First things first: Mark Kelly is no Bowe Bergdahl.

By that I mean: Kelly didn’t desert his post, didn’t turn himself over to the enemy, and didn’t cause an America-hating American president to trade five high-value enemy detainees for his release. No, unlike the man of Susan Rice’s dreams, Mark Kelly really did, by all accounts, serve our nation “with honor and distinction.”

But that’s as good as he’ll get from yours truly.

Yesterday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that he’d taken the extraordinary step of censuring the former Navy pilot and current senior senator from Arizona for his participation with five other Democrats in a sleazy, slippery, scummy seditionist video aimed at our active-duty service personnel and repeatedly suggesting that their commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, is giving them unlawful orders that they must disobey. As Secretary Hegseth put it:

Six weeks ago, Senator Mark Kelly — and five other members of Congress — released a reckless and seditious video that was clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline. As a retired Navy Captain who is still receiving a military pension, Captain Kelly knows he is still accountable to military justice. And the Department of War — and the American people — expect justice.

Therefore, in response to Senator Mark Kelly’s seditious statements — and his pattern of reckless misconduct — the Department of War is taking administrative action against Captain Mark E. Kelly, USN (Ret). The department has initiated retirement grade determination proceedings under 10 U.S.C. § 1370(f), with reduction in his retired grade resulting in a corresponding reduction in retired pay.

Actions have consequences, and Commander Kelly — man, does that ever have a nice ring to it — isn’t immune to those consequences. Hegseth added that the censure was “a necessary process step” toward a demotion in rank and a reduction in retirement pay.

Put bluntly: Kelly fooled around with sedition, and now he’s finding out about the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“Over twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy,” caterwauled Kelly in response, “thirty-nine combat missions, and four missions to space, I risked my life for this country and to defend our Constitution — including the First Amendment rights of every American to speak out. I never expected that the President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would attack me for doing exactly that. My rank and retirement are things that I earned through my service and sacrifice for this country. I got shot at. I missed holidays and birthdays. I commanded a space shuttle mission while my wife Gabby recovered from a gunshot wound to the head– all while proudly wearing the American flag on my shoulder.”

Kelly did indeed earn his rank and retirement, but he didn’t earn the right to engage in sedition. Put another way, if I can borrow from James Madison: I cannot undertake to lay my finger upon that article of the UCMJ which granted retired officers receiving retirement pay the right to engage in seditious behavior against their commander-in-chief.

Kelly, of all people, should’ve known better. After all, he isn’t some non-rate spouting off in the E-club about Barack Hussein Obama. He’s a retired Navy captain, the equivalent of an Army or Marine Corps colonel. Furthermore, he’s a sitting U.S. senator. If anyone on planet Earth should know better, it’s him.

Kelly’s invocation of the First Amendment is equally galling, and surpassingly idiotic. Everyone in the military knows that when they take the Oath of Enlistment, they check their First Amendment rights at the door. As the Supreme Court noted in the 1974 Parker v. Levy case, “The military is, by necessity, a specialized society apart from civilian society.”

Maybe Kelly was asleep during that class about the UCMJ — the class that covered Article 133, which is Conduct Unbecoming an Officer, and Article 134, which is the glorious catch-all article that we all learned about in boot camp; the article that was specifically written to cover clear offenses that hadn’t otherwise been specifically spelled out. You know, like starring in a seditious video and promoting it via social media to the entirety of our Armed Forces. That sorta thing.

Retired Navy SEAL and popular podcaster Jocko Willink appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show last night, and he began by calling Kelly “a guy that served with distinction.” Which, again, is true. But Willink wasn’t so much defending Kelly as simply stating the obvious. Indeed, if we look back through Kelly’s military career, we can’t find any instances of him attempting to undermine the terminal end of his chain of command. Which makes what he did six weeks ago in that video so jarring and so patently unlawful.

Regarding the seditious video, Willink then added this: “It implies that there is some sort of unlawful order out there. What they’re saying is actually true. Anybody in the military will tell you you’re not allowed to obey — and you must disobey — unlawful orders. But they’re implying that there’s some unlawful orders out on the horizon or that there’s been unlawful orders without identifying any of them. So, yeah, that causes, that undermines, the chain of command, and it’s not healthy. And I think anyone that’s in the military knows and understands that. And that’s why I think it’s a dishonest video, and I think it’s just meant as a political statement.”

Yep, it’s a dishonest video. And a seditious one.

Those looking for an even harsher condemnation from Willink need to remember: He’s got a business empire to protect. And, as Michael Jordan once famously put it while explaining his refusal to take political stands in favor of Democrats, “Republicans buy sneakers too.”

Having said that, I keep going back to that part of Kelly’s tweet where he complained, “I missed holidays and birthdays.” Yeah, well, me too. Same with Jocko and his brothers, and same with every one of the tens of millions of warriors who’ve ever worn our nation’s uniform.

None of us is crying out for special treatment, though. And neither should Captain Mark Kelly.