[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17976]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



            DO NOT VOTE TO CONDEMN UNTIL WE KNOW WHAT IT IS

  (Mr. STRICKLAND asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, it troubles me that sometimes in this 
Chamber we stand and say things that we ought not to say. We criticize 
people that we have no right to criticize.
  We recently voted to condemn a scientific study and an organization, 
an organization that has done as much as any organization in this 
country to fight child abuse.
  I wonder how many of us read the study before we were willing to vote 
to say that the methodology was flawed. I wonder how many of us were 
technically competent to make that decision.
  I believe that we ought to observe the Ten Commandments. One of those 
Commandments says, you ought not to bear false witness against your 
neighbor.
  When we say things about an organization or about an individual 
scientist that are untrue or unsubstantiated, in my judgment, we have 
violated that Commandment.
  We ought to have the decency not to vote to condemn something until 
we know what it is we are voting to condemn.

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