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It’s not hindsight — the pre-hearing threads on this hearing (posts by Christy and Looseheadprop; comments by the rest of us) laid out a lot that is in the questions posed by TiredFed. To use the language of this thread, the committee’s sins were sins of omission, not sins of comission.

It didn’t have to be an adversarial hearing, but I’d have appreciated it if the Dems had approached it as a discovery hearing. A lawyer asking the questions at a discovery hearing doesn’t come to the interview without a clear, well organized, systematic plan for questioning the witness.

Very good point. Thank you.

Realist and Brokenarrow, another Catholic story for you. My mother (now 79) found herself pregnant and not married 55 years ago. She came from a hard working labor family and had never taken (still has not) a dime from anyone that she had not worked for. When she went to the 2 Catholic priest in her parish for help, they actually told her that “she would be going to hell for adultery”. She found herself in a Catholic convent/home for unwed mothers in Cincinnati Ohio and was the only woman to walk out with her baby (me), while all of the other unwed mothers there had been convinced to give their babes up for adoption.

She still lives with the “guilt” of being an unwed mother in the 50’s. Yet she and my step father fed the Catholic church lots LOTS of “guilt” money on Sunday’s. Truely did not see this $$ spent on those who needed it.

One of the priest at the church I grew up in ended up being one of the biggest perpetrators of the molestation of young boys in the state of Ohio.

While I do believe there are “people of the cloth” who have a serious commitment to compassion and empathy. The perverse lifestyle that “some” in the Catholic system have and continue to live within the protection of that system is out of control.

Sell those fancy clothes priest boys! Give that money to the poor!

Hi Kathleen, and all,

We’ve got a Catholic household here and your story is, unfortunately, way too common. It’s like, thank you for giving us this opportunity to condemn you. The attitude I most despise in religious organizations and political ones is “being ‘correct’ is more important than being caring and lifegiving.”

As a mother of two daughters, I lean over to editorialize on the most fiery priest railing about abortion. He is formidable. I tell my girls it’s a complicated issue, you need to do your own research, and come to your own decisions about what you think. I often challenge what we’ve heard back at home, so my kids know it’s ok to, gasp, question. I know the Jesuits would agree with this philosophy.

IOW, it’s our responsibility to think critically and not follow blindly. I feel this way about political parties too. It’s not disloyal to think for your self.

Personally I see traditional religious organizations as manmade institutions that are imperfect. It’s human nature to make any gathering hierarchical, etc. The mistake is substituting any representative of God for God Himself. God has given me free will so I can decide for myself how to vote.

Thanks for the response here in EPU-land. I agree that something should be done, just think that if they can’t override the recent veto it’s that much more unlikely on the deauthorization.

I do like the concept of 2-months worth of funding and making Bush come back again. Gives more time for people to see that this (surge) just isn’t working and more support for an end.

I agree with you, but there is no chance of its happening without changes in perception amongst all Americans.

It would be truly wonderful if we could achieve a realist Administration which looked at which way up the US’s ‘bread is buttered’ and jettisoned the US’s economically dangerous one-eyed support for Israel, but, to get there…

Unless and until the citizenry have at least a gut feeling that this one-eyed support for our economic colony is misguided and inaccurate there will be no isolating of The Lobby, so no progress will be possible.

Without a sufficient number of the population’s understanding that what is promoted as history is in fact propaganda and fiction that will not happen. Palestine rightly belongs to its indigenous people, the Palestinians, and not to immigrants artificially supported to live there.

Once there, and the US stops propping up the Israel economy every year, and demands return of all the loans, Israel has no reason to bother to make any accommmodation and will continue its apartheid, genocide and land-stealing.

Those of us who are committed on the subject are gradually raising awareness that Israel has been refusing to apply Security Council Resolutions,with the US’s assistance for longer than Saddam was in power.

Quoting the Sec Council Resolutions in question focuses the targets on what we are saying. Personally I believe the territorial negotiations should begin with GA181!

I had dinner last week with Israeli-born friends of Yemeni origin who left because of the racism directed against them by the Ashkenazim (violent) Russian immigrants.

Yes, Professor Glennon’s testimony makes clear that Congress needs to pass such a deauthorization bill with a veto-proof majority in order to prevail. That’s why Republican support for the effort is vital. [Glennon also points out that the effort to end the fighting in Vietnam took as long as it did, for the same reason - because a veto-proof majority was required in Congress to revoke its very unwise grant of authority to the President.]

It seems achingly clear that our enforced Two-and-Only-Two Political Party system has stymied the intent of the Founders to make war easier to end than to begin… With only two political parties in our federal government, and the need to belong to one of them in order to get on the ballot for federal office, there will always be one faction in Congress trying to undermine the independence of the Legislative Branch. Because in order to “support” the head of your faction’s political party when he happens to be the head of the Executive Branch, with enough minority or majority clout for your faction in Congress (and enough scorn for your oath of office) the Legislative Branch is in effect made subservient to the Executive Branch, when members of one political party care more about their party power than our constitutional form of government (a la today’s Republican Party).

But the effort to end the occupation of Iraq, even though it requires a veto override, must nevertheless be made. It shouldn’t be the only course of action taken by Congress at this time, I’d agree. But I think a veto by the President of a majority vote in Congress to clearly and absolutely revoke the President’s (only) statutory authority to conduct the armed conflict in Iraq, would be a very loaded veto indeed. It at least puts the spotlight where it belongs: on the Constitution and the role of Congress vs. the naked exercise and abuse of power by the Republican political party, in open defiance of the duty to country and Constitution owed by elected public officeholders in our federal legislature.

There are actually more people being killed in ‘…..religious warfare and sectarian strife’… now, BY US, over a very short period, comparatively, than ‘…the centuries of religious warfare and sectarian strife that filled the histories of Great Britain and the rest of the “Old World”….’ I can say this, of course, because back then there were probably not even one billion people on Earth, including the now-probable 500 million in Central and South America until 1492.

Until lately I was a travelling salesman often in the South and was always amazed at the numbers of Jewish poiltical ads purporting to be ‘Judaeo-Christian’ aimed at the most basic Fundamentalists exhorting them to support Israel. Naturally they do not mention that Israel has focussed a lot of attention on driving out the remainder of the formerly about 35% of Palestinians who were Christian and also that they are systematically destroying Christian ruins.

There is an undercurrent of suppressed violence here in our society which is to a great extent religiously-based. The Oklahoma Bombers spring to mind together with the regularly-expressed Crusading aspect to the Bush/Cheney Axis.

[snip]

Yes!

400 years of violence and genocidal policies against “Indians” in the “New World” sink out of our awareness.

Here on the land of the First Peoples, we have a lot of forgetting to do every day.

Strong undercurrents of hate and violence…and the pious excuses for both.

But add this to the misogyny: the host of the dinner is St. Louis icon Bob Costas, who is divorced and remarried. Funny, Burke’s had no problems with Costas throwing this fundraiser for the last ten years or so.

*using my best Piper Laurie in Carrie voice* The sinner!