The Constitution, The News & You Response

1. Summarize the article, and include relevant quotes.
The story I chose is a fairly famous story that is now being made into a movie, I chose the Tillman case. Patrick Tillman was a pro-football star that decided to become an Army Ranger in 2002. He served multiple tours in Afghanistan until April 22, 2004. He was in the mountains of Afghanistan when he was shot and killed; the government reported that Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. The U.S. government attempted a cover-up the truth, which was that he was killed by “friendly fire”. Which is when someone who is on the same side as you doesn’t know you are apart of the same army and shoots at you. The government waited days to tell the family the truth about Tillman’s death, even though many soldiers new the truth. The family was out raged and Tillman’s mother said, “After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this. They purposely interfered with the investigation; they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a hand basket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy.”

2. Explain what Constitutional concepts are relevant. Some may be obvious, but others maybe more subtly related. Explain the Constitutional connection in your own words, but also reference the specific Article & Section or Amendment(s).
This story to me relates to the Freedom of Speech because it showed how many government officials lied to cover up their appearance to America and how they didn’t want to be perceived differently in the eyes of the public. All of those generals had the freedom of speech to say as they wanted even though it was later proven wrong they still had the right to say those things, even if it wasn’t morally right. Another important thing to know is that was that after Tillman died, within--instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire and none of the soldiers used their right of freedom of speech to speak up for Tillman.

3. Explain what interests you about this article and/or the Constitutional connections you found.
What interests me about this article is how I have just heard about this now and it surprised me that those men could lie like that just to keep up a good image. Another thing that surprised me was that after Tillman died, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew he died from friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire and they didn’t use the freedom of speech to speak up.