Ray, were you speaking about Murtha in response to Helice's defense of Dax when you posted about Murtha, Cunningham, Oswald, Arnold,and ex-Cathoilics?
Sometimes a posting may contain ideas that apply, not ONLY to the posting to which one is making an immediate reply, but also to other postings that may be found elsewhere but have a related theme. So for instance, at the moment we're taking about military service and what immunities, if any, that might confer upon the person with the service regarding what they might say or do following that service.
For instance, I mentioned Randy "Duke" Cunningham. He was a U.S. Naval aviator and a highly decorated F-4 Phantom pilot in Vietnam. In fact HE was the initial "force" behind the establishment of the "Top Gun" fighter pilot training program popularized by the Tom Cruise movie of the same name. If you're a regular viewer of the History Channel, you may have seen Cunningham as a featured pilot, recounting his exploits in the skies over Vietnam. In short, a war hero.
Cunningham ended up a Congressman from California. Well, that's not exactly true. He has ended up in prison convicted of taking bribes and kickbacks in his capacity as a high ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. None of his previous military honors did much to deflect the "current reality" of his being a crook in the House of Representatives. Still, he accomplished in Vietnam what he accomplished in Vietnam, and he is STILL one of the founders of Top Gun and he is still a highly decorated fighter pilot "ace" from a by-gone war. But he's still in prison, too.
Very often the political left tends to put up "unassailable" spokespersons to deflect criticism of their message. Recent examples would be Cindy Sheehan whose anti-war stance was deplorable. But anyone daring to disagree with her was quickly reminded how her son died in war and how can you criticize the grieving mother and boo hoo hoo. Disgusting!
Another example would be the "Jersey Girls" who have done some pretty incredible Bush-Bashing, yet anyone daring to disagree with them, notably Ann Coulter, was damned for being uncaring. "Oh how can talk like that about those poor, poor women who lost their husbands on 9/11? Oh boo hoo hoo."
And then there's the case of former Senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee who accidentally blew himself up with a grenade in Vietnam (that part of the story, of course, is conveniently overlooked) being sent to Crawford, Texas by the ever-cynical John Kerry to deliver a protest letter to George Bush, who happened to be in Washington at the time. "Oh how can you criticize poor Senator Cleland. Boo hoo hoo."
So a couple of weeks ago I heard John Murtha's outrageous condemnation of the "Haditha Marines" being defended on TV by someone who reminded everyone that, after all, Murtha had served in the marines. This was apparently intended to make Murtha bullet-proof to criticism. The reply to that was, "Lee Harvey Oswald was a marine, too. What's your point?"
Moving along, the reference to the "ex-Catholics" merely provided some immediacy to show how who or what you used to be does not necessarily mitigate who or what you are now. The correlation being that being an ex-Catholic doesn't mitigate current virulent anti-Catholic rhetoric I've seen elsewhere in our forums any more than being a former member of the military mitigates current vitriolic statements directed at the military in the Town Meeting.
Does that help explain things for you?