It’s not even a little accurate (as 5 seconds of Teh Google would show), it references something that doesn’t exist (“The D-Day Monument”) and is exceedingly unhelpful.
Anyone know where this started? Or how to find the first copy of this picture online? Just curious, I’d love to know who makes this crap up.
Well, here it is.
Note that in the Final Four, the Kennedy and Ginsburg bracket “winners” will pair off with the winner going to the National Chumpionship, with the Roberts and Sotomayor bracket “winners” competing likewise.
For those curious, the last four out were:
Dominic “Blue Neck Gator” Gallegos
Shedrick “Homeless SEAL” Burgess
Mark Seymour “Wookin fa nub with a falsified ID card” David
Anthony “The Saginaw Forrest Gump” Vanderhoof
And now…..the brackets:
Yup, the Stolen Valor selection committee is hard at work.
RangerOffspring, AverageNCO, Rob from Ranger Up, Justin, Old Tanker and Taco Bell from the Sand Gram are currently going through all 96 fakes we’ve covered since Veterans Day of last year, and they will wittle it down to 64 by the end of this weekend. (Hopefully sooner.) I wanted to share the names, so that any media out there that thinks this is “not that widespread a problem” can see just the type of people that the Supremes let off the hook. We’ve got the lowest of the low here, like a valor-free Mos Eisley cantina of asshats, shitbirds and criminals.
As Action Figure Therapy reminds us… (possibly NSFW)
Albert “Sensei Dick Munch” John
Alex “Subway Sandwich Shop Commando” Popovic
Andrew “Purple Heart Plates Phony” Bryson
Andrew “7.62 done killed my cap” Santee
Ane “Bikini Special Forces” Loyola
Angel “Snagletoothed Douchasaurus” Ocasio
Anthony “The Saginaw Forrest Gump” Vanderhoof
Asleigh “Shrapnel slit my throat” Martel
Ayush “Major in the Navy SEALs” Arora
Bill “Psychic SEAL” Brockbrader
Bob “Bolivian Field Mouse” Duft
Brandon Lee “Phony Billionaire, shops at $1 store” Price
Brian “Pound me in the ass Prison Bitch” Culp
Brian Leonard “T-Shirts and Tattoos make you a SEAL” Creekmur
Carl John “Hero of Every Pacific Battle of WWII” Pequignot
Christopher “Buffalonian Occutard” Simmance
Dallas “Flying Assclown” Wittgenfeld
Daron “burned my 3 year olds butt” Soard
Darrel “Infidel Sniper” Tracht
David Garcia “Not so Trusty” Diaz Jr
David “Toys and Total asshats” Lebrun
Delroy “The only phony Coast Guard vet in History” Bowe
Derek Kent “X-acto knife Recon” Rose
Derek “Mutant Strain of GWS” Walls
Dominic “Blue Neck Gator” Gallegos
Eliut “Mitigational Fiction” Lopez-Enriquez
Fermijon “Maggots and Rice” Marrero
Gary “The man loves a parade” Spors
Graham “IVAW Ranger Brigade” Crumpner
Gregory John “Trident and trim” Schaffer
Gregory “Slats the Euro-weenie Marine” Leveau
Herbert “Cav Secret Squirrel” Williamson
Jackie Lee “What’s a forged DD214 between friends” Climer
Jacob “read my plates bitch!” Cruze
Jake “I rethunk whether I was in Astan” Dilberto
James “Jumpmaster Noflash” Bryan
Jasper Land “My moustache alone is SF qualified” Holland
Joe T. “the T is for Theft by Deception” Joseph
John “Mayor/Aquatic Secret Squirrel” Spodofora
Jomathan “The Cock Inhaler” Sharkey
Jorge “Columbian Medal of Valor Recipient” Cruz
Joseph “Who wouldn’t go AWOL from Jersey” Coyle
Kasie Michelle “Warr Bunnyy” Benson
Ken “Tri-recycled 18B Wannabe” Aden
Larry “The Round Marine” Gugle
Larry “Cambodian Drummerboy” Marquez
Lehn Joseph “The Long Road to Stolen Valor” Bundrick
Leo “Half my Squadron Died” Webb
Lt. Taylor “Zombie Ballduster” Kent
Marc “Gunshot in Grenada” Restucci
Mark Seymour “Wookin fa nub with a falsified ID card” David
Matthew “The Tattooed Phony” Beck
Melanie Evalena “Meth made me ugly” Gutermuth
Micaiah “Marine Terrorizer of OWS” Dutt
Michael Allen “Gwinnett County Grifter” Bradshaw
Michael “8 tons of frijoles” Frisoli
Mike “The dirty Cohiba sucking Major” Kronos
Mike “Goth Special Forces” Wilson
Nathan “upside down ribbons” Seal
Paul “PTSD Counselor” Schroeder
Paul “Prince Chumming” Tillson
Richard “Senator Dickenthal” Blumenthal
Richard “Gunny Recon Seal Truck driver” Lyons
Robert “Headmaster with a Dishonorable Discharge” McDowell
Robert “72 medals and a dump truck to carry them” Vaughn
Ronnie Glenn “Wheelchair Security Guard” Eddings
Ryan “Door to door phony” Brashears
Shedrick “Homeless SEAL” Burgess
Stephen “I done faked a GED” Chase
Stephen Frank Cio “The Fourth most dangerous NDSM recipient in the world” Burrel
Terry “From a cage to Ice Cream Man” Sallada
Thomas “Colonel, Lawyer, Minister, CEO, Phony” Hughes
Thomas “Rolling Thunder Jackass” Lowry
Thomas “45 is the new 18” Montgomery
Timothy “Durango + Delta = Douchebag” Oliver
Tony “The Pushup Machine” Trimble
Father Time, now with more bling
It hasn’t been a full year since our last tournament, but we’ve got so much publicity right now about stolen valor that I wanted to get the tournament rolling.
One problem, I am going through our archives, and just from November to March I already have 65 Nominees. So, I am throwing this out there.
I need 5 people to be on the selection committee. You have to have the time available to do this. I will provide you with a spreadsheet (excel) with probably 100 names or more, and links to their perfidy, and I need you to come up with seedings from 1-16 for 64 of them. That means 4 #1’s, 4 #2’s and so forth. If you think you have time, let me know. I want to unveil the tournament on Monday of next week, including the seedings.
If you want to, just comment here with your ACTUAL email address. It won’t be first come first served, it will be the 4 folks that I know have been reliable commenters etc. So please don’t get unhappy if you aren’t picked, it means I probably had memory lapse or something else.
Anyway, who wants in. Seriously, this is not for the feint of heart.
Normally I wouldn’t cross-post this in toto, but since Wittgenfeld’s stuff started here, I thought y’all should get a chance to weigh in as well. If anyone finds any errors of fact, or something that deserves clarification, please let me know.
[EDITORS NOTE: This is the longest blog posting in history, so you might want to print it out and read it when you have the time. I apologize for the length, but I think it is necessary to make the point I wanted to make; to wit, that the Supreme Court’s answer to the Stolen Valor Problem is not only unworkable, but unnecessarily puts folks in jeopardy of legal or physical disputes. Also, thanks to Ranger Up for the appropriate graphic.]
As you know, I disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Alvarez in many aspects. Fair enough, I disagree with a lot of legal decisions. Most folks seem pleased with the decision, thinking that the Stolen Valor Law somehow chilled free speech. That was something even the defense in the case didn’t argue, but whatever.
Nonetheless, despite the ruling, I wanted to focus on what their answer was to stolen valor phonies, and how the “free market of ideas” could be used to counter them. Specifically, the plurality decision’s author Justice Kennedy stated that:
The Government has not shown, and cannot show, why counter speech would not suffice to achieve its interest. The facts of this case indicate that the dynamics of free speech, of counter speech, of refutation, can overcome the lie.…
The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth…
It is a fair assumption that any true holders of the Medal who had heard of Alvarez’s false claims would have been fully vindicated by the community’s expression of outrage, showing as it did the Nation’s high regard for the Medal. The same can be said for the Government’s interest. The American people do not need the assistance of a government prosecution to express their high regard for the special place that military heroes hold in our tradition. Only a weak society needs government protection or intervention before it pursues its resolve to preserve the truth. Truth needs neither handcuffs nor a badge for its vindication.
It might not need handcuffs or a badge, but as I will show later, it better have at least a concealed carry permit, because these phonies seldom respond to you outing them with some sort of cheery aplomb.
But this answer fails on two separate levels, the first eloquently stated in the dissent written by Justice Alito:
Because a sufficiently comprehensive database is not practicable, lies about military awards cannot be remedied by what the plurality calls “counterspeech.” Ante, at 15. Without the requisite database, many efforts to refute false claims may be thwarted, and some legitimate award recipients may be erroneously attacked. In addition, a steady stream of stories in the media about the exposure of imposters would tend to increase skepticism among members of the public about the entire awards system. This would only exacerbate the harm that the Stolen Valor Act is meant to prevent….
….the proliferation of false claims about military awards blurs the signal given out by the actual awards by making them seem more common than they really are, and this diluting effect harms the military by hampering its efforts to foster morale and esprit de corps. Surely it was reasonable for Congress to conclude that the goal of preserving the integrity of our country’s top military honors is at least as worthy as that of protecting the prestige associated with fancy watches and designer handbags.
Now, I disagree with Justice Alito that a database such as that suggested is not possible, in the sense that one couldn’t be made. But even more vigrorously do I dispute the majoritys notion that such a database would serve to counter these liars, since most people won’t even know enough to look these things up, and if they do and the guy is in fact a liar, than we run into the problem that the Justice cited about exacerbating the problem.
But even so, what the decision gives as a whole is a sort of remedy which is to give a sort of credence to a vigilante group of veterans and others who counter the lies with truthful speech. As my friend Jonn Lilyea aptly noted the other day:
The USSC decided that the public sector is doing a fine job of policing the ranks. There may be some illiterate [idiots], like Sharkey who think that the USSC’s overturning of the Stolen Valor Act means that we can’t do here what the government won’t do – but that’s not it at all. Like I told the ABC crew, it probably means that decision was good for our business. More idiots, like Sharkey, think they can get away with their thievery.
But This Ain’t Hell and all of our partners are the stocks and dunking chairs in the village square of the internet – a place where folks can come and throw rotten tomatoes at the valor thieves. The Supreme Court gave us a warrant to be the internet’s vigilantes and bounty hunters.
As Jonn notes, from a strictly business sense, this is good for military bloggers who will likely enjoy some increased traffic. But from the standpoint of acknowledging real heroism etc, it would have been better if the Supremes had gone the other way.
By a plurality the court ruled the Stolen UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
I am currently going through the decision and the dissent(s) and will post relevant portions from them as the day progresses.
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The Stolen Valor Act was ruled unconstitutional by a plurality decision of the Supreme Court today. As I go through the ruling I will have more information that I will post here.
OK, so the way it broke down I felt was somewhat surprising. Thomas, Scalia and Alito were with us, as expected. But Roberts shifted over, which I had not expected. And so, our hope of a 5-4 win turned into a 6-3 loss when Kennedy joined Roberts on the other side as well. But, all is not lost, there is significant hope to be found even within a ruling that went against us.
Before I leap into parts of it, I wanted to show you what the Scotusblog had to say about the case. ScotusBlog is written by lawyers and constitutional scholars, and lays it out better than I can:
Justice Kennedy announced a plurality opinion – joined by the Chief Justice, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Sotomayor – and concluding that the Stolen Valor Act infringes on protected speech. The plurality reasoned that, with only narrow exceptions, content-based restrictions on speech face strict scrutiny, and are therefore almost always unconstitutional. False statements of fact do not fall within one of these exceptions, and so the Stolen Valor Act can survive strict scrutiny only if it is narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest. The Court concluded that the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional because the Government had not shown that the statute is necessary to protect the integrity of the system of military honors – the interest the Government had identified in support of the Act.
Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Kagan, concurred separately, concluding that the Stolen Valor Act, as drafted, violates intermediate scrutiny. These Justices argued that intermediate scrutiny is the appropriate standard because the Government should have some ability to regulate false statements of fact. However, because the statute, as drafted, applies even in family, social, or other private contexts where lies will often cause little harm; it includes few other limits on its scope, and it creates too significant a burden on protected speech. The concurring Justices believe that the Government could achieve its goals in a less burdensome way, and so they too held the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional. This opinion leaves open the possibility that Congress will re-write the law more narrowly. Three Justices, led by Justice Alito, dissented.
The main thing to take away from the Alvarez case is that the Supreme Court felt that the bill wasn’t sufficiently “narrowly tailored.” When dealing with anything that touches on a Constitutional Right, it has to be written as small in scope as possible, so that it avoids “chilling” speech which is protected. The Court felt that this statute was too broadly defined. But, it did hold out that other measures are available. I hate to start with a dissent, but Justice Alito ties together the opinion itself (Kennedy writing for the Chief Justice, Ginsburg and Sotomayor) with the concurring opinion of Justice Breyer (and Kagen):
The plurality and the concurrence also suggest that Congress could protect the system of military honors by enacting a narrower statute. The plurality recommends a law that would apply only to lies that are intended to “secure moneys or other valuable considerations.” Ante, at 11. In a similar vein, the concurrence comments that “a more finely tailored statute might . . . insist upon a showing that the false statement caused specific harm.” Ante,at 9 (opinion of BREYER, J.). But much damage is caused, both to real award recipients and to the system of military honors, by false statements that are not linked to any financial or other tangible reward. Unless even a small financial loss—say, a dollar given to a homeless man falsely claiming to be a decorated veteran—is more important in the eyes of the First Amendment than the damage caused to the very integrity of the military awards system, there is no basis for distinguishing between the Stolen Valor Act and the alternative statutes that the plurality and concurrence appear willing to sustain.
So, essentially what they are saying is that the bill needs to be written much like Fraud Statutes. This is already happening in part, as Congresman Joe Heck of Nevada has already authored one in HR 1775:
Heck offered a tacit endorsement of that ruling a few months later when he offered a new Stolen Valor Act that achieves almost the same ends as the one being challenged at the Supreme Court, while steering fully clear of the matter of speech.
Heck’s law makes it a crime to benefit from falsely claiming to have served in the military or have been decorated for that service. Individuals who knowingly lie “with intent to obtain anything of value” would be subject to the same prison terms: Up to six months for basic lies about military service, and up to a year for lying about receiving the Medal of Honor, should those lies be told with the intention of gaining a job, a reward, or other thing of value.
The bill doesn’t specify exactly what “anything of value” is, though a de minimis clause in the bill suggests it couldn’t be applied if the thing procured by lying is of minimal value, such as a beer at a bar. The thing in question must also have a value that is quantifiable, so lies about military service told with the intention of getting the attention, a date, or something less gentlemanly with a person at that same bar is also likely not prosecutable.
I will have more on this as I get through the reading, but keep getting interrupted with calls from the media.
Looks like no decision today, will update as needed.
Thursday morning, 10:03 am. Stolen Valor O’Geddon.
Should be coming down the pike at 10am. If you want to watch it live (or liveblogged) go here.
I will put up a post as soon as it comes down, and then update it as I go through the ruling.
After the jump, if you fast forward to 27 minutes, you will hear my 30 minute interview on why I think the court should uphold the act.