The Blue Angels?

(Weekly Standard)  This column was written by Hugh Hewitt.

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Barry Lynn is the top guy at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a cartoonish presence on talking head television, ever-ready to declare the imminent threat of theocracy in the land. It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, that the organization Lynn leads last week leveled a series of very serious charges against almost everyone at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The report, available here in PDF, is among the worst examples of McCarthyism since Joe McCarthy stood up on February 9, 1950, and declared that "I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department."

Lynn and his gang of wreckers are not rooting out Reds, of course, but something far more dangerous in their eyes: evangelical Christians, from the Commandant of Cadets General Johnny Weida to the head football coach Fisher DeBerry to Air Force "Chaplain of the Year" Major Warren Watties.

The "report" from Americans United's legal director and assistant legal director concludes with the breathless and bold-typed exclamation: "We have concluded that both the specific violations and the promotion of a culture of official religious intolerance are pervasive, systemic, and evident at the very highest levels of the Academy's command structure."

Unfortunately, the acting secretary of the Air Force quickly established a task force to investigate the report's allegations before considering whether the group issuing it was worthy of trust on such a matter, whether the specific charges can be considered to have risen to a level worthy of further investigation, and whether the appropriate response might not have been a demand of Americans United for their sources before launching such a high-profile, well, we can't quite call it a "witch hunt," can we?

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