By ,
Published January 13, 2015
Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:
Secret Ballot
Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen is warning American military personnel to stay out of politics this election year. Admiral Mullen's open letter to those in uniform will appear in the upcoming issue of Joint Force Quarterly, an official military journal.
He writes, "The U.S. military must remain apolitical at all times. It is and must always be a neutral instrument of the state, no matter which party holds sway."
Mullen says military personnel should remember their sworn duty as the nation prepares to elect a new president: "Keeping our politics private is a good first step. The only things we should be wearing on our sleeves are our military insignia."
False Pretenses
Twelve-term Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman Paul Kanjorski says frustration led him to make remarks that are all over the Internet, in which he claims Democrats campaigning in 2006 deliberately misled voters that they would end the Iraq war.
The video shows Kanjorski's comments during an August 2007 town meeting: "We didn't say it, but we implied it, that we if we won the congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody who was a good student of government knew that wasn't true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts."
The Hill newspaper reports Republicans say Kanjorski has admitted to what they call a fraudulent agenda. Kanjorski's Republican opponent this fall says the Democrat indicted himself and his party by admitting to purposefully deceiving the voters.
Something in the Air
A group in Santa Fe, New Mexico says its members are allergic to wireless Internet and cellphone signals and wants wi-fi banned from public buildings. A local TV station reports the group says that putting wi-fi in public places is discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities act. One man says the signals give him chest pains that won't go away. The city attorney is checking into the group's claim of discrimination.
But Santa Fe City Councilor Ron Trujillo says, "It's not 1692, it's 2008. Santa Fe needs to embrace this technology, it's not going away."
Thumbs Down
The Saint Petersburg, Russia Communist Party is calling for a boycott of the new Indiana Jones movie, because it says the movie's portrayal of Soviet soldiers and agents is disgusting, warped and unrealistic.
The London Times reports "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" opened on a record 808 screens in Russia. But the Saint Petersburg communists say in an open letter to star Harrison Ford: "Your work in this film is an insult to the Soviet and Russian people... You have no future in Russia any more. Speaking plainly, it is better for you not to come here. You will be beaten and despised."
The Party's Central Committee says the film is an attempt to slander Soviet communists and poison young people against them. One blogger on the party's Web site said Ford and co-star Cate Blanchett are "second-rate actors serving as the running dogs of the CIA."
— FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/the-armed-forces-get-their-marching-orders-this-political-season