Marching as to War

[MountainLaurel]

About the man behind the lawsuit about proselytization in the military.

Weinstein, 51, was once a White House lawyer who defended the Reagan administration during the Iran-contra investigation. Three generations of his family -- his father, himself, both of his sons and a daughter-in-law -- have gone to U.S. military academies.

Now he's declaring war against what, for him, is an improbable enemy: the defense establishment. He is suing the Air Force in federal court, demanding a permanent injunction against alleged religious favoritism and proselytizing in the service. He has also formed a nonprofit organization, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, to combat what he sees as a concerted effort by evangelical Christian organizations to treat the armed forces as a mission field, ripe for conversions.

snip

Yet one of his favorite lines these days -- right up there with "sucking chest wounds" -- comes from the Officers' Christian Fellowship, a private organization with 14,000 active-duty members on more than 200 U.S. military bases around the world. In its mission statement, the OCF says its goal is "a spiritually transformed military, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, empowered by the Holy Spirit."

snip

"Let me make it clear. I would shed my last drop of blood to defend their right to hold that biblical worldview. They are absolutely entitled to believe that Anne Frank is burning in hell along with Dr. Seuss, Gandhi and Einstein," he says. "But I will not accept my government telling me who are the children of the greater God and who are the children of the lesser God. That's the difference. I will not defend -- I will fight them tooth and nail, and lay down a withering field of fire and leave sucking chest wounds -- if they engage the machinery of the state, which is what they're doing."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/15/AR2006071501032.html

Here's the Web site for his organization, for those of us interested in supporting his efforts.

http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/

[struggle4progress]

1. Uh, Reagan's opposition to "separation of church and state" was ..

.. immediately obvious to anyone who followed the 1980 campaign, and subsequent events have done nothing but emphasize this fact. Reagan SCOTUS pick Scalia has always been opposed to "separation of church and state" and so was now CJ of SCOTUS Roberts when he was working for Reagan.

I'm glad to have Weinstein on the right side now, but it's apparently taken two decades to open his eyes -- it seems nothing crossed his mind until cadets started to insult his son's religion.

[SPKrazy]

2. Scalia Was A Bush 41 Pick n/t

[struggle4progress]

3. Scalia was confirmed as SCOTUS Associate Justice in 1986,

which was during Ronald McDonald's second term.

Antonin Scalia ...
Position: associate Justice
Nominated by: Reagan
Commissioned: September 25, 1986
Sworn in: September 26, 1986
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/legal_entity/103/

... On June 17, 1986, President Reagan nominated Scalia to the Supreme Court, to fill the seat left vacant by the elevation of William Rehnquist to chief justice. In his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Scalia said that he considered the most important part of the Constitution to be the system of "checks and balances among the three branches....so that no one of them is able to 'run roughshod' over the liberties of the people." Scalia was confirmed unanimously (98-0) by the Senate September 17 ...
http://www.supremecourthistory.org/myweb/justice/scalia.htm

... In 1986, President Reagan nominated William Rehnquist to fill the chief justice position vacated by the retiring Warren Berger, and subsequently nominated Scalia to fill the newly opened associate justice position. With so much attention focused on Rehnquist's promotion, the staunchly conservative Scalia passed through the confirmation process by an unanimous Senate vote. He took his oath of office on Sept. 26, 1986 ...
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/supreme_court/judge_scalia.html

[SPKrazy]

4. I Stand Corrected

I guess the old idea that I kept hearing during the 2000 election debacle, that Scalia should recuse himself because he was a Bush 41 appointee was a red herring.

It convinced me enough that I never bothered to check my facts.

Thanks

[struggle4progress]

5. Two of Scalia's sons who are lawyers had ties to W's legal team

[NMMNG]

6. Gah

These extremist bullies are infiltrating everything.