Student gets charged for essay (Die Free Speech Die!!! )

[Elok]

Yeah, GL, I thought you were the one who deplored the whole "shut up and soldier" mentality? I don't subscribe to your whole shpiel, but I do know that none of the armed forces want their members embarrassing them with garbage like this. They have an image to protect, similar to that shown on those annoying TV commercials with the kid climbing the rock formation. That image is pretty hard to maintain already, what with Abu Ghraib and all. Joking about acts of violence against the civilians you're supposed to protect is a bad thing. Very bad.

[MichaeltheGreat]

It's the pending arrest and charges, not the content of the essay. If the kid was an active duty Marine attending a community college class and he wrote that essay, he could be charged under the "general article" of the UCMJ (Art. 134) for "all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces."

The general article can and does apply to conduct which is legal under civilian law, and/or is not specifically prohibited by the UCMJ, but does have the effect of being service discrediting.

Prior to enlistment, the UCMJ does not apply. The issue is that the prospective recruit has pending criminal charges. If charges are dropped or he is acquitted, then he may be accepted as a recruit, and he could in theory still be accepted with a misdemeanor conviction,
but there's a process where the recruit has to submit written character references by giving a specific form to a certain number of people (typically school official, employer or former employer if any, and a number of adult neighbors.)