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United States News
See other United States News Articles

Title: Air Force action 'entirely inappropriate'
Source: One News Now
URL Source: http://www.onenewsnow.com/national- ... -action-entirely-inappropriate
Published: Feb 13, 2015
Author: Chad Groening
Post Date: 2015-02-13 14:42:54 by redleghunter
Ping List: *Military or Vets Affairs*     Subscribe to *Military or Vets Affairs*
Keywords: None
Views: 8628
Comments: 34

A conservative military watchdog says it was completely inappropriate for an Air Force commander to allow the display of a hybrid flag that advances the radical LGBT political agenda on base.

Writing for The Blaze, former Senior Airman Brian Kolfage accounts that he was driving through Davis Monthan Air Force Base near Tucson when he saw an American flag with rainbow stripes, instead of red and white stripes, flying high on a two-story house.

Kolfage complained to base officials that that flag violates a section of Title 4 that states the American flag "shall be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; and the union of the flag shall be forty-eight stars, white in a blue field."

But several days after his complaint, the installation commander ruled that the flag does not violate federal law and can remain flying.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), thinks the decision was made to accommodate a political agenda.

"This was exhibitionism of a political point of view. It was entirely inappropriate," she exclaims. "Other forms of political expression on a military base also are ruled out, so for the Air Force to make an exception for the sake of a flag that is the hybrid of the American flag -- and the LGBT flag is inappropriate itself -- but to allow that display on a military base, the Air Force authorities who made that decision should be held accountable, because they are the ones who are out of line here."

Donnelly concludes that this incident is a consequence of Barack Obama's imposition of LGBT law on the American military. Subscribe to *Military or Vets Affairs*

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#3. To: redleghunter (#0)

[Article] Kolfage complained to base officials that that flag violates a section of Title 4 that states the American flag "shall be thirteen horizontal stripes, alternate red and white; and the union of the flag shall be forty-eight stars, white in a blue field."

But several days after his complaint, the installation commander ruled that the flag does not violate federal law and can remain flying.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), thinks the decision was made to accommodate a political agenda.

Senior Airman Kolfage and CMR President Donnelly are wrong and the installation commander did what the law required. The First Amendment protects unpopular forms of expression, including this one. The complainants reliance on Title 4 for enforcement action is unfounded.

https://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RL30243.pdf

Congressional Research Service Report for Congress

The United States Flag: Federal Law Relating to Display and Associated Questions

Updated April 14, 2008

John R. Luckey
Legislative Attorney
American Law Division

Order Code RL30243

Excerpt from introductory summary, unnumbered page

This report presents, verbatim, the United States “Flag Code” as found in Title 4 of the United States Code and the section of Title 36 which designates the Star- Spangled Banner as the national anthem and provides instructions on how to display the flag during its rendition. The “Flag Code” includes instruction and rules on such topics as the pledge of allegiance, display and use of the flag by civilians, time and occasions for display, position and manner of display, and how to show respect for the flag. The “Code” also grants to the President the authority to modify the rules governing the flag.

Excerpt at 1: [footnotes omitted, emphasis added]

On the national level the Federal Flag Code provides uniform guidelines for the display of and respect shown to the flag. In addition to the Code, Congress has by statute designated the national anthem and set out the proper conduct during its presentation. The Code is designed “for the use of such civilian groups or organizations as may not be required to conform with regulations promulgated by one or more executive departments” of the federal government. Thus, the Flag Code does not prescribe any penalties for non-compliance nor does it include enforcement provisions; rather the Code functions simply as a guide to be voluntarily followed by civilians and civilian groups.

Excerpt at 2: [footnotes omitted, emphasis added]

In addition to the Flag Code, a separate provision contained in the Federal Criminal Code established criminal penalties for certain treatment of the flag. Prior to 1989, this provision provided criminal penalties for certain acts of desecration to the flag. In response to the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. Johnson (which held that anti-desecration statutes are unconstitutional if aimed at suppressing one type of expression), Congress enacted the Flag Protection Act of 1989 to provide criminal penalties for certain acts which violate the physical integrity of the flag. This law imposed a fine and/or up to one year in prison for knowingly mutilating, defacing, physically defiling, maintaining on the floor, or trampling upon any flag of the United States. In 1990, however, the Supreme Court held that the Flag Protection Act was unconstitutional as applied to a burning of the flag in a public protest.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-02-13   17:08:42 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: nolu chan (#3)

Senior Airman Kolfage and CMR President Donnelly are wrong and the installation commander did what the law required. The First Amendment protects unpopular forms of expression, including this one. The complainants reliance on Title 4 for enforcement action is unfounded.

Wrong. Military members have no 1st Amendment rights while on base,or right to display any political opinion on base housing.

sneakypete  posted on  2015-02-13   18:34:37 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: sneakypete (#13)

Wrong. Military members have no 1st Amendment rights while on base, or right to display any political opinion on base housing.

You forgot the citation to case law. Most emphatically, military have 1st Amendment rights on and off base.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-02-13   21:15:01 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#24. To: nolu chan (#17)

You forgot the citation to case law.

I didn't forget,I didn't bother to look because I know better.

sneakypete  posted on  2015-02-13   22:28:08 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#31. To: sneakypete (#24)

[nolu chan #16] You will have to show me where the UCMJ suspends or overrides the Constitution on a military base. Courts-martial held pursuant to the UCMJ must not violate the Constitution.

[sneakypete #23] BullBush! You were in the Navy for 20+ years and don't know this?

[nolu can #17] You forgot the citation to case law.

[sneakypete #24] I didn't forget,I didn't bother to look because I know better.

It is obvious that you are too lazy to examine the issue and would rather blather.

Your claim at #13,

Military members have no 1st Amendment rights while on base

You have been unable to support your contention, and express an unwillingness to attempt to do so. You would rather blather.

The Constitution makes a separate provision at Art. 1, Sec. 8, Cl 14, granting to Congress the authority "to make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." SCOTUS has extended this, by inference, to the Air Forces.

Just as your right of free speech in the civilian world is not without limits, so your right to free speech as a military member is not without limits. For military members, those limits are set forth by Congress as expressly provided for by the Constitution. To say that you cannot go up to your commanding officer and tell him to eff off is not the same as saying all of your First Amendment rights taken away.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Parker v. Levy (1974), has expressly held that military members do have First Amendment rights and that those rights are not infringed, much less extinguished, by Articles 133 or 134

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/417/733/case.html

U.S. Supreme Court

Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733 (1974)

417 U.S. 733

Held:

1. Articles 133 and 134 are not unconstitutionally vague under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. Pp. 417 U. S. 752-757.

Page 417 U. S. 734

(a) Each article has been construed by the United States Court of Military Appeals or by other military authorities, such as the Manual for Courts-Martial, so as to limit its scope, thus narrowing the very broad reach of the literal language of the articles, and at the same time supplying considerable specificity by way of examples of the conduct that they cover. Pp. 417 U. S. 752-755.

(b) The articles are not subject to being condemned for specifying no standard of conduct at all, but are of the type of statutes which, “by their terms or as authoritatively construed, apply without question to certain activities, but whose application to other behavior is uncertain,” Smith v. Goguen, 415 U. S. 566, 415 U.S. 578. Pp. 417 U. S. 755-756.

(c) Because of the factors differentiating military from civilian society, Congress is permitted to legislate with greater breadth and flexibility when prescribing rules for the former than when prescribing rules for the latter, and the proper standard of review for a vagueness challenge to Code articles is the standard that applies to criminal statutes regulating economic affairs, and that standard was met here, since appellee could have had no reasonable doubt that his statements urging Negro enlisted men not to go to Vietnam if ordered to do so was both “unbecoming an officer and gentleman” and “to the prejudice of good order and discipline in the armed forces,” in violation of Arts. 133 and 134, respectively. Pp. 417 U. S. 756-757.

417 U. S. 734

2. Nor are Arts. 133 and 134 facially invalid because of overbreadth. Pp. 417 U. S.757-761.

(a) Doctrines of First Amendment overbreadth asserted in support of challenges to imprecise language like that contained in Arts. 133 and 134 are not exempt from the operation of the principles that, while military personnel are not excluded from First Amendment protection, the fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it. Pp. 417 U. S. 758-759.

(b) There is a wide range of conduct to which Arts. 133 and 134 may be applied without infringing the First Amendment, and while there may be marginal applications in which First Amendment values would be infringed, this is insufficient to invalidate either article at appellee’s behest. His conduct in publicly urging enlisted personnel to refuse to obey orders which might send them into combat was unprotected under the most expansive notions of the First Amendment, and Arts. 133 and 134.

You can go pretty far, and get away with it, if you do not act all stupid about it. You can always file a Freedom of Information Act request and be creative about what you ask for. You can ask for any record which may exist regarding Captain Horatio Hornblower, which record relates to [fill in the blank], drunk and disorderly, or any unseemly or embarrassing thing of your imagination. They can come back and deny your request on the grounds that no such record exists, but you have committed no offense. You have only asked for a record if it happens to exist. While you might not be had for your creative FOIA request, be prepared whatever wrath they can bring down upon you.

Among your First Amendment rights is the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Yes, you can write to your Senator or Representative and exercise your constitutionally protected free speech to say things to your congressman that you may get in trouble for if you said the same to your senior officer. It's protected free speech, by military members, on base.

Demonstrably, the First Amendment has not been extinguished on base for all military members.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/military_law.aspx#3

Rights of Service Members

In the past, some legal analysts contended that those in the military receive a level of constitutional protection that is inferior to that afforded to civilians. However, in United States v. Stuckey, 10 M.J. 347 (1981), the Court of Military Appeals (now called the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Services) held that "the bill of rights applies with full force to men and women in the military service. …"

http://jpp.whs.mil/Public/docs/06-Public_Comment/dd_201408_BillofRights_ApplicationToCM_Sullivan.pdf

Constitutional rights identified by the Supreme Court generally apply to members of the military unless by text or scope they are plainly inapplicable. In general, the Bill of Rights applies to members of the military absent a specific exemption or certain overriding demands of discipline and duty. Though we have consistently applied the Bill of Rights to members of the Armed Forces, except in cases where the express terms of the Constitution make such application inapposite[,] these constitutional rights may apply differently to members of the armed forces than they do to civilians. The burden of showing that military conditions require a different rule than that prevailing in the civilian community is upon the party arguing for a different rule.

United States v. Easton, 71 M.J. 168, 174-75 (C.A.A.F. 2012) (internal citations, quotation marks, ellipses, and brackets omitted).

C.A.A.F is the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, formerly the Military Court of Appeals (MCA).

http://jpp.whs.mil/Public/docs/06-Public_Comment/dd_201408_BillofRights_ApplicationToCM_Sullivan.pdf

Free Exercise Clause: The Supreme Court, in a non-military justice case, held that “[o]ur review of military regulations challenged on First Amendment grounds is far more deferential than constitutional review of similar laws or regulations designed for civilian society.” Goldman v. Weinberger, 475 U.S. 503, 507 (1986). Since Congress’s adoption of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), codified at 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb, military appellate courts have applied that statute’s compelling interest standard to review free exercise of religion claims, though without definitively resolving whether and how RFRA applies to the military justice system. See, e.g., United States v. Webster, 65 M.J. 936, 946-48 (A. Ct. Crim. App.), petition denied, 67 M.J. 9 (C.A.A.F. 2008); see also Hasan v. Gross, 71 M.J. 416, 417 (C.A.A.F. 2012) (noting that an analysis of a RFRA claim was unnecessary to decide the case).

Free Speech Clause: The Supreme Court has held that “while members of the military services are entitled to the protections of the First Amendment, ‘the different character of the military community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections.’” Brown v. Glines, 444 U.S. 348, 354 (1980) (quoting Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 758 (1974)). The courts have recognized considerable limitations on the freedom of speech in a military context. For example, the Supreme Court has held that there is “no generalized constitutional right to make political speeches or distribute leaflets” on military bases, even if they are generally open to the public. United States v. Albertini, 472 U.S. 675, 685 (1985) (quoting Greer v. Spock, 424 U.S. 828, 838 (1976)). The Court of Military Appeals rejected a constitutional challenge to a statute criminalizing an officer’s use of contemptuous language about the President. United States v. Howe, 17 C.M.A. 165, 37 C.M.R. 429 (1967).

Goldman v. Weinberger, 475 U.S. 503, 507 (1986) is a U.S. Supreme Court case, signified as such by the "U.S." in the citation.

Fourth Amendment

Right to be Free from Unreasonable Searches and Seizures: While the military appellate courts have held that the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures applies to service members, those courts have also held that the reasonable expectation of privacy that informs that right is sometimes different in a military rather than civilian context. For example, “a solider has less of an expectation of privacy in his shared barracks room than a civilian does in his home.” United States v. Bowersox, 72 M.J. 71, 76 (C.A.A.F. 2013).

Id.

http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/weborj

Repository Citation: Fredric I. Lederer and Frederic L. Borch, Does the Fourth Amendment Apply to the Armed Forces?, 3 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 219 (1994), http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol3/iss1/6

at 219

I. INTRODUCTION

The United States Court of Military Appeals has long held that the Bill of Rights applies to members of the armed forces except where explicitly or implicitly inapplicable. [1]

[...]

[1] E.g., United States v. Jacoby, 29 C.M.R. 244, 246-47 (C.M.A. 1960).

jagdefense.com/resource-docs/Tab-J-Search-Seizure.pdf

52nd Military Judge Course, Search and Seizure, at J-1

The Fourth Amendment applies to soldiers. United States v. Stuckey, 10 M.J. 347, 349 (C.M.A. 1981).

nolu chan  posted on  2015-02-14   20:42:15 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


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