Pete Hesseff, the First Amendment and me, O. and Tucker, and the Swarming Harpies.

February 23, 2026. Introduction. Last week, I had the privilege of bringing the message at a monthly prayer meeting at the Pentagon.

I was invited to participate in this meeting by Pete Hague Seth, the Secretary of bringing the message at a monthly prayer meeting at the Pentagon. I was invited

to participate in this meeting by Pete Hague Seth, the Secretary of War, and he is also the one who

had made the decision to start up this monthly prayer meeting in the first place. As a result of

his fine example, similar meetings are now being held in other departments under other cabinet

members. Attendance at this prayer meeting is entirely voluntary.

No one is required to attend.

The meeting is held during lunch hour.

There was no compulsion at all, not even a squidge.

Let me give you a contrary example of something that was not entirely voluntary.

Something that I witnessed 55 years ago back when I graduated from boot camp in San Diego.

We marched out there to rehearse the ceremony, I think the day before,

and we came to the part where the chaplain was going to give the invocation.

We were all firmly instructed that when the chaplain said,

Let us pray, we were all to bow our heads together in unison as one man.

And the atheists were further instructed,

this is the moment when you will decide to examine your shoe shine. Okay, that was not copacetic.

The unbelievers should have been told to just remain respectfully at attention.

But this prayer meeting was nothing at all like that. And yet to gauge by the reaction of some,

you might think that we are being dragged into a constitutional

crisis provoked by an authoritarian Martinette, with the First Amendment, the sentences of which

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