Tag Archives: USAFA

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

Atheist Chaplain Analyzes USAFA Whiteboards, Freethinkers

Chris Stedman, the Assistant Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University, took to the Religion News Service to express his view on recent events at the US Air Force Academy. Specifically, he addressed Todd Starnes’ comparison of how USAFA took down a Bible verse recently and censored Christian cadets in the past — but allowed atheists to advertise their beliefs. Stedman said:

The stated reason for removing the Bible verse—attempting to ensure that no person, perhaps particularly religious minorities, feels coerced or discriminated against—is a good one… Read more

USAFA Cadets as Lab Rats

US Air Force Academy cadets long suspected there were OSI agents among them. While most often dismissed as an inflated feeling of self-importance, it turns out they were right.

USAFA cadets have also long suspected they are used as lab rats, given the very controlled environment in which they live. For example, there were rumors for years that flu vaccines and other medications were tested en masse at USAFA before being released to the general population.

It seems the “controlled lab” suspicion, too, has been borne out as correct, at least in one instance. NPR reveals that a “social experiment” was conducted at USAFA over a period of two years, led by a Dartmouth College professor, Bruce Sacerdote, and two USAFA staffers: Scott Carrell and James West (who taught at USAFA from 1997-2011):  Read more

Liberty Institute Responds to MRFF Attack

At the beginning of March Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s research assistant, Chris Rodda, posted a lengthy* diatribe that attempted to parse a talk given by the Liberty Institute’s Kelly Shackelford to USAFA cadets during the 2014 NCLS.

Apparently upset that Shackelford was there at all, the MRFF surreptitiously recorded his speech and Rodda attempted to dissect it, labeling it “fear and misinformation.”

The Liberty Institute’s Michael Berry recently responded, essentially noting that Rodda was uninformed, and therefore incorrect, on pretty much every point:

The problem is that Rodda lacks first-hand knowledge (i.e., the real facts) of the matters on which she opined. As an attorney, I can tell you that the law has a strong preference for first-hand knowledge and knowing the true evidence. And because Shackelford was an attorney in nearly every one of the cases he mentioned, he knows the actual facts of each of those cases.

Rodda’s original piece garnered almost no attention, as she Read more

Mikey Weinstein Teams Up with Casey on ACLJ Radio Show

Weinstein Wants Christian Cadets Punished, but Not Atheists

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein appeared on the ACLJ radio program Jay Sekulow Live with attorneys Jay Sekulow, Jordan Sekulow, and retired US Army LtCol Skip Ash to respectfully “debate” again — as Weinstein and Jay Sekulow did in 2007 at USAFA. The topic was, once again, the Bible verse stricken from a cadet’s whiteboard.  During the conversation, Weinstein reiterated his position that the cadet who posted a Bible verse on his dry erase board should be punished:

We want to have visible punishment for the cadet…

He also said he would “not oppose” courts-martial for the cadet’s active duty chain of command.

As before, he declined to call for the same punishments regarding the atheist cadets he claims to have “complained” about a few days later, instead, Read more

USAFA: Cadet Pilot Volunteers also UAV Volunteers

The Air Force Academy published a release saying they have “typically” filled their pilot slots, but they had trouble filling non-pilot rated career fields — CSOs, ABMs, and UAVs. The issue is that all rated career fields are volunteer only. Many cadets would volunteer only for a pilot slot, and the others were going unfilled.

USAFA’s solution? If you volunteer for a pilot slot, you’re volunteering for any rated field — including UAVs:

“They cannot volunteer for just one. By volunteering Read more

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