so often mocks. Still, like Rodda and Weinstein, he is often blind to the traits he shares with those he ridicules.
On Monday, Brayton wrote a blog at the pay-per-click Patheos entitled “Cruz Shows He Has No Clue About the Military” in which he mocks presidential candidate and US Senator Ted Cruz for his statement saying of ISIS “we will carpet bomb them into oblivion.” Speaking to Cruz, Brayton says:
Do you or do you not know what carpet bombing is? He makes clear that he does not.
Brayton quotes Cruz waxing political in pivoting to Operation Desert Storm and the military draw down that has occurred since then: Read more
Update: Nearly a month later, Mikey Weinstein complained that the disclaimer discussed below was “lipstick on a pig.” Weinstein appeared offended that he hadn’t been consulted and that his demand that Col Hundley be “publicly punish[ed]” was ignored.
The latest US service member to publicly mention his faith and get castigated by Michael “Mikey” Weinstein is US Army Col Thomas Hundley. In a 400-word post at the US military’s official Health.mil, Col Hundley provided one of his regular “Motivational Monday Messages” and recounted his grandfather’s admonition “You just gotta give God a little something to work with.”
He finished with
I challenge you to join the Operation Live Well team on the journey to attain a “new you” in 2016. All we have to do is give God and ourselves a little something to work with. Happy New Year!
and included a list of “improvements” for 2016, among which was
1. Improve your spiritual fitness through increased prayer.
Cited by Military.com’s Bryant Jordan, Weinstein said he complained because Read more
Michael “Mikey” Weinstein frequently publishes messages written in support of his organization, as he did last week when he published a letter from a supporter to Franklin Graham berating Graham for his defense of US Air Academy football players taking a knee in the end zone. The supporter first summarized what he believed was Graham’s position:
You contended that young football players at the USAF Academy should be free to kneel down in a circle before a football game if they wished.
While it’s not too far off, that’s not actually what was happening. Football players were Read more
Over the past months, a few critics have tried to draw attention to one particular person on the staff of Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson.
Originally his foreign policy advisor, Carson’s new campaign chairman is Bob Dees, a retired US Army Major General and former executive director of Campus Crusade for Christ (now “Cru“) which had a substantial ministry to the US armed forces called Military Ministry (now “CruMilitary“).
As early as November 10th of last year, James Bamford at Foreign Policy described Dees as
a retired general who believes Muslims pose a threat to the U.S., the military should spread Christianity, and Carson should be president.
But the statements that Bamford apparently found ‘disturbing’ were fairly benign: Read more