We Shouldn’t Really Be Surprised When A Bureaucrat....

On Dec. 1, the story broke that Bethesda, Maryland-based
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where wounded veterans convalesce, apparently had banned visitors from bringing in Bibles or other religious items.

Walter Reed Chief of Staff C.W. Callahan issued a memo in September which said:
"No religious items (i.e. Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed 
to be given away or used during a visit."

Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, savaged the Obama Administration on the floor
of the House, saying, "The President of the United States should address this and
should excoriate the people who brought about this policy and the individual who
brought it about should be dismissed from the United States Military."

Yes, telling wounded soldiers and their families that their First Amendment
freedoms have been suspended should be a firing offense.

Rep. King, who serves on the House Subcommittee on the Constitution,
conveyed the gravity:

"The idea that these soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that have fought 
to defend our Constitution, and that includes our First Amendment rights 
to religious liberty –would be denied that religious liberty when they are 
lying in a hospital bed recovering from wounds incurred while defending that 
liberty is the most bitter and offensive type of an irony that I can think of."

The policy was rescinded, but that it happened at all is a reminder of the culture
that  Mr. Obama has fostered in the armed forces and executive agencies, where
extreme environmentalism, moral relativism, and sexual immorality have replaced traditional American values.

We shouldn’t really be surprised when a bureaucrat tries to bar Bibles in a
U.S. military stateside hospital while other bureaucrats make sure that
terrorists in Guantanamo Bay get copies of the Koran.

Announcing an end to the rule, Walter Reed public affairs officer Sandy Dean
said that a new policy "will be written to articulate our initial intention which
was to respect religious and cultural practices of our patients."   Say what?

Dean went on to insist that the policy was "in no way meant to prohibit
family members from providing religious items to their loved ones at all."

Here’s more from the hapless Dean:
"We appreciate Congressman King bringing this to our attention.
We don’t want our instructions to be ambiguous."

Ambiguity is not the problem.
It’s the Obama Administration’s hostility to religion, except for Islam.

From the prevarications that helped sell Obamacare, to the lies surrounding
Fast and Furious, to the periodic emissions of horse pucky about Obama’s
“evolving” view of marriage while he’s sabotaging the Defense of Marriage Act,
it’s getting so bad that Obama Administration spokespeople really should
consider donning Groucho noses, glasses and mustaches.
That would help disguise them, at least, and pave their way to enter the
Witness Protection Program.

Should it be necessary to explain why wounded soldiers who risked their lives
be allowed to receive Bibles from their families?