On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 08:49:32 -0500, "anon" wrote:

He can't even keep his lies straight. His ego takes over and he claims he
received a nomination to a service academy - then he says his attempt was
unsuccessful. That doesn't make any sense. If you receive a nomination to
a service academy, no military branch would hamper your acceptance.

The difference is in "nomination" vs. "appointment." Being nominated means your
name was formally submitted to the admissions board, but only a bit more than
one in ten are actually offered admission ("appointment").

Each congresscritter is allowed to have five of his/her nominated cadets in each
of four Academies, and is allowed to nominate up to ten candidates for each
vacancy. In a given year, then, Zoom could claim to be one of 120 or more
nominees. He never does specify which Academy he was supposedly nominated to,
remember.

The big differences is that disproving a claim that someone was *appointed* to
an academy is relatively easy...but thirty years later, disproving someone was
*nominated* is a lot tougher. The New Jersey congressional delegation would have
turned over at least once since then, and minor records such as this are not
likely to have been retained. Even *proving* you were nominated would be tough,
if you hadn't hung on to the letter you received.

Finally, as the Air Force Academy web page says, "Each Senator and
Representative has considerable latitude in awarding nominations..." They can
be awarded in response to excellence, or they can be just a political or
personal favor. The congresscritter is protected from blame; they gain credit
for the nomination, but have complete deniability if their candidates fail to
gain appointment since that's an Academy decision.

Ron Wanttaja