Onward Christian soldiers

Jeremy Hall, an atheist soldier stationed in Iraq, attempted to form a meeting of his fellow atheists, after receiving permission to do so from an Army chaplain. That meeting occurred on August 7, and was attended by Hall's supervisor, Major Freddy J. Welborn, 44, an evangelical Christian who broke up the meeting and threatened to charge Hall with violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as to block Hall's reenlistment if the group continued to meet.

Hall filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon and Welborn for injunctive relief to prevent such unconstitutional abuses.

In response to his lawsuit, Hall has been assaulted by fellow soldiers and threatened on blogs with being killed by friendly fire. (There have been some allegations, not substantiated to my knowledge, that Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire may have been the result of his outspoken atheism.)

Welborn, who was initially misidentified in the lawsuit as Paul Welbourne, was tracked down via his MySpace page, a visual monstrosity which says that he is a member of the "Department of Eternal Affairs," his primary occupation is "Bible Study," he has a Bachelor's Degree from Tennessee Temple University with a major in "Pers. Evangelism" and minor in "Biblical Worldview," and he attended Tara High School from 1976 to 1983. (In fairness to Welborn, the heading says that the school information is for "MAJ Freddy & HIS Girl," so the dates probably include "his girl"'s high school career along with his own, rather than indicating that he took seven years to get through high school.)

The U.S. military has had a serious problem with Christian evangelicals who don't understand what freedom of religion means. Earlier this year, the Pentagon Inspector General's office issued a report that officers who appeared in uniform in a recruiting video for Christian Embassy, a group that promotes Bible studies by senior government officials, violated military rules by doing so. Two years ago, evangelical Christians proselytizing at the Air Force Academy led to a review of the Air Force rule for chaplains which says that there can be no proselytizing those of other religious faiths, but it's perfectly acceptable to proselytize to "those who are not affiliated." A lawsuit against this evangelizing was thrown out of court last year, but the rule for chaplains with the double standard was revoked.

More on the Hall and Christian Embassy cases may be found at the Questionable Authority blog, as well as the links in this post.

UPDATE (March 7, 2008): Hall has updated his complaint to include a charge that he has had a promotion blocked because of his unwillingness to "put aside his personal convictions and pray with the troops."

UPDATE (July 10, 2008): The government has filed a motion to dismiss (at the last available moment to do so), arguing that Hall lacks standing to sue and did not take advantage of all available remedies within the military to pursue his complaint before suing.

UPDATE (April 26, 2008): The New York Times has now covered this story. (About time!)

UPDATE (April 28, 2008): Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars asks the question of why Hall had to be transferred out of Iraq for his own safety, rather than the commanding officers telling the troops to leave him alone or be punished.

UPDATE (October 18, 2008): Hall has withdrawn his lawsuit on the grounds that he will soon be out of the military and suspects the case will be dismissed for lack of standing once he's out. A second case filed by Dustin Chalker will continue.

9/11 Truther returns to reality

Mike Metzger, co-founder of 9/11 Truth UAlbany, has abandoned the 9/11 Truth movement and returned to reality after actually starting to listen to the debunkings and think about the evidence and the methods of argument used. He's posted a letter explaining his change of heart.

Good for him.

I've yet to see a 9/11 Truther actually attempt to systematically address the content of any of the critiques, nor put together a scenario that even attempts to be a comprehensive explanation of the events leading up to and including the 9/11 attacks (such as the actions of Osama bin Laden and the hijackers, described in the 9/11 Commission Report, Gerald Posner's Why America Slept, James Bamford's A Pretext for War, and elsewhere). Instead, their methodology resembles that of creationists and Holocaust deniers--identifying apparent inconsistencies, and constructing a fantasy around them without any regard for the enormous collection of facts at hand. Their defense then becomes progressively more delusional attempts to explain away the contrary facts that they've not bothered to address.

The "Screw Loose Change" annotated version of the "Loose Change" 2nd edition video may be found here.

3D scanner made out of a webcam, Legos, and milk

Friedrich Kirschner has built a device to make 3D image scans of objects placed in a small plastic container, using a webcam and a platform built of Legos, and some milk.

(Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC list.)

September's Fall

Finally, we see a break in the past year's almost relentless upward trend in Maricopa County's Notices of Trustees Sales...


September's total was 2836 - well off from last month's high.

Something tells me, though, that this is not the start of a new trend downward, just yet.

Oh, I should note that I've changed the graph this month so that the vertical axis starts at zero instead of 400.

Liberty, security, and death

"Give me Liberty, or give me Death!"
--Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Richard Jackson, motto on title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, 1759 (often attributed to its publisher, Benjamin Franklin)

"And I hear from time to time people say, hey, wait a second. We have civil liberties we have to worry about. But don't forget, the most important civil liberty I expect from my government is my right to be kept alive, and that's what we're going to have to do."
--Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate debate, September 5, 2007

(Also see the Reason blog on "Civil Liberties Check-Up.")

Hacker finds vulnerability in Adobe Reader

A hacker has found a flaw in Adobe's PDF file format which can be used to exploit Adobe Reader 8.1 on Windows XP.

Dave G. at the Matasano Chargen blog predicts that such attacks--targeting popular applications--will become more common. PDF in particular is a likely target due to its ubiquity and its complexity.

Instructor fired for saying Adam and Eve story shouldn't be taken literally

In Red Oak, Iowa:

A community college instructor in Red Oak claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.

Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.

"I'm just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master's degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job," Bitterman said.
...
Bitterman said he called the story of Adam and Eve a "fairy tale" in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the students in the class.

Even most Christians on the planet don't think that the Adam and Eve story is literally true, so it's hard to see why this would even be a controversial statement in a western civilization class. The quotes in the article from the school suggest that Bitterman was fired for something else (a "personnel issue"), but the firing immediately following the class with the student threatening legal action seems to support his account.

Blog of unnecessary quotation marks

There are some hilarious sign photos at the blog of unnecessary quotation marks.

Naomi Wolf on 10 steps to a fascist America

I just saw Naomi Wolf on The Colbert Report (Wednesday night's show), discussing her new book, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. She only had time to list a few of the ten steps on her list, but I found all ten in an article from the Guardian:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

Boston police arrest MIT student for blinking nametag

Boston authorities have filed another set of bogus "hoax device" charges, against Star Simpson, a 19-year-old MIT student who was wearing a sweatshirt with a homemade electronic nametag stuck to the front of it. The device was made of a breadboard with LEDs and a 9V battery, and Simpson was also holding "a lump of putty" in her hands, as she was waiting at Logan airport for a friend's flight to arrive. She explained that she made the device for career day because she wanted to stand out. She was released on $750 bail and will have to appear in court on October 29 on charges of "possessing a hoax device."

The Boston Globe's article says:

Outside the terminal, Simpson was surrounded by police holding machine guns.

"She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands, and not make any movement so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device," Pare said at a press conference at Logan. "There was obviously a concern that had she not followed the protocol ... we may have used deadly force."

Catch that last part--the police might have killed her for wearing an LED nametag.

AP and Information Week reported the device as a "fake bomb." It doesn't look at all like a fake bomb--if there was intent to do anything of the sort, I suspect it was to show how ridiculous the Boston authorities still are after the Mooninite scare. Would a jury decide that a reasonable person would think it was a bomb?

(Via Bruce Schneier's blog.)

UPDATE (September 21, 2007): I think this case is less absurd than the Mooninite one, where the devices were clearly professionally made to look like light-up cartoon characters. Questioning her was appropriate, but I don't think charging her was unless there is some evidence of intent to commit a hoax that hasn't yet been reported.

Bruce Schneier has previously reported a list of "terrorist dry run" items that TSA issued warnings about, in which each case actually had a valid explanation (though we still haven't seen what the explanation was for the "wire coil wrapped around a possible initiator, an electrical switch, batteries, three tubes and two blocks of cheese").

Odd, unexplained items are deserving of questioning and scrutiny, I think we can all agree.

UPDATE: Boing Boing has more details.