Gerry Connolly

Characterizing Members of Congress and abusing and badgering witnesses, that is not the standard this subcommittee has set.

I must say----I object to this badgering of a witness.

I am urging my colleagues to vote for an alternative that expresses our sense of Congress with respect to the need for Turkey to have a lot more progress on the return of Christian properties.

This resolution is fairly simple. It recognizes progress has been made but much progress needs to be done.

We need to speak about human rights.

Turkey has been an ally that we are working with, a very important ally in the region, and I think that this sends the wrong message at the wrong time.

All of us want to see more progress in Turkey. This resolution shortchanges the progress that has been made.

I will be offering a substitute amendment that expresses our concerns about these issues but in what I consider a more balanced way.

But to have a situation like this and not have the decency to show up where 13 members who are their best supporters just makes it more difficult for us to assist them.

I want to know what they are doing in their country to stymie this exodus, because this is a humanitarian crisis.

It was very disappointing to me that only one Ambassador showed up, and I let him know that we were all very disappointed.

What are reasonable milestones for measuring progress though?

Libya is a bit of a morality tale about how limited our reach can be.

We have our own peccadillos and we can focus on those too.

I find it really interesting, by the way, that we would also, some of us, apparently, would focus on people who have obviously abused or misused their position at the EPA.

It is par for the course. We have done it, unfortunately, with a lot of consistency for the last four years.

Generally, when nets are that wide, what is going on is called a fishing expedition.

The chairman and I, Chairman Issa, have introduced a bill, FITARA, the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act--a mouthful--otherwise known as Issa-Connolly.

You can't have it both ways. You can't be cutting the IRS that kind of amount and then decry the fact that they've got antiquated IT systems.

But there are 22 States and the District of Columbia that have decided otherwise because they feel they have been held back at the Federal level.

We owe it to her and the other families in this country that may suffer from similar medical conditions.

I have long believed that the Federal Government governs best when it truly listens and learns from our States.

I believe we should act swiftly to reclassify marijuana in order to allow for legitimate medicinal uses and research.

That's an astounding statement, and it will be very interesting whether that holds up in terms of science.

I think the title of this hearing shouldn't be about this administration. It really is almost 40 years of U.S. drug policy with respect to marijuana through Republican and Democratic administrations.