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Good afternoon, everybody, happy Wednesday! I hope you all enjoyed the poem I posted on Facebook today. It\u2019s about an Amish girl and snow, really sweet. I thought I\u2019d take some questions, but first I want to address something that\u2019s being weighing heavily on my mind.<\/p>\n

I have done some things that are contrary to my values. I tortured some folks. I understand why it happened, and I think it\u2019s important that we all remember how lonely, frightened and angry I was feeling after the Twin Towers fell. I was really furious, drinking pretty heavily at the time and the truth is that I wanted nothing more than to lash out. I think many of us were feeling that way, and I know that my partner-in-torturing-folks, Vera, certainly was.<\/p>\n

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But remember, Vera, who is a patriot, was under tremendous pressure at that time. She was working really hard at two kitchen jobs, unsure about whether to get back with her ex and had just had her bike stolen.<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s quite a bit to handle, and she was simply doing the best she could under difficult circumstances. However, having said all that, the simple truth is that we did some things that were wrong.<\/p>\n

Waterboarding violates my ideals and values.<\/p>\n

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Nothing, not even finding out where Vera\u2019s stolen bicycle was, and if it was her ex who stole it, is worth violating our values for. Vera and I crossed a line, and this needs to be understood and accepted, and we, as drinking buddies, need to take responsibility so that hopefully we don\u2019t torture any more folks in the future.<\/p>\n

Kids, let me say to you, torturing folks is wrong. It\u2019s not what Michael Murray stands for, and it\u2019s my hope that this sad series of incidents over the summers of 2011 and 2012 and 2013, remind us once again, that our character has to be measured not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard.<\/p>\n

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  Good afternoon, everybody, happy Wednesday!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2697,1357,194,276,1678,1026,2694,2696,2695,2693,661,333,699,622,2698,934,1469,2692],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4590"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4590"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4601,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4590\/revisions\/4601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/michaelmurray.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}