JAG CENTRAL

From the NY Times, Sentencing Hearing Starts for G.I. Featured in Abu Ghraib Pictures ('When asked outside court if he found any conflict between the accounts of Private England's shyness and the notorious images of her pointing at the genitals of humiliated Iraqi prisoners, one of her lawyers, Rick Hernandez, said: "I don't. You have to take everything into consideration." He added, "Just for posing in those photos, she never meant or did any abuse."').

From the Washington Post, Air Force to Probe Religious Climate at Colorado Academy:

The Air Force said yesterday it is creating a task force to address the religious climate at the U.S. Air Force Academy, following allegations that its faculty and staff have pressured cadets to convert to evangelical Christianity.

The acting secretary of the Air Force, Michael L. Dominguez, ordered the task force to make a preliminary assessment by May 23 of the religious atmosphere on the Colorado Springs campus and its "relevance . . . to the entire Air Force." He named Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, the Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel, to head the effort.
....
Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, a White House attorney in the Reagan administration who graduated from the academy in 1977 and has sent two sons there, said yesterday that "a colossal failure of leadership is resulting in a constitutional train wreck" at the school.

Last week, the Washington-based group Americans United for Separation of Church and State issued a 14-page report charging that there is "systematic and pervasive religious bias and intolerance at the highest levels of the Academy command structure."

The report said that during basic training, cadets who declined to go to chapel after dinner were organized into a "Heathen Flight" and marched back to their dormitories. It said the Air Force's "Chaplain of the Year" urged cadets to proselytize among their classmates or "burn in the fires of hell"; that mandatory cadet meetings often began with explicitly Christian prayers; and that numerous faculty members introduced themselves to their classes as born-again Christians and encouraged students to become born again during the term.

ANALYSIS: I graduated from West Point in 1997, and I must say I didn't really experience this kind of intolerance there. Although I do believe in God, I almost never went to church there, and I never witnessed any backlash for not doing so. I did experience something like "Heathen Flight" during my initial entry training. Every week, the various chaplains organized "Chaplain's Time," where they had sodas and cookies, and most importantly, a few hour break from the rigors of "Beast Barracks." One person in our company decided they didn't want to go to Chaplain's Time since he was atheist. Well, two of the cadets decided to hold "Atheist's Time" with him while we were gone, which consisted of push-ups, uniform drills, and other "additional training." Well, next week, that guy lined up for Chaplain's Time with everyone else. I don't think these upperclass cadets were trying to force religion on him; rather, I think they were ensuring that he take the several hour break from Beast that everyone needs, and since they couldn't make him because of the event's religious nature, they would make it uncomfortable for him to miss it. However, I can see how someone who wouldn't recognize what they were doing would view this as religious discrimination.

From USA Today, Air Force Academy Wrestles With Alleged Religious Bias.