washingtonscene
n a requirement for a DoD plan to “en- hance quality, efficiency, and savings with- in the military health care system”; n requirements for an advisory panel on community support for families with special-needs children and a report on DoD programs and child care for such children; n temporary authority to allow voluntary retirement of prior-enlisted officers with eight years of officer service (normally 10); n authority for services to pay replacement value for goods damaged during permanent change-of-station (PCS) moves if reim- bursement isn’t available from the carrier; n a requirement for a DoD report on servicemembers’ out-of-pocket PCS ex- penses, including overseas shipment of personal vehicles; and n a requirement for a GAO review of DoD housing surveys and housing allow- ance standards. Check out a comparison of key House-
versus-Senate proposals on pages 36 and 37. The full Senate will consider the bill in
July. MOAA will be working with Senate sponsors to seek amendments that would ease inequities for disabled retirees, mili- tary widows, guardmembers and reserv- ists, health care, and more.
MOAA Opposes
Funeral Protest Military and veterans’ groups urge Supreme Court ruling.
A
t a May 28 Capitol Hill press conference, MOAA joined Sen- ate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) to speak out in support of mili- tary families’ right to be protected against the presence of disruptive protesters at the funerals of their loved ones who died in service to their country. MOAA and many other military and
veterans’ associations, along with Reid and numerous legislators, have added their names to a “friend of the court” brief in support of a lawsuit (Snyder vs. Phelps, No. 09-751) asking the Supreme Court to uphold this protection. The case concerns a protest at the
funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, who was killed in Iraq in 2006. Members of the Westboro Bap- tist Church in Topeka, Kan., staged the protest, displaying signs such as “Thank God for dead soldiers,” and then posted a video online about Snyder’s funeral to commemorate their protest. Snyder’s family sued the church and
MOAA’s Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF-Ret., front, far right, joined Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), center, on Capitol Hill May 28 speaking in support of a Supreme Court appeal against protestors who disrupted the funeral of a Marine killed in Iraq, the son of Albert Snyder, front left.
3 2 MI L I T A R Y O F F I C E R AU G U S T 2 0 1 0
won a judgment, but the U.S. Court of Ap- peals overturned it based on First Amend- ment protection of free speech. “We don’t believe this is a freedom of speech issue,” said MOAA Government Relations Director Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF-Ret. “It’s about vicious and repre- hensible personal attacks on individual servicemembers and their families. This isn’t some philosophical exercise. It’s about upholding the simple human dignity of men and women who have forfeited their lives for the rest of us and about protecting the rights of their families to privately mourn their loss.”
PHOTO: ALEX BRANDON/AP
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