Thursday, June 07, 2012 6:50:33 AM
Romney's (non) military record faces new scrutiny
In this Friday, May 4, 2012, file photo Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns in Pittsburgh, Pa. Romney's military background _ or, rather, lack of one _ is facing new scrutiny as he courts veterans and introduces himself to a broader segment of the population. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is calling for a more aggressive American military. But he avoided military service at the height of the Vietnam War.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
[ http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/06/05/romneys_non_military_record_faces_new_scrutiny/?page=full (complete story, with comments)]
In this 1966 photo taken by a photographer at the San Francisco Examiner newspaper, 19-year-old Mitt Romney, right, then a student at Stanford University, participates in a counter-protest on campus. Romney and his fellow students were reacting to a protest then being waged by other students upset with the university's student draft deferment policies. Romney sought and received four draft deferments from 1965 to 1970 during college and his time as a Mormon missionary in France. The country was cutting troop levels by the time he became eligible for service, and his draft number was not called.
(AP Photo/San Francisco Examiner)
[ http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_20786001/romneys-non-military-record-faces-new-scrutiny (complete story, with comments)]
In this 1966 photo taken by a photographer at the San Francisco Examiner newspaper, 19-year-old Mitt Romney, far right, then a student at Stanford University, participates in a counter-protest on campus. Romney and his fellow students were reacting to a protest then being waged by other students upset with the university's student draft deferment policies. Romney sought and received four draft deferments from 1965 to 1970 during college and his time as a Mormon missionary in France. The country was cutting troop levels by the time he became eligible for service, and his draft number was not called.
(AP Photo/San Francisco Examiner)
[id.]
By STEVE PEOPLES, Associated Press – June 5, 2012
SAN DIEGO (AP) — On a stage crowded with war heroes, Mitt Romney recently praised the sacrifice "of the great men and women of every generation who serve in our armed services."
It is a sacrifice the Republican presidential candidate did not make.
Though an early supporter of the Vietnam War, Romney avoided military service at the height of the fighting after high school by seeking and receiving four draft deferments, according to Selective Service records. They included college deferments and a 31-month stretch as a "minister of religion" in France, a classification for Mormon missionaries that the church at the time feared was being overused. The country was cutting troop levels by the time he became eligible for the draft, and his lottery number was not called.
President Barack Obama, Romney's opponent in this year's campaign, did not serve in the military either. The Democrat, 50, was a child during the Vietnam conflict and did not enlist when he was older.
But because Romney, now 65, was of draft age during Vietnam, his military background — or, rather, his lack of one — is facing new scrutiny as he courts veterans and makes his case to the nation to be commander in chief. He's also intensified his criticism lately of Obama's plans to scale back the nation's military commitments abroad, suggesting that Romney would pursue an aggressive foreign policy as president that could involve U.S. troops.
A look at Romney's relationship with Vietnam offers a window into a 1960s world that allowed him to avoid combat as fighting peaked. His story also demonstrates his commitment to the Mormon Church, which he rarely discusses publicly but which helped shape his life.
Romney's recollection of his Vietnam-era decisions has evolved in the decades since, particularly as his presidential ambitions became clear.
He said in 2007 — his first White House bid under way — that he had "longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam." But his actions, Selective Service records and previous statements show little interest in joining a conflict that ultimately claimed more than 58,000 American lives.
Still, he repeatedly cites his commitment to public service and the nation's military while campaigning for president.
"Greatness in a people, I believe, is measured by the extent to which they will give themselves to something bigger than themselves," Romney said in San Diego last week to a Memorial Day crowd of thousands, flush with military veterans of all ages.
He did not address his own Vietnam history that day. And his campaign has refused to comment publicly on the subject over the past week.
Political rivals, military veterans among them, suggest that Romney's own decision not to serve in the military is in conflict with his pro-military rhetoric.
"He didn't have the courage to go. He didn't feel it was important enough to him to serve his country at a time of war," said Jon Soltz, who served two Army tours in Iraq and is the chairman of the left-leaning veterans group VoteVets.org.
Critics note that the candidate is among three generations of Romneys — including his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, and five sons — who were of military age during armed conflicts but did not serve.
As a presidential candidate in 2007, Romney told The Boston Globe he was frustrated, as a Mormon missionary, not to be fighting alongside his countrymen.
"I was supportive of my country," Romney said. "I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there, and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam."
Indeed, Romney strongly supported the war at first. As a freshman at Stanford University, he protested anti-war activists. In one photo, he's shown in a small crowd of students, smiling broadly, wearing a sport jacket and holding up a sign that says, "Speak Out, Don't Sit In."
But the frustration he recalled in 2007 does not match a sentiment he shared as a Massachusetts Senate candidate in 1994, when he told The Boston Herald, "I was not planning on signing up for the military."
"It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft," Romney told the newspaper.
But that's exactly what Romney did, according Selective Service records. He received his first deferment for "activity in study" in October 1965 while at Stanford.
As Soltz notes, the younger Romney was under no obligation to seek a college-related deferment.
"Vietnam was a war that the poor and the people who couldn't afford to go to college had to go to," Soltz said.
After his first year at Stanford, Romney qualified for 4-D deferment status as "a minister of religion or divinity student." It was a status he would hold from July 1966 until February 1969, a period he largely spent in France working as a Mormon missionary.
He was granted the deferment even as some young Mormon men elsewhere were denied that same status, which became increasingly controversial in the late 1960s. The Mormon church, a strong supporter of American involvement in Vietnam, ultimately limited the number of church missionaries allowed to defer their military service using the religious exemption.
But as fighting in Vietnam raged, Romney spent two and a half years trying to win Mormon converts in France. About that same time, Romney's father would famously speak out against Vietnam, declaring that he had been "brainwashed" by military officials into supporting the conflict.
Young Romney's comments indicated his support had waned, too.
"If it wasn't a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don't know what is," a 23-year-old Romney would tell The Boston Globe in 1970 during the fifth year of his deferment.
His 31-month religious deferment expired in early 1969. And Romney received an academic studies deferment for much of the next two years. He became available for military service at the end of 1970 when his deferments ran out and he could have been drafted. But by that time, America was beginning to slice its troop levels, and Romney's relatively high lottery number — 300 out of 365 — was not called.
Romney's past may not be enough to hurt his popularity in this year's election among veterans, who typically lean Republican.
A Gallup survey released last week found that veterans prefer Romney over Obama by 58 percent to 34 percent. That voting bloc, consisting mostly of older men, makes up 13 percent of the adult population. Obama won the presidency four years ago while losing veterans by 10 points to Sen. John McCain, a former Navy pilot.
Still, some veterans say Romney's reluctance to serve irks them.
"I volunteered for the draft. Romney could have, too. Simple as that," said Wade Lieseke, of Nevada, who served as a helicopter gunner in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970.
Associated Press Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press
[taken from] http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gISsoLFyuAfPxjWD-CfZ3EltN39A?docId=34c38d312bde4b55a9d4eaaca68675f3 [original on Google; if past is prologue, link will go dark at some point; complete article also at e.g. the two sources linked under story photos above]
===
Romney gets pass on Vietnam avoidance
June 6, 2012
Rachel Maddow describes the series of deferments Mitt Romney was granted to avoid having to serve in the Vietnam War, contrasted with his subsequent statements about his desire to serve, and wonders why the mainstream media isn't vetting this part of Romney's life.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/47714969#47714969 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOs9YSJwoTA ]
===
Did Young Mitt Romney Impersonate A Police Officer? Another Witness Says Yes
Did Young Mitt Romney Impersonate A Police Officer? Another Witness Says Yes
Joe Conason
June 6th, 2012 7:00 pm
When Mitt Romney was a college freshman, he told fellow residents of his Stanford University dormitory that he sometimes disguised himself as a police officer – a crime in many states, including Michigan and California, where he then lived. And he had the uniform on display as proof.
So recalls Robin Madden, who had also just arrived as a freshman, the startling incident began when Romney called him and two or three other residents into his room, saying, “Come up, I want to show you something.” When they entered Romney’s room, “and laid out on his bed was a Michigan State Trooper’s uniform.”
Madden, a native Texan who graduated from Stanford in 1970 and went on to become a successful television producer and writer [ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0534639/#Producer ], has never forgotten that strange moment, which he has recounted to friends over the years as he observed his former classmate’s political ascent. The National Memo learned of the incident from a longtime Madden friend to whom he had mentioned it years ago.
Said Madden in a recent interview, “He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”
In Madden’s recollection, confirmed by his wife Susan, who also attended Stanford during those years, “we thought it was all pretty weird. We all thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty creepy.’ And after that, we didn’t have much interaction with him,” although both Madden and Romney were prep school boys living in the same dorm, called Rinconada [ http://campus-map.stanford.edu/?srch=Rinconada ].
Other eyewitnesses have previously recalled Romney’s alleged use of a police or trooper uniform in pranks during his high school years at the exclusive Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Phillip Maxwell, a prep school buddy, told the New Republic in 2008 that Romney had pulled over students from a girls school next door to Cranbrook while wearing a police uniform as a prank. Other former classmates described Mitt as a “happy-go-lucky guy known less for his achievements and more for his pranks.”
In The Real Romney, a biography published by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman this year, another former friend recalled [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/dowd-mitt-is-this-wit.html ] how Romney had “put a siren on top of his car and chased two of his friends who were driving around with their dates.” The two friends were in on the scheme, but the girls were not. There was beer in the car trunk, according to a prearranged plan. Mitt told his two counterparts to get out of their vehicle and into his car. Then they drove off, leaving the girls behind.
“It was a terrible thing to do,” said one of his accomplices [ http://books.google.com/books?id=ZP3-rXn0H8sC&pg=PT35&lpg=PT35&dq="It+was+a+terrible+thing+to+do"+Cranbrook+Graham+McDonald.&source=bl&ots=Ns1rUk5WBg&sig=0ulXfuc44L6RWs4F6WQdBXOUo48&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6azPT8rDDYOg6QHBnOi7DA&ve ], a Cranbrook classmate named Graham McDonald.
To some observers, Romney’s alleged masquerading as a cop to intimidate innocent drivers shows a character defect that is also revealed by other bullying incidents [ http://www.nationalmemo.com/did-mitt-romney-harass-gay-classmates-while-in-high-school/ ] during his youth. When those incidents were disclosed in the Washington Post earlier this year, Romney issued an apology of sorts, stating that he had done “stupid” things and was sorry if he had harmed anyone.
While he may have believed that his cop antics were harmless, Romney may well have been breaking the law merely by donning a police uniform, committing a crime if he pretended to be a cop and a felony if he did so more than once. In both California [ http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/538d.html ] and Michigan [ http://law.onecle.com/michigan/750-michigan-penal-code/mcl-750-217c.html ], any person convicted of fraudulently impersonating a police officer may be sentenced to up to one year in prison. (The National Memo has collected some other examples of police impersonators [ http://www.nationalmemo.com/not-just-mitt-other-police-impersonators-in-recent-history/ ].)
The Romney campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Following his sophomore year at Stanford, young Mitt left and never went back. For more than two years he served as a Mormon missionary in France — thus avoiding the obligation to wear a very different uniform [ http://www.nationalmemo.com/strange-true-mitt-romney-spent-vietnam-war-french-palace/ ] in Vietnam.
With reporting by Kyle Roerink
© 2011 Eastern Harbor Media, LLC
http://www.nationalmemo.com/did-young-mitt-romney-impersonate-a-police-officer-another-witness-says-yes/ [with comments]
===
Mitt Romney and cop uniforms
June 6, 2012
Editor-in-chief of TheNationalMemo.com Joe Conason tells MSNBC’s Lawrence O'Donnell how he uncovered a new story about how Mitt Romney's pranks in uniform. Jon Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org, also weighs in.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45755883/vp/47715547#47715547 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wad7FITTPQ ]
In this Friday, May 4, 2012, file photo Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns in Pittsburgh, Pa. Romney's military background _ or, rather, lack of one _ is facing new scrutiny as he courts veterans and introduces himself to a broader segment of the population. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is calling for a more aggressive American military. But he avoided military service at the height of the Vietnam War.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
[ http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/06/05/romneys_non_military_record_faces_new_scrutiny/?page=full (complete story, with comments)]
In this 1966 photo taken by a photographer at the San Francisco Examiner newspaper, 19-year-old Mitt Romney, right, then a student at Stanford University, participates in a counter-protest on campus. Romney and his fellow students were reacting to a protest then being waged by other students upset with the university's student draft deferment policies. Romney sought and received four draft deferments from 1965 to 1970 during college and his time as a Mormon missionary in France. The country was cutting troop levels by the time he became eligible for service, and his draft number was not called.
(AP Photo/San Francisco Examiner)
[ http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_20786001/romneys-non-military-record-faces-new-scrutiny (complete story, with comments)]
In this 1966 photo taken by a photographer at the San Francisco Examiner newspaper, 19-year-old Mitt Romney, far right, then a student at Stanford University, participates in a counter-protest on campus. Romney and his fellow students were reacting to a protest then being waged by other students upset with the university's student draft deferment policies. Romney sought and received four draft deferments from 1965 to 1970 during college and his time as a Mormon missionary in France. The country was cutting troop levels by the time he became eligible for service, and his draft number was not called.
(AP Photo/San Francisco Examiner)
[id.]
By STEVE PEOPLES, Associated Press – June 5, 2012
SAN DIEGO (AP) — On a stage crowded with war heroes, Mitt Romney recently praised the sacrifice "of the great men and women of every generation who serve in our armed services."
It is a sacrifice the Republican presidential candidate did not make.
Though an early supporter of the Vietnam War, Romney avoided military service at the height of the fighting after high school by seeking and receiving four draft deferments, according to Selective Service records. They included college deferments and a 31-month stretch as a "minister of religion" in France, a classification for Mormon missionaries that the church at the time feared was being overused. The country was cutting troop levels by the time he became eligible for the draft, and his lottery number was not called.
President Barack Obama, Romney's opponent in this year's campaign, did not serve in the military either. The Democrat, 50, was a child during the Vietnam conflict and did not enlist when he was older.
But because Romney, now 65, was of draft age during Vietnam, his military background — or, rather, his lack of one — is facing new scrutiny as he courts veterans and makes his case to the nation to be commander in chief. He's also intensified his criticism lately of Obama's plans to scale back the nation's military commitments abroad, suggesting that Romney would pursue an aggressive foreign policy as president that could involve U.S. troops.
A look at Romney's relationship with Vietnam offers a window into a 1960s world that allowed him to avoid combat as fighting peaked. His story also demonstrates his commitment to the Mormon Church, which he rarely discusses publicly but which helped shape his life.
Romney's recollection of his Vietnam-era decisions has evolved in the decades since, particularly as his presidential ambitions became clear.
He said in 2007 — his first White House bid under way — that he had "longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam." But his actions, Selective Service records and previous statements show little interest in joining a conflict that ultimately claimed more than 58,000 American lives.
Still, he repeatedly cites his commitment to public service and the nation's military while campaigning for president.
"Greatness in a people, I believe, is measured by the extent to which they will give themselves to something bigger than themselves," Romney said in San Diego last week to a Memorial Day crowd of thousands, flush with military veterans of all ages.
He did not address his own Vietnam history that day. And his campaign has refused to comment publicly on the subject over the past week.
Political rivals, military veterans among them, suggest that Romney's own decision not to serve in the military is in conflict with his pro-military rhetoric.
"He didn't have the courage to go. He didn't feel it was important enough to him to serve his country at a time of war," said Jon Soltz, who served two Army tours in Iraq and is the chairman of the left-leaning veterans group VoteVets.org.
Critics note that the candidate is among three generations of Romneys — including his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, and five sons — who were of military age during armed conflicts but did not serve.
As a presidential candidate in 2007, Romney told The Boston Globe he was frustrated, as a Mormon missionary, not to be fighting alongside his countrymen.
"I was supportive of my country," Romney said. "I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there, and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam."
Indeed, Romney strongly supported the war at first. As a freshman at Stanford University, he protested anti-war activists. In one photo, he's shown in a small crowd of students, smiling broadly, wearing a sport jacket and holding up a sign that says, "Speak Out, Don't Sit In."
But the frustration he recalled in 2007 does not match a sentiment he shared as a Massachusetts Senate candidate in 1994, when he told The Boston Herald, "I was not planning on signing up for the military."
"It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft," Romney told the newspaper.
But that's exactly what Romney did, according Selective Service records. He received his first deferment for "activity in study" in October 1965 while at Stanford.
As Soltz notes, the younger Romney was under no obligation to seek a college-related deferment.
"Vietnam was a war that the poor and the people who couldn't afford to go to college had to go to," Soltz said.
After his first year at Stanford, Romney qualified for 4-D deferment status as "a minister of religion or divinity student." It was a status he would hold from July 1966 until February 1969, a period he largely spent in France working as a Mormon missionary.
He was granted the deferment even as some young Mormon men elsewhere were denied that same status, which became increasingly controversial in the late 1960s. The Mormon church, a strong supporter of American involvement in Vietnam, ultimately limited the number of church missionaries allowed to defer their military service using the religious exemption.
But as fighting in Vietnam raged, Romney spent two and a half years trying to win Mormon converts in France. About that same time, Romney's father would famously speak out against Vietnam, declaring that he had been "brainwashed" by military officials into supporting the conflict.
Young Romney's comments indicated his support had waned, too.
"If it wasn't a political blunder to move into Vietnam, I don't know what is," a 23-year-old Romney would tell The Boston Globe in 1970 during the fifth year of his deferment.
His 31-month religious deferment expired in early 1969. And Romney received an academic studies deferment for much of the next two years. He became available for military service at the end of 1970 when his deferments ran out and he could have been drafted. But by that time, America was beginning to slice its troop levels, and Romney's relatively high lottery number — 300 out of 365 — was not called.
Romney's past may not be enough to hurt his popularity in this year's election among veterans, who typically lean Republican.
A Gallup survey released last week found that veterans prefer Romney over Obama by 58 percent to 34 percent. That voting bloc, consisting mostly of older men, makes up 13 percent of the adult population. Obama won the presidency four years ago while losing veterans by 10 points to Sen. John McCain, a former Navy pilot.
Still, some veterans say Romney's reluctance to serve irks them.
"I volunteered for the draft. Romney could have, too. Simple as that," said Wade Lieseke, of Nevada, who served as a helicopter gunner in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970.
Associated Press Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press
[taken from] http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gISsoLFyuAfPxjWD-CfZ3EltN39A?docId=34c38d312bde4b55a9d4eaaca68675f3 [original on Google; if past is prologue, link will go dark at some point; complete article also at e.g. the two sources linked under story photos above]
===
Romney gets pass on Vietnam avoidance
The Rachel Maddow Show
June 6, 2012
Rachel Maddow describes the series of deferments Mitt Romney was granted to avoid having to serve in the Vietnam War, contrasted with his subsequent statements about his desire to serve, and wonders why the mainstream media isn't vetting this part of Romney's life.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/47714969#47714969 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOs9YSJwoTA ]
===
Did Young Mitt Romney Impersonate A Police Officer? Another Witness Says Yes
Did Young Mitt Romney Impersonate A Police Officer? Another Witness Says Yes
Joe Conason
June 6th, 2012 7:00 pm
When Mitt Romney was a college freshman, he told fellow residents of his Stanford University dormitory that he sometimes disguised himself as a police officer – a crime in many states, including Michigan and California, where he then lived. And he had the uniform on display as proof.
So recalls Robin Madden, who had also just arrived as a freshman, the startling incident began when Romney called him and two or three other residents into his room, saying, “Come up, I want to show you something.” When they entered Romney’s room, “and laid out on his bed was a Michigan State Trooper’s uniform.”
Madden, a native Texan who graduated from Stanford in 1970 and went on to become a successful television producer and writer [ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0534639/#Producer ], has never forgotten that strange moment, which he has recounted to friends over the years as he observed his former classmate’s political ascent. The National Memo learned of the incident from a longtime Madden friend to whom he had mentioned it years ago.
Said Madden in a recent interview, “He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”
In Madden’s recollection, confirmed by his wife Susan, who also attended Stanford during those years, “we thought it was all pretty weird. We all thought, ‘Wow, that’s pretty creepy.’ And after that, we didn’t have much interaction with him,” although both Madden and Romney were prep school boys living in the same dorm, called Rinconada [ http://campus-map.stanford.edu/?srch=Rinconada ].
Other eyewitnesses have previously recalled Romney’s alleged use of a police or trooper uniform in pranks during his high school years at the exclusive Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
Phillip Maxwell, a prep school buddy, told the New Republic in 2008 that Romney had pulled over students from a girls school next door to Cranbrook while wearing a police uniform as a prank. Other former classmates described Mitt as a “happy-go-lucky guy known less for his achievements and more for his pranks.”
In The Real Romney, a biography published by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman this year, another former friend recalled [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/dowd-mitt-is-this-wit.html ] how Romney had “put a siren on top of his car and chased two of his friends who were driving around with their dates.” The two friends were in on the scheme, but the girls were not. There was beer in the car trunk, according to a prearranged plan. Mitt told his two counterparts to get out of their vehicle and into his car. Then they drove off, leaving the girls behind.
“It was a terrible thing to do,” said one of his accomplices [ http://books.google.com/books?id=ZP3-rXn0H8sC&pg=PT35&lpg=PT35&dq="It+was+a+terrible+thing+to+do"+Cranbrook+Graham+McDonald.&source=bl&ots=Ns1rUk5WBg&sig=0ulXfuc44L6RWs4F6WQdBXOUo48&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6azPT8rDDYOg6QHBnOi7DA&ve ], a Cranbrook classmate named Graham McDonald.
To some observers, Romney’s alleged masquerading as a cop to intimidate innocent drivers shows a character defect that is also revealed by other bullying incidents [ http://www.nationalmemo.com/did-mitt-romney-harass-gay-classmates-while-in-high-school/ ] during his youth. When those incidents were disclosed in the Washington Post earlier this year, Romney issued an apology of sorts, stating that he had done “stupid” things and was sorry if he had harmed anyone.
While he may have believed that his cop antics were harmless, Romney may well have been breaking the law merely by donning a police uniform, committing a crime if he pretended to be a cop and a felony if he did so more than once. In both California [ http://law.onecle.com/california/penal/538d.html ] and Michigan [ http://law.onecle.com/michigan/750-michigan-penal-code/mcl-750-217c.html ], any person convicted of fraudulently impersonating a police officer may be sentenced to up to one year in prison. (The National Memo has collected some other examples of police impersonators [ http://www.nationalmemo.com/not-just-mitt-other-police-impersonators-in-recent-history/ ].)
The Romney campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Following his sophomore year at Stanford, young Mitt left and never went back. For more than two years he served as a Mormon missionary in France — thus avoiding the obligation to wear a very different uniform [ http://www.nationalmemo.com/strange-true-mitt-romney-spent-vietnam-war-french-palace/ ] in Vietnam.
With reporting by Kyle Roerink
© 2011 Eastern Harbor Media, LLC
http://www.nationalmemo.com/did-young-mitt-romney-impersonate-a-police-officer-another-witness-says-yes/ [with comments]
===
Mitt Romney and cop uniforms
The Last Word
June 6, 2012
Editor-in-chief of TheNationalMemo.com Joe Conason tells MSNBC’s Lawrence O'Donnell how he uncovered a new story about how Mitt Romney's pranks in uniform. Jon Soltz, chairman of VoteVets.org, also weighs in.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45755883/vp/47715547#47715547 [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wad7FITTPQ ]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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