Stolen Valor Act challenged

[BLUEHAWK]

Stolen Valor Act facing legal challenges
By Dan Elliott, The Associated Press
European edition, Monday, February 8, 2010

Oct. 10, 2008 photo shows Rick Glen Strandlof stressing a point during a press conference at City Hall in Colorado Springs, Colo. Strandlof, who claimed he was an ex-Marine wounded in Iraq and received the Purple Heart and Silver Star. He founded an organization in Colorado Springs that helped homeless veterans. Military officials said they had no record that he ever served. He has pleaded not guilty, and a judge is considering whether to throw out the charge. DENVER — The federal courts are wrestling with a question of both liberty and patriotism: Does the First Amendment right to free speech protect people who lie about being war heroes?

At issue is a 3-year-old federal law called the Stolen Valor Act that makes it a crime punishable by up to a year in jail to falsely claim to have received a medal from the U.S. military. It is a crime even if the liar makes no effort to profit from his stolen glory.

Attorneys in Colorado and California are challenging the law on behalf of two men charged, saying the First Amendment protects almost all speech that doesn’t hurt someone else. Neither man has been accused by prosecutors of seeking financial gain for himself.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School who is not involved in the two cases, said the Stolen Valor Act raises serious constitutional questions because it in effect bans bragging or exaggerating about yourself.

“Half the pickup lines in bars across the country could be criminalized under that concept,” he said.

Craig Missakian, a federal prosecutor in the California case, argued that deliberate lies are not protected. He also said the Constitution gives Congress the authority to raise and support an army, and that includes, by extension, “protecting the worth and value of these medals.”

The Stolen Valor Act revised and toughened a law that forbids anyone to wear a military medal that was not earned. The revised measure sailed through Congress in late 2006, receiving unanimous approval in the Senate.

Dozens of people have been arrested under the law at a time when veterans coming home from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are being embraced as heroes.

Many of the cases involve men who simply got caught living a lie without profiting from it.

Virtually all the impostors were ordered to perform community service.

In one case, a man posing as a Marine war hero was accused of using his hero status to receive discount airline tickets and a free place to stay near Phoenix.

Defense attorneys say the law is problematic in the way it does not require the lie to be part of a scheme for gain. Turley said someone lying about having a medal to profit financially should instead be charged with fraud.

One of the men challenging the law is Xavier Alvarez of Pomona, Calif.

He had just been elected to a water district board in 2007 when he said at a public meeting that he was a retired Marine who received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration.

His claim aroused suspicion, and he was indicted 2007.

Alvarez, who apparently never served in the military, pleaded guilty on condition that he be allowed to appeal on the First Amendment question.

He was sentenced to more than 400 hours of community service at a veterans hospital and fined $5,000.

The case is now before a federal appeals court.

The other person challenging the law is Rick Glen Strandlof, who claimed he was a Marine wounded in Iraq and received the Purple Heart and Silver Star.

He founded an organization in Colorado Springs that helped homeless veterans.

Military officials said they had no record that he ever served. He has pleaded not guilty, and a judge is considering whether to throw out the charge.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in California quoted Alvarez as saying in 2007, “I must have mis-said things. It wasn’t supposed to go that way.”

Strandlof’s lawyer has said his client may suffer from bipolar disorder or other problems.

Attorneys challenging the law say that lying about getting a medal doesn’t fit any of the categories of speech that the U.S. Supreme Court has said can be banned: lewd, obscene, profane, libelous or creating imminent danger to others, such as yelling fire in a crowded theater.

Army veteran Pete Lemon of Colorado Springs, who received the Medal of Honor for turning back an enemy assault and rescuing wounded comrades in Vietnam while injured himself, supports the law, saying that pretending to have a medal can bring undeserved rewards.

“It gives you the power to entice somebody into marriage,” he said. “It could give you the power to be able to join an organization, get special treatment with regards to getting tickets to a football game, getting license plates, getting preferential treatment in a job situation.”

Doug Sterner, a military historian, said the law embodies the wishes of the nation’s first commander in chief, George Washington. Sterner noted that Washington created the Purple Heart, the nation’s first military decoration, and wrote: “Should any who are not entitled to these honors have the insolence to assume the badges of them, they shall be severely punished.”

“I think that speaks to the intent of the framers,” Sterner said, “that George Washington saw this kind of lie outside the scope of this freedom-of-speech issue.”

[Gimpy]

As I told our esteemed Col. Scout in another post about this subject.

We should ALL write our Congressmen (women) and Senators to have the current "Stolen Valor Act" upgraded to the point of having the penalty for this offense increased to AT LEAST a twenty (20) year sentence (or more) and then maybe these a$$holes will think twice before DIShonoring the authentic troops who were awarded these medals and awards!

Gimp

[BLUEHAWK]

Ayup... I hate reading that the law is being parsed and spun for political correctness reasons like it is.

[Stick]

Enlisting today deserves decoration and appreciation from the American people and I believe that the Service Ribbon is given for just that. NO ONE should be able to get even that if they didn't serve a country that they proved on their own that they were willing to fight for our freedom. If a Buck Private is wearing the Congressional Medal of Honor and a Four Star General walks past that medal then the General is obligated to salute that Private and his Medal but if I go to the Medals of America I can buy anything they have for a price but I'm GUILTY of ILLEGAL FRAUD if I don't deserve what I buy. How can a liar stand proud? A liar should be subject to the penalties of the law and the American Armed Forces can proudly wear the rewards that they are willing to die for.
The Stolen Valor Act must stay as our law and should never be "Changed." Damn I hate that word.

[5thgrpguy]

The law needs to be changed to include stiffer penalities for all these GDMFWB'S and maybe they will stop stealing the valor of all the gallant men we left behind....

[SuperScout]

This afternoon on the Fox News Channel, Megyn Kelly interviewed some ditzy dame who said the Stolen Valor Act should be thrown out on grounds of alleged violation of somebody's 1st amendment rights, while the opposing argument, presented by another female attorney, Mercedes (CRS about her last name) presented some great arguments against its repeal. As I understand it, the 1st amendment doesn't protect lying, especially when that lying could cause harm to others or have benefits accrue to the prevaricator. The harm to others arises from the denigration that is brought to their respective awards that were earned justly, and the trivialization of such awards when flaunted by frauds. And as we have seen many times, veteran benefits and other honors accrue to frauds at the expense of honest taxpayers.

To reiterate a point long held by genuine constitutional scholars, there are no absolutes in the freedoms as spelled out in the Constitution, and I think they would also concur that lying is not a protected form of free speech.

All we need now is a geninely concerned federal attorney to briskly prosecute this case, seeking maximum punishment.

[covan]

Damn good overview SS. I concur wholeheartedly.

There should be no 1st Amendment argument here. Locally, I am seeking a prosecution of a Marine vet claiming a NC, 2 SS, 5 PH, discharged as a corporal and running around in a captain's uniform. I think the FBI and US attorney are getting cold feet since these court cases have been filed.

[SuperScout]

Stay after the Federal attorney and the FBI, and make those lazy bastards do their job. Remind them that you pay their salaries, that they work for you, and they are charged constitutionally speaking with doing their jobs.

[paddypal]

i also concur. the stolen valor act should hunt these people down and find out why they would lie about something like this.

[darrels joy]

Leftist War Hero Rick Strandlof Exposed as Fraud


UPDATE: More details here about the escaped gay mental patient that claims to be a captain that claimed to command a Marine Battalion in Iraq.
______________________________________
Via a reader tip comes news of yet another leftist war hero being exposed as a fraud:

Rick Strandlof, executive director of the Colorado Veterans Alliance and the man most colleagues knew as Rick Duncan, was front and center during the 2008 political campaigns in Colorado.

He spoke at a Barack Obama veterans rally in front of the Capitol in July, co-hosted several events with then- congressional candidate Jared Polis and attacked Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer in a TV ad paid for by the national group Votevets.org.

And the mostly Democratic candidates he supported — looking for credibility on veterans issues and the war — lapped it up appreciatively.

Now, politicians are dealing with news that the man they believed to be a former Marine and war veteran wounded in Iraq by a roadside bomb, in fact, never served in the military — but did spend time in a mental hospital.

Many of the candidates he supported won their elections handily and now say they were defrauded as much as anyone else. [Denver Post]

The group that Rick Duncan Strandlof founded the Colorado Veterans Alliance has decided to disband:

But on Thursday the Colorado Veterans Alliance, the organization he founded, announced that it was disbanding, having discovered that his entire story was a sham.

As it turns out, the group said, Rick Duncan is not even Rick Duncan but instead a man named Richard Glen Strandlof.

And Mr. Strandlof, who contrary to his claims never graduated from the Naval Academy or served in the military, is a 32-year-old drifter with a history of at least one criminal conviction, for car theft in Nevada. As a condition of his probation in that case, he was ordered to appear in a mental health court. [New York Times]

Besides being a member of the Colorado Veterans Alliance he was also a member of VoteVets and Iraq Veterans Against War (IVAW).

For those that don’t know VoteVets is not really a veterans group. It is a really a liberal advocacy group that claims to speak for the military. The VoteVets.org site, just like the Amnesty International fraud Appeal for Redress group was formed before the 2006 Congressional elections.

This site was backed by former Democratic Presidential Candidate General Wesley Clark and the group of retired generals that made headlines before the 2006 Congressional elections by running ads funded by the site speaking out against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as well as a change in strategy in Iraq by sending in more troops.

Interestingly enough even though Rumsfeld had been removed and the new surge strategy in Iraq brought an increase in troops there, VoteVets was still not satisfied. Instead of this site recognizing the changes it had advocated for, it instead become an anti-war site calling for the removal of US troops in Iraq. Since then none of the retired generals has been heard from, but the person we have continued to hear a lot from (for no good reasons) is VoteVets President Jon Soltz who was one of the people willfully fulled by Strandlof. Incredibly the media still calls this group a grassroots movement despite its George Soros connections.



The other group IVAW has had a number of frauds and deceptions exposed over the years and yet they continue to be trumpeted by the left as a legitimate veterans group. All these people and politicians that have willfully using these frauds for their own partisan political purposes should be ashamed, but judging from past incidents many of these people believe the ends justifies the means. In the mean time these people are all busy trying to cover their tracks.

Oh by the way is anyone surprised that Strandlof belonged to a communist group as well? I’m sure Rush Limbaugh is having a great laugh as more of these phony soldiers are exposed.

Also make sure to read this that has a whole lot more about the phony vets that populate these so called veterans groups.

http://rokdrop.com/2009/05/16/leftis...osed-as-fraud/