Jesus in the Cockpit?

[NOTE:  I’ll pull this if it’s been diaried before, just let me know.]

Heard the story on NPR, and found it posted on the Americans for Separation of Church & State website.  Seems the evangelicals can’t get enough people amongst us civilians.  So parasites that they are, they’ve burrowed inside the Air Force Academy:

“Americans United for Separation of Church and State today welcomed an announcement from Air Force officials that a new task force is being formed to investigate allegations of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. [link]

Allegations indeed.  They’ve shredded the Establishment Clause again.  Is there no end to their reach?  Do they clone these people in batches?  
Paraphrasing Twain:  “”Their ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there’s scarcely a hole in it anywhere.”  

With apologies, alot of this is quotes.  But better from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.  From the first paragraph of the report:

We have investigated those complaints and come to the conclusion that the policies and practices constitute egregious, systemic, and legally actionable violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

And the article:

The announcement came just four days after Americans United sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Air Force officials a detailed report (PDF) listing examples of religious bias and preference toward evangelical Christianity at the Academy.

I’d suggest you read the report (14 pages), which is where these quotes came from [edited]:  

  •  The Academy’s Cadet Wing ..[is] 30% evangelical Protestants.  Yet the Academy’s chaplains’ core is overwhelmingly composed of Protestant chaplains, virtually all of whom are evangelical Christians.
  •  The D.C. District court held that the Navy’s chaplaincy program was presumptively unconstitutional because two-thirds of the Navy’s chaplain slots were filled with liturgical Christian clergy [but] only one third of personnel were.
  •  Major Warren “Chappy” Watties led a Protestant worship service in which he encouraged the attending cadets to return to their tents and proselytize cadets who had not attended the service, with the declared penalty for failure to accept this proselytization being to “burn in the fires of hell.”
  •  a history instructor at the Academy ordered students to pray before they were permitted to begin their final examination for the course.
  •  non-Christian cadets [were] being subjected to proselytization or religious harassment by other, more senior or upperclass cadets, thus reinforcing the message of endorsement conveyed by the Permanent Party.   [Permanent Party = Academy Staff].

Onward christian soldiers, sailors, and Jesus in the cockpit.