Via Digby, comes this story in today's WaPo (that I missed):
The Air Force is investigating whether a two-star general violated military regulations by urging fellow Air Force Academy graduates to make campaign contributions to a Republican candidate for Congress in Colorado, Pentagon officials said yesterday.
Maj. Gen. Jack J. Catton Jr., who is on active duty at Langley Air Force Base, sent the fundraising appeal on Thursday from his official e-mail account to more than 200 fellow members of the academy's class of 1976, many of whom are also on active duty.
"We are certainly in need of Christian men with integrity and military experience in Congress," Catton wrote.
(Snip)
"The lack of any Air Force presence within the Congress was particularly telling over the last few years," Rayburn wrote, referring to controversy over proselytizing at the Air Force Academy and new Air Force regulations on religious expression. "For those of us who are Christians, there is that whole other side of the coin that recognizes that we need more Christian influence in Congress."
The story goes on to say that the candidate (Rayburn - a Republican candidate for the House seat where the Air Force Academy is, in Colorado) and Catton (the Air Force General who did this idiocy) are both claiming the only thing wrong is that Catton sent the email out on his "official" email account, and that if he'd sent it from his "personal" email account, it would have been fine.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only sane person left on the planet, and everyone else is nutzo. Active duty military people (of any rank) should not and cannot endorse any candidate. Period. Full stop. No discussion.
Retired military can do whatever they want. Freedom of speach and all that. But in our system, active duty military cannot be involved in politics (it is a short step from endorsing a candidate to running oneself as a candidate: if you can't see the fundamental wrongness of that, you need to re-take civics class). And I'm not even going to touch the (obviously as frightening) religious aspect of this.
That both an active-duty General and a candidate for US House don't seem to be aware of these basic concepts is frightening.
Posted by baltar at May 6, 2006 11:00 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Military Affairs | Politics | Religion | The Ever Shrinking ConstitutionAnd I've seen this discussed elsewhere, but, what the hell is going on with the Air Force?
Posted by: binky at May 6, 2006 11:24 AM | PERMALINKJesus is going on with the Air Force, or so an acquaintance who recently left active duty tells me. I would love to see an expose of evangelical activities within the US services (how does one respond when one's sergeant/CO witnesses at one?), but of course that would "undermine morale", and we can't be having that during "wartime".
Posted by: jacflash at May 6, 2006 01:17 PM | PERMALINKYeah, I've heard before about the connection between the Air Force and evangelical protestantism. A more interesting question is "why"? There are three services (four if you count the Marines separately; five if you include the Coast Guard, which operates in a fairly military fashion, though small) - why is only the Air Force so closely associated with this?
Posted by: baltar at May 6, 2006 01:32 PM | PERMALINKAnd it's even deeper, as I have noticed a real difference in the ROTC folks. At least two to three of the 4-5 AFROTC people I've worked with in the last few years are now out and considering the ministry as a future.
Posted by: binky at May 7, 2006 12:33 PM | PERMALINK