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Upholding the Constitution in Hard Cases
Just as Bill Cosby was rightly freed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on solid constitutional grounds, so now two Marines have been cleared of wrongdoing in a 2011 incident, where Marine snipers recorded themselves urinating on Taliban corpses. The reason for reversal of lower adverse actions? Improper command influence from the top of the Marine Corps.
The Acting Secretary of the Navy just cleared the record of a Marine officer who had be separated from service under a cloud, even though he was not at the scene. At the same time, the Navy has upgraded the rank of a senior noncommissioned officer, a senior sergeant, who had been forced into retirement at a lower rank.
It is a gross violation of military justice for a senior commander to make statements indicating the desired result of a supposedly fair process.