From the interview that started the conflagration, here is original quote that got Rep. Kaptur in trouble:

"If you think back to our founding as a country, we are a country of revolution," Miss Kaptur said in an interview this week.

She and the Rev. Jim Bacik, pastor of Toledo?s Corpus Christi University Parish, will speak at a workshop Friday for local Catholic leaders titled "Preaching and Teaching Peace in the Face of War."

When America "cast off monarchical Britain" in 1776, it involved the help of many religious people who had fled repression in other countries, the 11-term Toledo congressman said. Among the nontraditional American revolutionaries were the Green Mountain Boys, a patriot militia organized in 1770 in Bennington, Vt., to confront British forces, she said.

"One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown," Miss Kaptur said.

And here is how Rush Limbaugh characterized the statements on his web site: "Kaptur has dared compare bin Laden and his thugs to our Founding Fathers. (What was the Revolutionary equivalent of the Twin Towers?) What is this need to find moral equivalency between our founders and these monsters?" He goes on to say, "Bin Laden is certainly not fighting for religious freedom and tolerance like Washington, Adams, Henry and Jefferson."

Marcy never made a comparison between Washington, Adams and Jefferson and Osama bin Laden (especially considering that both Washington and Jefferson weren't motivated by religion), but rather with the Green Mountain Boys, who, before they captured Ft. Ticonderoga, were little more than a group of violent thugs and have ever since been dressed up in patriotic gauze.

In the Blade article, Kaptur went on to more clearly discuss her opposition to the comming war.

If the United States ousts Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and seizes the land, it would not resolve the underlying problems leading to political and social upheaval, she said.

"Even if we take the ground, we do not share the culture," she said, "and in the end we have to learn to coexist in a world with religious states that we may not agree with and find ways to cooperate."

Miss Kaptur, a lifelong member of Toledo?s Little Flower Catholic Parish, said her political and moral views were influenced by her family?s tradition of Roman Catholicism and service in the U.S. Marine Corps and Army infantry.

"Our tradition is to exhaust all reasonable means before one goes to war because our family, like so many others in our area, knows the price of war," she said.

The standards of the "Just War Theory," developed by Saint Augustine in the 4th Century, are not clearly defined in the present U.S.-Iraq showdown, Miss Kaptur said.

"I think that?s why there is so much angst and division over this because we?re in the gray area here," she said. "People of religious tradition are making their voices be heard very loudly on this one. I think there?s sort of an instinctual sense that something isn?t right here, and while they know there is a problem they are not sure that war is the solution."

The Catholic tradition calls for embracing the poor and the dispossessed, Miss Kaptur said. Rather than initiating military action, the United States should try to counter the poverty and repression that breed terrorism in the Mideast.

"I think food and education will help stem the poverty of the young people who are being drawn into terrorism every day," she said.

"The reason I think this is such an important moment in history is because the United States cannot become the target of the anguish of the dispossessed in the most undemocratic region of the world."

2:22:56 PM  #  

Last week, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (my Congresswoman) was falsely accused by Rush Limbaugh and The Washington Times of equating the Founding Fathers with Osama bin Ladin (even Paul Begala, in one of his stupider moments attacked her on Crossfire) Anyone in her district knows that any such accusation is ludicrous. Not only is Marcy herself religious, but she is intensely patriotic (she led the fight for the WW II memorial in Washington D.C.).

Yesterday, at a symposium about the war for Catholics, she said that she did not regret her statements, which had been distorted, but that she sees this controversy as an opportunity to step up her criticism of the Bush administration's Middle east policy.

One person fueling the controversy locally is Bernadette Noe, chair of the Lucas County Republican Party. Noe is easily the least-likable non-felon in Lucas County (I should note that I have, in the past, very tenuous personal contacts with both women. My admiration for Kaptur and my dislike for Noe are based on real experiences and not hearsay or innuendo). Noe, newly elected to the post, owes her political prominence in Toledo to her husband, who owes his political prominence in Ohio to a fortune made selling over-priced "collectibles" and from having his lips surgically attached to Governor Bob Taft's ass. Noe successes in the November elections in pre-dominantly Democratic Lucas County came from seizing on the missteps of incumbent Democrats and then misrepresenting those missteps. She obviously hopes such a strategy will work in 2004. She doesn't bother to find good candidates or run intelligent campaigns, she just pounces on the weak member of the herd. She is clearly hoping that Kaptur's remarks last week will give her such an opening again. Her chosen challenger for the congressional seat, the current county auditor Larry Kazala, is chiefly known for having the least-poorly run county office. While he is the most successful Republican in the county, that is unlikely to be enough against the wildly popular Kaptur. She is very strong in union, minority, Catholic, Polish and veteran's households in the county (and in Toledo, with the bulk of the population of her disterict, that's nearly every household fits into two or more of those categories). If she continues this vigorous defense of herself, she is unlikely to loose (she also opposed the first Gulf War, and she suffered little erosion in her support, even though the war was popular in Toledo). (Here is a brief bio of her that shows why she is so popular in NW Ohio.)
12:17:13 PM  #