Friday Afternoon Fun: This Photo Needs a Caption
Her Majesty looks a little less than thrilled with Igor’s company in this photo but what is she thinking?
Day: May 4, 2007
Book Review: With God on Our Side
What would you do if you found that people espousing a brand of intolerant evangelical religion were turning an organization that was responsible to a large degree for shaping your life and career into a tool for coercive recruitment? No, I’m not talking about the White House; I’m referring to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military, by Michael L. Weinstein, Davin Seay Mikey Weinstein, a self-described “militant Jew†took on the academy, the Air Force and the Department of Defense a couple of years back because of flagrant violations of the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution by the officers and cadets of the Air Force Academy. Their officers, chaplains and classmates were subjecting cadets to a robust and pervasive proselytizing of fundamentalist Christian doctrine. And if you happened to be Jewish, it was likely that you would be treated like an outsider, subjected to humiliation and possibly called a “Christ killer†by classmates.
“With God on Our Side: One Man’s War against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military” chronicles Weinstein’s crusade against the school from he himself graduated with honors in 1974 and followed it with a distinguished record of service in the judge advocate general corps and three years on staff in the Reagan White House. So he’s no slouch. Instead Weinstein is the third generation of a four-generation military family, and both his sons graduated from the Air Force Academy.
While the narrative occasionally gets rather breathless — especially the first couple of chapters where the author is desperately trying to hook the reader with the power of Weinstein’s personality and the gravity of his crusade, the book is well-written.
For a look into the underpinnings of the race to theocracy and the rise of radical evangelicalism that we are witnessing in America today, read this book.
LAPD Caught on Tape Attacking Reporters – Again
The sound was off on my television when I first saw video of police in riot gear attacking reporters covering a demonstration. I assumed I was seeing footage from a police riot in Bogata or Buenos Aires.
In fact, the scene had taken place at MacArthur Park near Downtown Los Angeles, just five miles from my home.
The demonstrators were protesting treatment of Mexican illegal aliens by the government, marking the first anniversary of immigrants rights protets that brought tens of thousands of people to the streets downtown. This year’s event was much smaller, and would have been relegated to footnotes in the news, if the cops hadn’t over-reacted.
It’s hard to imagine a worse PR move than clubbing reporters who are simply doing their jobs. It’s equally hard to think of an organization that needs to avoid bad PR, especially among minority communities, more than the Los Angeles Police Dept.
Worse, this is not the first time the LAPD has been caught on tape roughing up reporters at a big event. The department and the city were sued after the Democratic Convention here in 2000 for precisely that. The matter was settled in 2002, with an agreement that officers would not use force against reporters even when they were covering an unlawful assembly during an order to disperse.
Oops.
