ONE NEWS NOW: One call, that’s all: Atheist (sic) picks up phone, Air Force surrenders again

Note: the following article makes the deliberately false claim of referring to Mikey Weinstein as an ‘atheist,’ when he is in fact a Jewish Agnostic.

Selected Article Excerpt:

• An atheist known for attacking expressions of faith in the U.S. Armed Forces has convinced the Air Force to remove a newsletter contribution from a colonel because he mentioned his faith.

  Mikey Weinstein, who leads the so-called Military Religious Freedom Foundation, complained after an Air Force colonel wrote about his faith in a newsletter called “The Stinger.”

  The colonel is Florencio Marquinez, a medical group commander in the 180^th Fighter Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard. Among other observations, the colonel wrote in the newsletter that his faith has sustained him throughout his military career.

  Ron Crews, executive director of The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, says the Ohio Air National Guard cannot censor the protected speech of one of its members based on the content of that speech.

  “When we found out about this,” says Crews, “we drafted a letter to the commander to give him the constitutional reasons why this good colonel has every right to say that faith is what has sustained him in his military career.”

• Weinstein has congratulated himself in the past for how quickly military leaders respond to his complaints – even counting the minutes – and this time was no different.

  “After merely speaking with me once over the phone,” Weinstein wrote, the “amazing and caring” Col. Baker “immediately recognized the seriousness of this egregious Constitutional and Air Force regulation violation.”

  Crews, however, calls the colonel’s decision “just one more egregious example” of the Air Force denying officers and airmen the right to exercise their faith.

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