Day: November 29, 2004

Seven troops, including a fellow Aggie, died when their Blackhawk apparently ran afoul of both bad luck and bad weather.

Six soldiers and a brigadier general from Fort Hood died today when a U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter crashed near Waco after hitting the guy wire of a television station tower in heavy fog.

The accident occurred about 7 a.m. between the Central Texas towns of Moody and Bruceville-Eddy. The UH-60 Blackhawk was flying from Fort Hood to the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana. Col. Jonathan Withington said all seven of those on the aircraft were members of the 4th Infantry Division.

“Our condolences and our hearts go out to the families and friends of the seven soldiers aboard this aircraft,” he said.

The helicopter was headed to check out equipment being readied for use in Iraq, said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington, spokesman for the Fort Hood-based 4th Infantry Division. The names of the victims, all from Fort Hood, were not immediately released by the military.

A military official at the home of Brig. Gen. Charles B. Allen told The Associated Press that Allen was among those killed. In his 27-year career, Allen, an assistant division commander for the 4th Infantry Division, was stationed at several U.S. and overseas military posts and also worked at the Pentagon.

Brad and Becky Christmas of Wagon Mound, N.M., were notified today that their son, Capt. Todd Christmas, was among those killed, said family friend Patti Goetsch, who answered the phone at the family’s ranch.

Christmas, 26, had just returned to Texas after spending Thanksgiving with his family, she said. She said the Texas A&M graduate, who joined the Army in 2001, served a year in Iraq, where he received the Bronze Star. She said he had been based at Fort Hood since the spring.

“He was doing what he loved,” Goetsch said. “He was a career military man. He was proud to serve his country.”

….

The helicopter hit a guy wire that stabilizes a 1,800-foot television broadcasting tower, Jerry Pursley, general manager of Waco-Temple-Killeen television station KXXV, told the Associated Press. The tower itself was not hit, he said.

The tower’s lights stopped working early last week after strong storms hit the area, Pursley said. The station notified the Federal Aviation Administration, he said. The agency’s spokesman in Texas did not return a phone call to The Associated Press seeking comment.

Other reports state that the FAA gave the television station a fifteen-day window to repair the lights and sent out notifications of the danger.

Texas A&M has a fairly unique tradition to honor Aggies who have passed. At an annual gathering with a long and storied history and called Aggie Muster, the names of those Aggies lost over the past year are read, with family or friends or fellow Aggies answering “Here” to signify the continued presence of the lost in our lives.

For Capt. Todd Christmas from a fellow Aggie and former serviceman, “Here.” And thank you, sir.

In a ruling destined to be appealed and hopefully overturned, a federal court has ruled the colleges can bar military recruiters without financial repercussions from the Department of Defense.

A federal appeals court on Monday barred the Defense Department from withholding funds from colleges and universities that deny access to military recruiters.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a decade-old federal law which allows withholding the funds infringes on the free speech rights of schools that wish to limit on-campus recruiting in response to the military’s ban on homosexuals.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of more than a dozen law schools, a three-judge panel said the government’s threat to withhold funding amounted to compelling the schools to take part in speech they didn’t agree with.

“The Solomon Amendment requires law schools to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives,” the court wrote.

By a 2-1 vote, the panel overturned an earlier decision by a federal judge that those challenging the law were unlikely to prevail at trial.

The ruling affects all institutions of higher learning, but the case revolved around law schools because most had developed policies prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Monday’s ruling represented the first time a court has barred the government from enforcing the law.

The Justice Department, which represented the government in the case, said it was reviewing its appeal options. “The United States continues to believe that the Solomon Amendment is constitutional,” the agency said in a statement.

One judge on the panel wrote a stinging dissent, saying he was disturbed that law schools would ignore the consequences that a recruiting ban would have on the military’s ability to compete with law firms for young talent.

“They obviously do not desire that our men and women in the armed services, all members of a closed society, obtain optimum justice in military courts with the best-trained lawyers and judges,” Judge Ruggero John Aldisert said.

He said he disagreed with plaintiffs who argued that the schools were being asked to violate their own anti-discrimination policies by welcoming recruiters who won’t take openly gay men and women.

The two-judge majority based its decision in part on an earlier Supreme Court ruling that the Boy Scouts of America could bar homosexuals from becoming scouts or troop leaders.

The court reasoned that if the Boy Scouts could legally reject gays because it had a core belief that homosexuality is illegitimate behavior, then other institutions could impose an opposite type of restriction if it had a core value that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong.

Realize first that we’re talking about an all-volunteer military that discriminates on a variety of factors in its hiring policies. I don’t recall my tank being wheelchair-accessible. Because of the special role that the military plays, it has long been legally held that even some constitutional rights are surrendered or curtailed for its members.

This ruling essentially seems to give a free hand to law schools and other institutions of higher education to ordain any aspect of the military that they feel is discriminatory and banish recruiters as they see fit. Well, without the ruling, they could already do this, but with the understanding that there could be financial repurcussions. The schools want to fight what they view as discrimination by the government with discrimination against the government, as long as it doesn’t hit the bottom line.

The Boy Scout rationale seems flimsy, and I expect this to be a short-lived hit against recruiting. Hopefully, anyway, as I’m sure a large chunk of left-leaning, anti-military professors and administrators are currently busy right now drooling over telling the folks in uniform to stick it. This ruling is probably the equivalent of Pavlov’s bell for hippie holdovers in academia.