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Many countries have longstanding traditions, ceremonies, and holidays to honor their veterans. In the UK "Remembrance Day" is held on November the 11th and is focused mostly on the veterans who died in service to the monarch and country. A red or white poppy is worn on the lapel (for remembrance or for peace, respectively) in the weeks up to the date, and wreaths and flowers laid at memorials to the dead.
In Russia, a tradition was established after the Second World War, where newly married couples would on their wedding day visit a military cemetery. In France, for instance, those wounded in war are given the first claim on any seat on public transit. Most countries have a holiday such as Veterans Day to honor their veterans, along with the war dead.
Some veterans from the Belgian commitment of the Congolese to WWII live in communities throughout the Congo. Though they received compensation from the government during the rule of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, after his overthrow they no longer receive pensions.
Each state of the United States sets specific criteria for state-specific veterans' benefits. For federal medical benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, prior to 7 September 1980 the veteran must have served at least 180 days of active duty, after the above-mentioned date, the veteran must have served at least 24 months. However, if the veteran was medically discharged and receives a VA service-connected disability stipend, the time limits are not applicable.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
Birth name | Oliver Laurence North |
---|---|
Birth date | October 07, 1943 |
Birth place | San Antonio, Texas |
Placeofburial label | Place of burial |
Nickname | Ollie |
Allegiance | United States of America |
Branch | United States Marine Corps |
Serviceyears | 1968–1990 |
Rank | Lieutenant Colonel |
Commands | Marine Corps Northern Training Area, Okinawa |
Unit | 1st Battalion 3rd Marines3rd Battalion 8th Marines2nd Marine Division |
Battles | Vietnam War |
Awards | Silver StarBronze Star Purple Heart(2)* Presidential Service Badge |
Laterwork | correspondent with the Fox News ChannelUnited States Senate candidate }} |
North was at the center of national attention during the Iran-Contra affair, a political scandal of the late 1980s. North was a National Security Council staff member involved in the clandestine sale of weapons to Iran, which served to encourage the release of U.S. hostages from Lebanon. North formulated the second part of the plan: diverting proceeds from the arms sales to support the Contra rebel groups in Nicaragua (funding to the Contras had been prohibited under the Boland Amendment amidst widespread public opposition in the U.S. and controversies surrounding human rights abuses by the Contras). North was charged with several felonies and convicted of three, but the convictions were later vacated, and the underlying charges dismissed due to the limited immunity agreement granted for his pre-trial public Congressional testimony about the affair.
While at Brockport, North spent a summer at the United States Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Class and Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, and gained an appointment to the United States Naval Academy in 1963. He received his commission as Second Lieutenant in 1968 (he missed a year due to injuries from an auto accident). One of North's classmates at the Academy was former Secretary of the Navy and current U.S. Senator Jim Webb. Although a heavy underdog North beat Webb in a championship boxing match at Annapolis.
After Okinawa, North was assigned for four years to Marine Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. He was promoted to Major, and then served two years as operations officer of 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, commanded by then Lt. Col. John Southy Grinalds, 2nd Marine Division in Camp Lejeune at Jacksonville, North Carolina. It was through Lt. Col. Grinalds that North developed a deep personal commitment to the Christian faith. He attended the Command and Staff Course at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and graduated in 1981.
North began his assignment to the National Security Council (NSC) in Washington, D.C., where he served as the deputy director for political-military affairs from 1981 until his reassignment in 1986. In 1983, North received his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, which would be his last.
During his tenure at the NSC, North managed a number of missions. This included leading the hunt for those responsible for the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing that killed 241 U.S. Marines, an effort that saw North arranging a midair interception of an EgyptAir jet carrying those responsible for the Achille Lauro hijacking. Also at the NSC, he helped plan the U.S. invasion of Grenada and the 1986 Bombing of Libya.
North told Poindexter that Noriega could assist with sabotage against the Sandinistas and supposedly suggested that Noriega be paid one million dollars in cash, from "Project Democracy" funds raised from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran—for the Panamanian leader's help in destroying Nicaraguan economic installations.
In November 1986, as the sale of weapons was made public, North was dismissed by President Ronald Reagan, and, in July 1987, he was summoned to testify before televised hearings of a joint Congressional committee that was formed to investigate Iran-Contra. The image of North taking the oath became iconic, and similar photographs made the cover of Time and Newsweek, and helped to define him in the eyes of the public. During the hearings, North admitted that he had lied to Congress, for which, among other things, he was later charged. He defended his actions by stating that he believed in the goal of aiding the Contras, whom he saw as freedom fighters, and said that he viewed the Iran-Contra scheme as a "neat idea". North admitted shredding government documents related to his Contra and Iranian activities, at William Casey's suggestion, when the Iran Contra scandal became public. He testified that Robert McFarlane had asked him to alter official records to delete references to direct assistance to the contras and that he had helped.
North was tried in 1988 in relation to his activities while at the National Security Council. He was indicted on sixteen felony counts, and, on May 4, 1989, he was initially convicted of three: accepting an illegal gratuity; aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry; and ordering the destruction of documents via his secretary, Fawn Hall. He was sentenced, by U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell on July 5, 1989, to a three-year suspended prison term, two years' probation, $150,000 in fines, and 1,200 hours community service.
However, on July 20, 1990, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), North's convictions were vacated, after the appeals court found that witnesses in his trial might have been impermissibly affected by his immunized congressional testimony.
Because North had been granted limited immunity for his Congressional testimony, the law prohibited the independent counsel (or any prosecutor) from using that testimony as part of a criminal case against him. To prepare for the expected defense challenge that North's testimony had been used, the prosecution team had—before North's congressional testimony had been given—listed and isolated all of its evidence. Further, the individual members of the prosecution team had isolated themselves from news reports and discussion of North's testimony. While the defense could show no specific instance in which North's congressional testimony was used in his trial, the Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge had made an insufficient examination of the issue. Consequently, North's convictions were reversed. The Supreme Court declined to review the case. After further hearings on the immunity issue, Judge Gesell dismissed all charges against North on September 16, 1991, on the motion of the independent counsel.
Allegations were made, most notably by the Kerry Subcomitee, that North and other senior officials created a privatized contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, then turned a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the contras, and actively worked with known drug smugglers such as Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the contras. Most Contra associates found guilty of trafficking by the Kerry Committee were involved in the supply chain (ostensibly for "humanitarian goods," though the supply chain was later found to have serviced the transport of arms), which had been set up by North. Organizations and individuals involved in the supply chain under investigation for trafficking included the company SETCO (operated by large-scale trafficker Juan Matta-Ballesteros), the fruit company Frigorificos de Puntarenas, rancher John Hull, and several Cuban Exiles; North and other US government officials were criticized by the Kerry Report for their practice of "ticket punching" for these parties, whereby people under active investigation for drug trafficking were given cover and pay by joining in the Contra supply chain. In addition to the Kerry Committee's investigation, the Costa Rican government of Nobel-Prize winner Óscar Arias conducted an investigation of Contra-related drug trafficking, and as a result of this investigation, North and several other US Government officials were permanently banned from entering Costa Rica. North has consistently denied any involvement with drug trafficking, stating on Fox's ''Hannity and Colmes'', "...nobody in the government of the United States, going all the way back to the earliest days of this under Jimmy Carter, ever had anything to do with running drugs to support the Nicaraguan resistance."
thumb|left|Oliver North pictured with Clinton Township, Franklin County, Ohio Assistant Fire Chief John Harris and Lieutenant Douglas Brown at a public speaking event.In his failed bid to unseat Robb, North raised $20.3 million in a single year through nationwide direct mail solicitations, telemarketing, fundraising events, and contributions from major donors. About $16 million of that amount was from direct mail alone. This was the biggest accumulation of direct mail funds for a statewide campaign to that date, and it made North the top direct mail political fundraiser in the country in 1994.
His latest book, ''American Heroes'', was released nationally in the U.S. on May 6, 2008. In this book, North addresses issues of defense against global terrorism, Jihad, and radical Islam from his perspective as a military officer and national security advisor and current Middle East war correspondent. North is also a syndicated columnist.
From 1995 to 2003, North was host of his own nationally-syndicated radio program known as the ''Oliver North Radio Show'' or ''Common Sense Radio''. He also served as co-host of ''Equal Time'' on MSNBC for a couple of years starting in 1999. North is currently the host of the television show ''War Stories with Oliver North'', and a regular commentator on ''Hannity'', both on the Fox News Channel. North appeared as himself on many television shows including the sitcom ''Wings'' in 1991, and three episodes of the TV military drama ''JAG'' in 1995, 1996 and 2002. In addition, he regularly speaks at both public and private events.
Also, in 1991, Oliver North appeared on the first season of The Jerry Springer Show.
Although raised a Roman Catholic, he has long attended Protestant evangelical services with his family.
North is a board member in the NRA and had appeared at the NRA national convention in 2007 and 2008.
In 2008, American Dad!, an animated TV show produced by Seth McFarlane, aired an episode that had the Iran-Contra affair as the main storyline called "Stanny Slickers II: The Legend of Ollie's Gold" in which the main character, Stan Smith, looks for a crate full of gold that Ollie North had to hide before the Iran-Contra affair blew up.
Category:1943 births Category:Living people Category:American anti-communists Category:American columnists Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American foreign policy writers Category:American military personnel of the Vietnam War Category:American military writers Category:American political pundits Category:American talk radio hosts Category:Iran–Contra affair Category:National Rifle Association members Category:People from Columbia County, New York Category:People from Loudoun County, Virginia Category:People from San Antonio, Texas Category:Reagan Administration personnel Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal Category:Recipients of the Purple Heart medal Category:Recipients of the Silver Star Category:Recipients of the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry Category:United States Marine Corps officers Category:United States National Security Council staffers Category:United States Naval Academy alumni Category:Virginia Republicans Category:Reagan administration controversies Category:Fox News Channel people
de:Oliver North es:Oliver North fr:Oliver North it:Oliver North he:אוליבר נורת' nl:Oliver North ja:オリバー・ノース pl:Oliver North pt:Oliver North ru:Норт, Оливер fi:Oliver North sv:Oliver NorthThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Jim Moran |
---|---|
birth date | May 16, 1945 |
birth place | Buffalo, New York, U.S. |
state | Virginia |
district | 8th |
term start | January 3, 1991 |
preceded | Stanford Parris |
order2 | Mayor of Alexandria, Virginia |
term start2 | 1985 |
term end2 | 1990 |
preceded2 | Charles E. Beatley |
succeeded2 | Patsy Ticer |
party | Democrat |
children | Four |
spouse | LuAnn L. Bennett (m. 2004)Mary Howard (1988–2003) |
relations | James Patrick Moran (father)Brian Moran (brother) |
religion | Roman Catholic |
occupation | Investment brokerFederal employee |
residence | Arlington, Virginia, U.S. |
alma mater | College of the Holy Cross (B.A.)University of Pittsburgh (M.P.A.) |
signature | Jim Moran signature.png |
website | Official House websiteCampaign website}} |
James Patrick "Jim" Moran, Jr. (; born May 16, 1945) is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1991. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district is located in Northern Virginia and includes the cities of Falls Church and Alexandria, as well as a portion of Fairfax County and all of Arlington County.
Jim Moran was the mayor of Alexandria, Virginia for five years from 1985 to 1990, when he resigned to run for Congress. He defeated Republican incumbent Stanford Parris in the general election on November 6, 1990, and was sworn in the following January. Since then he has served ten consecutive terms as a member of the Congress. He is of Irish American descent and is the brother of former Virginia State Delegate and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brian Moran who currently serves as Chairperson of the Democratic Party of Virginia, as well as the son of professional football player James Patrick Moran, Sr.
Moran attended Marian High School in Framingham, Massachusetts, before earning a B.A. in economics (1967) at the College of the Holy Cross, where he played college football, and a Master of Public Administration (1970) at the University of Pittsburgh. Moran admitted in 1992 that he had experimented with marijuana during his early twenties.
Moran secured an internship in financial management at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and spent five years there as a budget officer. He was a senior specialist for budgetary and fiscal policy at the Library of Congress, and then was on the staff of U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations from 1976 to 1979 under Warren Magnuson's sponsorship.
He was elected to the Alexandria, Virginia, City Council in 1979. He was deputy mayor from 1982 until his resignation in 1984 as part of a ''nolo contendere'' plea bargain to a misdemeanor conflict of interest charge, which courts later erased. The incident stemmed from charges that Moran had used money from a political action committee to rent a tuxedo and buy Christmas cards; both of which were later judged by the Commonwealth Attorney to "fit the definition of constituent services", and were dismissed. In 1985 Moran was elected Mayor of Alexandria.
During the mid nineties, Moran co-founded and later co-chaired the Democratic Leadership Council, a coalition of Democratic lawmakers who report to be moderates when considering commerce, budgeting, and economic legislation, but will vote as a liberal would on social issues. Moran is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), the largest caucus operating within the Democratic caucus, which works to advance progressive issues and opinions. He joined the caucus prior to the 111th Congress.
In 1995, Moran had to be restrained by the Capitol Police after a shoving match with California Republican Duke Cunningham on the house floor over President Bill Clinton's decision to send U.S. troops to Bosnia. "I thought he had been bullying too many people for too long, and I told him so," Moran recalled. "He said he didn't mean to be so accusatory... After that, he would bring me candy from California." Moran claims that after the encounter he later found Cunningham crying in the cloakroom.
Moran was critical of the President during the final years of the Clinton administration: In 1998, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Moran was one of only 31 House Democrats to support launching a formal impeachment inquiry into President Bill Clinton. He told ''Time'' magazine that "This whole sordid mess is just too tawdry and tedious and embarrassing... It's like a novel that just became too full of juicy parts and bizarre, sleazy characters." Moran is also reported to have told First Lady Hillary Clinton that if she had been his sister, he would have punched her husband in the nose. Moran eventually decided not to vote for impeachment, explaining that Clinton had not compromised the country's security, and that he still respected him for what he had accomplished as President. He still proposed a resolution demanding that Clinton confess to a pattern of "dishonest and illegal conduct" surrounding his sexual involvement with Monica Lewinsky.
Moran has been voted High Technology Legislator of the Year by the Information Technology Industry Council and has been voted into the American Electronics Association Hall of Fame for his work on avoiding the Year 2000 crisis and his support of the IT Industry and defense contractors in Northern Virginia. He cosponsored failed bills in 2005 to provide the District of Columbia with a House seat and to prohibit slaughter of horses.
On April 28, 2006, Moran, along with four other members of Congress, the now-deceased Rep. Tom Lantos of California, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, and James McGovern and John Olver of Massachusetts; as well as six other activists, was arrested for disorderly conduct in front of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C., and spent 45 minutes in a jail cell before being released. They were protesting the alleged role of Sudan's government in ethnic cleansing in Darfur. According to the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', "Their protest and civil disobedience was designed to embarrass the military dictatorship's ongoing genocide of its non-Arab citizens."
The day after the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007, Moran told a local radio station that the assault weapons ban should be reinstated and blamed the National Rifle Association, which he accused of getting a "free ride", and President George W. Bush for blocking gun control legislation. He further warned that if gun control legislation was not passed, then shootings such as the one at Virginia Tech will happen "time and time again." He later dismissed charges that he was politicizing the shooting, telling ''Politico'' that "as a legislator, your immediate reaction is to think something could be done to avoid this. I don't know why the idea of figuring out how to avoid it is a political partisan issue."
A few days before the 2008 Virginia Democratic primaries, Moran endorsed Senator Barack Obama of Illinois for the presidency over New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Explaining his endorsement, he told a local newspaper that the long term goal of closing Alexandria's coal-fired power plant would be more attainable under Obama than under Clinton. Obama later won the primaries and later the general election to win the presidency.
In May 2009, Moran introduced a bill that would restrict broadcast advertisements for erectile dysfunction or male enhancement medication. He said that such ads were indecent and should be prohibited on radio and television between the hours of 6 am and 10 pm, in accordance with Federal Communications Commission policy. Later that year, Moran and former presidential candidate and former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean held a town hall meeting on the issue of Health Care at South Lakes High School in Reston, Virginia. The meeting was interrupted several times by protesters, most notably anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, who, along with about half a dozen supporters, caused such a commotion that he had to be escorted out by police. The incident was replayed several times over the next few weeks on television as an example of the tension at town halls that fall.
The following February he made a call on the House floor for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the military policy of discharging soldiers on active duty who are openly homosexual. He spoke about a letter penned by a gay soldier who was then serving in the Afghanistan War, who had "learned that a fellow soldier was also gay, only after he was killed by an IED in Iraq. The partner of the deceased soldier wrote the unit to say how much the victim had loved the military; how they were the only family he had ever known... This immutable human trait, sexual orientation, like the color of one's skin, does not affect one’s integrity, their honor, our commitment to their country. Soldiers serving their country in combat should not have their sacrifices compounded by having to struggle with an antiquated Don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Let's do the right and honorable thing and repeal this policy."
Moran is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, a position he uses to allocate federal funding to projects in Northern Virginia, usually in the technology and defense industries. He also assisted in authorizing the replacement of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, a bridge between Alexandria, Virginia, and Prince George's County, Maryland, which had gained a reputation over the years among Northern Virginia residents as the site of numerous rush-hour traffic jams.
On March 9, 2010, Moran was named to succeed Norm Dicks of Washington as the chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee. Dicks ceded the chairmanship of the Interior Appropriations subcommittee in order to replace the recently deceased John Murtha as the chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The chairmanship gave Moran authority over appropriations to the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the National Endowment for the Arts; among other things. Moran said he was excited to be able to play a role in protecting the environment and conserving natural resources. Moran became the ranking member of the subcommittee after the Democratic Party lost control of the House of Representatives following the 2010 midterm elections.
After President Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address, Moran was interviewed by Alhurra, an Arab television network. During the interview, he said, "a lot of people in [the United States of America]...don't want to be governed by an African-American" and that the Democrats lost seats in the 2010 election for "the same reason the Civil War happened in the United States...the Southern states, particularly the slaveholding states, didn't want to see a president who was opposed to slavery." The remarks received national media attention. The ''Washington Post'''s Jennifer Rubin said the remarks were "beyond uncivil" and "obnoxious".
Moran occasionally makes appearances on MSNBC, usually on ''Hardball with Chris Matthews'' and ''The Ed Show''.
He supports attempting to strengthen Social Security, calling it "a safe, stable, and dependable source of financial assistance for retirees and their families." He also states that he strongly opposes privatizing Social Security, saying that it would "cripple the system". It is his position that any changes to the current system must "promote its long-term solvency without disrupting the core principles on which the program was founded."
Moran says he supports Federal oversight of financial institutions. He voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) Reform and Accountability Act. He says he supports pay-as-you-go budgeting and believes "that the American government needs to strive to build up a surplus when possible, so that there are funds to support and sustain our country during tough financial times." Moran has also called former President George W. Bush "Fiscally irresponsible."
Moran has said he supports the redistribution of wealth, saying that "We have been guided by a Republican administration who believes in this simplistic notion that people who have wealth are entitled to keep it and they have an antipathy towards the means of redistributing wealth." He also says on his website that the recession was largely "a result of the imbalance in the distribution of wealth over the last eight years and an absence of oversight and accountability."
Moran does not support granting statehood to the District of Columbia. However, he has voted to allow Washington, D.C., to send a voting representative to the United States Congress.
Moran voted against authorizing the Iraq War in 2002 and did not support the troop increase for the Afghanistan War proposed by President Barack Obama in 2009, saying first that he appreciated Obama's "careful consideration regarding the U.S.'s engagement in Afghanistan", but later defining the issues on which he and the President disagreed:"Our security concern is Al-Qaeda, not the Taliban. Eight years ago we went into Afghanistan to eliminate al-Qaeda and the “safe haven” that Afghanistan’s Taliban were providing the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda has no significant presence today in all of Afghanistan.... Instead of increasing our troop presence, the U.S. should limit its mission in Afghanistan to securing strategic Afghan population centers with the troops currently on the ground."
Moran has listed the environment as one of his top issues, citing his high marks from the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club. He has used his positions as a member of the Appropriations Committee and as chairman of the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee to allocate federal funding for hiking trails and wildlife reserves in his district.
He has also voted to ban logging on federal lands and for stronger prohibitions of animal fighting. He has criticized the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for inaction on climate change, saying that "EPA had a historic opportunity to tackle head-on one of the greatest threats to our existence—global warming. Instead they balked under pressure from the administration, concluding the problem is so complex and controversial that it cannot be resolved." He has also endorsed and voted for the Clean Air Act and says that global warming is an important issue to him. In 2010, Moran also expressed discontent with President Barack Obama's decision to allow oil drilling off the coast of the United States.
On immigration, Moran supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants and does not support decreasing the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country or the enforcement of federal immigration laws by state and local police. He was a cosponsor of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform ASAP Act of 2009 (H.R.4321), which the House did not pass. He has been given an overall immigration reduction grade of D by NumbersUSA. The American Immigration Lawyers Association has scored him as having voted 31 times for the organization's position and 7 times against the organization's position.
He was one of the only 75 members of the House of Representatives to vote no on a bill that would cease federal funding for community organizer ACORN in September 2009.
The Lieutenant Governor of Virginia at the time, Tim Kaine, joined Republican lawmakers in calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation into the loan, saying that Moran had made "an error in judgment" by accepting it. In his own defense, Moran said that the timing of the legislation's introduction was coincidental and had nothing to do with the loan. MBNA spokesman Brian Dalphon said that the bank had offered the mortgage package not knowing that Moran was a member of Congress, and that the loan "made good business sense" because with the mortgage loan, "we improved our position by getting security for an unsecured loan.... He had credit cards with us, he was having financial difficulties; this put him in a better position to be able to pay us back from a cash-flow standpoint."
Moran apologized for the remarks, saying that "I should not have singled out the Jewish community and regret giving any impression that its members are somehow responsible for the course of action being pursued by the administration, or are somehow behind an impending war... What I was trying to say is that if more organizations in this country, including religious groups, were more outspoken against war, then I do not think we would be pursuing war as an option."
Moran's remarks were criticized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the National Jewish Democratic Council. Ronald Halber, executive director of the first group, said that Moran "uses several age-old canards that have been used throughout history that have brought violence upon Jews... He uses clearly anti-Semitic images such as Jewish control of the media and wealthy Jews using their wealth to control policy." He was also criticized by many House Democrats, including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Energy and Commerce committee chairman Henry Waxman, who said that Moran's remarks were inaccurate and "deeply offensive". House Republican Whip, the sole Republican Jewish member of Congress, and fellow Representative from Virginia Eric Cantor said that Moran's remarks were "bigoted".
However, Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of ''Tikkun'', defended Moran's position, writing in the September–October issue of his magazine that "It's the kind of statement I would have made to any religious community, or to any labor movement audience, citing their own failures to act as a critical factor in why we had gotten involved." Moran stood by his remarks in the interview, saying in a separate interview that the pro-Israel lobby had not represented mainstream U.S. Jewish opinion in recent years, most notably with its Middle East policies, which he characterized as directly aligned with those of the Bush administration. In a statement Moran further affirmed that it was not his position American Jews were responsible for the Iraq War, and that his remarks to the magazine were directed solely at AIPAC. It stated that Moran "recognizes the progressive nature of the Jewish community as a whole, and notes that if the rest of America voted the way Jews vote, the U.S. would not be in the war in Iraq today, and would have health care for all, and would not be involved in discriminatory treatment of gays or of immigrants."
In the next two elections, Moran was challenged by Republican lawyer Kyle McSlarrow. During the 1992 campaign, McSlarrow accused Moran of "lying to the public". Moran responded by portraying McSlarrow as a drug abuser, referring to the candidate's admitted use of cocaine and marijuana while at the University of Virginia. Moran compared McSlarrow to Parris, saying that Parris had ''"[t]en times more integrity than McSlarrow. He didn't create lies."''
Two years later in 1994, Moran's daughter Dorothy was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. (She is still alive as of 2011.) During the campaign, neither Moran or McSlarrow would utilize the same negative tactics used two years before. On how he would handle his campaign strategy that election, McSlarrow stated that "It would not be a community service to shut down this campaign, but I probably will not talk much about Moran."
Moran was challenged for reelection in 1998 and in 2000 by Republican and flat tax advocate Demaris H. Miller. During the 1998 campaign Miller accused Moran of flip-flopping in his support of President Bill Clinton, after Moran, who had been a vocal supporter of the Clinton White House, voted in favor of opening an impeachment inquiry into the President following the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Moran was challenged in the 2008 elections by Independent Green candidate Ron Fisher and Republican candidate Mark Ellmore. Moran beat a primary challenger with 86% of the vote. In the November 4 General Election, Moran beat Ellmore 68 percent to 30 percent. He received 222,986 votes, while Ellmore and Fisher received 97,425 and 6,829 votes, respectively.
Moran was criticized by military advocacy groups and conservatives for remarks he made at a local Democratic committee meeting where he said his Republican opponent in the November 2010 election, 24-year U.S. Army veteran Colonel Patrick Murray, hadn't ''"served or performed any kind of public service"''. Moran responded to the controversy by commending Murray's military service, while indicating that he used the phrase in relation to Murray not having engaged in "local civic engagement" and not having served in local office.
Murray narrowly defeated Berry in the June 8, 2010 Republican primary. Independent Green candidate in 2008 Ron Fisher was also on the ballot.
Moran was re-elected to an eleventh term on November 2, 2010 in the general election with 61% of the vote.
Moran is the father of four children, including Mary Moran, who works at the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA), and Dorothy, who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor during her father's campaign for reelection against Kyle McSlarrow in 1994. It was said at the time that she had only a twenty percent chance of living to age five, but after almost two years of chemotherapy and herbal therapies she was designated cancer free.
His brother, Brian Moran, is a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates, and currently the head of the Virginia Democratic Party. He was an unsuccessful primary candidate for Governor of Virginia in the 2009 election.
Moran, who was a stockbroker before running for public office, made more than 537 options trades, which had a potential value of more than $3 million, between 1995 and 2003; according to ''The Washington Post''. In 1999 Moran lost approximately $120,000 from options investments. During divorce proceedings, the attorneys for his second wife described the trading as "stock market gambling" in court papers. Since his remarriage to LuAnn Bennett in 2004, Moran's disclosure statements have shown him to have one of the most actively traded portfolios in Congress. Moran's Chief of Staff, Austin Durrer, has stated that Moran has not made any trades personally for five years as of 2010.
Category:1945 births Category:Living people Category:People from Buffalo, New York Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Virginia Democrats Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia Category:College of the Holy Cross alumni Category:University of Pittsburgh alumni Category:Virginia city council members Category:Mayors of Alexandria, Virginia Category:Northern Virginia politicians Category:Stock traders Category:People from Arlington County, Virginia Category:People from Natick, Massachusetts Category:Holy Cross Crusaders football players Category:Employees of the United States Senate
da:Jim Moran pl:Jim Moran sv:Jim MoranThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.