Category: Phony soldiers

Jetty sent this to us through my cousin, Scott in reference to this story I posted yesterday;

In reaction to Democrat Richard (The Dick) Blumenthal’s big, fat lies about his Vietnam service, and then his big, fat lies about our misunderstanding him, Chip Limehouse a Republican South Carolina legislator along with Medal of Honor recipient retired Marine Major Gen. James Livingston unveiled plans to introduce legislation in their state that would levy a $10,000 fine on any politician who misleads the voting public with a false military legacy;

A South Carolina legislator and a medal of honor recipient both say politicians who lie about their military records should be required to pay a $10,000 fine to the state Ethics Commission.

Limehouse claims that veteran groups in South Carolina have been pushing for the legislation.

Let the word go out across the land.

You may remember Michael Hamilton when I wrote about him in May while he was facing charges for claiming he went from recruit to Colonel in just eight wonderful years and was awarded eight Purple Hearts. Hamilton told this story at veterans functions and in schools.

Well, it turns out that the human rocket also pedaled this story to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, since he was so successful among his peers, to the tune of $30,000 in benefits.

Hamilton, 67, of Richlands, fraudulently said during a Veterans Affairs compensation medical exam last year that he saw repeated combat in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia that resulted in him being “shot, stabbed, and blown up, and witnessed atrocities such as the dismemberment and decapitation of his best friend,” the indictment alleges.

Hamilton’s claim for service-connected compensation also included the false statements that he was extensively honored for his performance in battle by receiving two Navy Crosses, the second highest award for valor, according to the indictment. He also claimed to have earned three Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars, and eight Purple Hearts.

This is after he’d already been found guilty of altering his ID card to represent himself as a two-star general. He got off with a $100 fine and six months probation. Apparently, the light sentence only encouraged him to up the ante and go for the gold.

So the taxpayers get stuck with a $30,000 bill that we’ll never get back. The only cure is to up these sentences and mandatory jail time…and executing any judge in the public square that wants to erase valid laws with their “no compelling interest” blather.

ADDED: I forgot to thank someone for the link who only left me with his real name and I doubt that he wants you know it.

Daniel sent us a link to the Huffington Post this morning in which four (count ’em, four) peckerwood students from Yale University’s LGBT Litigation Project, Taylor Asen, Jeffrey Gurrola, Ramya Kasturi and Larry Kornreich, defend Patrick McManus (known here as Ballduster McSoulpatch) from the evil government. Read this bullshit;

A lifelong advocate of gay rights and a onetime victim of the United States military’s outdated and discriminatory policies towards homosexuals, McManus knew as much as anyone what an amazing achievement it was to elect a gay mayor in a major U.S. city, and especially in deep red Texas. At the same time, however, he knew that this was only one small step towards equal rights for the LGBT community. That night, McManus decided to attend the public celebration in honor of Parker’s victory. As a reminder to the gay community and the people of Houston of the lingering effects of discrimination, McManus donned a military uniform and an array of medals. Wearing this outfit, he went to Parker’s celebration party. When it was over, he went home.

Of course, a saner person might have thought that wearing HIS OWN uniform with HIS OWN array of medals might have made a better statement. But McManus has never been accused of being rational. Remember that he once tried to pass himself off as an air marshall – was that a statement of his gay pride, too?

The Stolen Valor Act is in clear violation of the First Amendment right to freedom of expression. Michael McManus engaged in an act of political expression, challenging a discriminatory and archaic policy that the U.S. military maintains — Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that political speech is at the core of the First Amendment’s protections. McManus’s outfit that night was over-the-top: he wore no fewer than 27 medals and badges, both U.S. and foreign. After a single glance at his photo it would be ludicrous to assert that anyone actually thought that it was anything but a costume.

Of course, it’s difficult to imagine that a group of college students, who’ve never earned anything in their miserable, sheltered lives, to understand the meaning behind the medals that the flamboyant McManus chose to wear, but they have to be doltish if they think that McManus wore them as some sort of political statement…especially when a literate person can read for themselves how he represented himself alternately as a lieutenant colonel and a brigadier general. How he made up details of his miserable military career to push a political agenda and to attract small Asian men to his bed.

How does wearing things he didn’t earn and representing himself as an expert on military issues when he left the military when Ronald Reagan was president and we were still fighting the Soviet Union?

One might argue that a military medal has more value or less value than a flag, but it is precisely such distinctions that we do not want Congress to make. It should not be for Congress to decide that certain objects’ symbolic value warrants trampling on the right of American citizens to engage in free speech.

So now we want free speech to include fraud? Our legislature which attempts to call rape interstate commerce can’t regulate “symbolic value” of the items it authorizes to distribute? Does that mean that our government can’t mint money, too? After all, money has “symbolic value”.

Furthermore, even if the government has a permissible interest in protecting these medals from fraudulent adornment, the language of the statute casts a much broader net. By disallowing any wearing of the medals or uniform, without regard to purpose, the statute prevents not only political expression, but also acts as harmless as wearing a military-themed costume for Halloween.

Yeah, Ballduster wasn’t at a Halloween party, or even a costume party – it was at a political function and he was wearing the uniform, not to make a political point, but to add to his own “symbolic value”.

It is the right to engage in unpopular speech — speech challenging the status quo, which the angry mob or the tyrannical government would be tempted to suppress — that the First Amendment protects for all of us. When that protection is denied to one person, it is denied to us all.

His speech doesn’t challenge the status quo or anything else – he wore stuff he didn’t earn – he stole. And what about protecting the honor of people who HAVE earned the privilege to wear the items that Ballduster stole? Don’t they have rights, too, you imbeciles.

There’s a reason they call them students – they have a lot to learn.

Some of you may remember John W. Rodriguez, the phony Marine in Arizona. Yesterday, he found guilty on 12 counts of forgery, fraudulent schemes and presentation of a false instrument for filing. For this he earned seven and a half years in an Arizona gray bar hotel. It also got him four years of probation tacked on to the end of his sentence.

Here’s the story of how he was busted from AZCentral;

Dan Ryan, a former Marine and FBI agent, first came in contact with Rodriguez at a Republican committee meeting in 2008. He noticed Rodriguez wearing a service uniform with some of the military branch’s highest honors, including the Navy Cross.
[…]
Ryan decided to look into Rodriguez’s background. After doing some research, Ryan alerted investigators at the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

A search of Department of the Navy and Department of Defense records found that Rodriguez never served in any branch of the military.

The video report;

So you phonies had better be careful about who is checking you out…it might be the FBI.

According to the article, Rodriguez not only fooled civilians, he fooled the local Marine Reserve unit with which he trained at times. He also had an ID card that allowed him into military bases across the southwest US. The FBI began to treat Rodriguez like a domestic terrorism case.

This Ain’t Hell takes pride in the small part we played in this outcome. With our wide readership, we were able to connect an informant with the Arizona law enforcement community which helped with Rodriguez’ initial arrest. We’d also like to thank the lead detective for keeping us abreast of developments in the case, lo these many months.

And thanks to ROS, Southern Class and Azygos for mailing the links last night. And to Code Monkey at TC Override for the initial post.