Female National Guardsman Challenges Firing Over Porn Site

IDAHO—A female Idaho National Guardsman with 15 years experience is challenging her firing last year when officials learned that she had been running a porn site, which has since been shuttered. "Staff Sgt. Amy Weidner, a 15-year-veteran of the Idaho Army National Guard, was released from the Active Guard and Reserve last year after officials learned she was operating a pay-per-view website,” reported the Idaho Statesman, which added she was “an administrative noncommissioned officer in the 200-member 1st Battalion of the 183rd Aviation Regiment, which flies Apaches. Weidner joined the part-time Guard in 1998 and became a full-timer in 2004.” The site, SandyBlaze.com, which now redirects to a swingers site, operated for only eight months as a subscription site before it was discovered by fellow guardsman in May of last year, shortly after which Weidner was relieved of her fulltime position an administrator in an attack helicopter unit, a job that came with health benefits and an annual salary of $59,000. She still works for the Guard part-time, but making only eight grand, and as the Statesman noted, “She also lost her health care benefits and says she has been unfairly denied promotion.” Weidner, 35, who is married (and said the site was launched with her husband’s blessing), filed a claim under the Idaho Tort Claims Act in March of this year. The law gives the parties 90 days from the filing of a claim to resolve their difference before the aggrieved party can file a lawsuit. According to the Statesman, the state has yet to respond and Weidner could file but has not yet done so. In her tort claim, Weidner also alleges that she was purposefully subjected to “internal harassment and [a] hostile work environment,” and that military colleagues were permitted by superiors to watch Sandy Blaze videos in the workplace, charges the Guard vehemently denies and appears all too willing to defend in court, as well as its decision to take away Weidner’s full-time gig for "inappropriate professional and personal conduct" and "moral or professional dereliction.”