BishopAccountability.org
	Will the House Majority Leader Change His Ways? Keene Sentinel April 6, 2011 http://www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/editorial/will-the-house-majority-leader-change-his-ways/article_5288b3d3-faaf-56eb-9bb1-a644c7b24371.html The most refreshing thing about recent public events in the life of House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt is a hint that he senses a difference between civil behavior and uncivil behavior. Whether this capacity will amount to much remains to be seen. Summary: Last week, outraged that John McCormack, the Catholic bishop of Manchester, publicly criticized significant House-backed cuts in human service programs, the 28-year-old Republican from Salem called McCormack a "pedophile pimp" who has "absolutely no moral credibility to lecture anyone." Bettencourt, who's in his fourth term, is not the only lay Catholic outraged by the church's sex abuse record. But he is surely the highest-ranking politician in the state to ever say such a thing publicly about any Catholic leader in New Hampshire. After a thunderstorm of criticism from all sorts of people, including the head of the state Republican party, Bettencourt allowed on Monday that he had comported himself badly. "My remarks and my characterization (were) unbecoming of proper political discourse in New Hampshire," he said. He said he plans to meet privately with Bishop McCormack Thursday. How the meeting between the two Catholics turns out is not important. Bettencourt's feelings about the church and McCormack are his business; his mistake was to let those private feelings, which are obviously raw, influence his statements about matters of public policy. But Bettencourt's assault on McCormack was not an isolated event; since being named to his current office, he has been part of a boorish band of politicians who have bullied their way through protocol and decorum in Concord as they attempt to, as they put it, set things right. Indeed, the tone of Bettencourt's attack on the bishop implies a lot about his standard of conduct in the Statehouse. In the case of the bishop, Bettencourt now says that he erred. Regardless of his political principles, he must now demonstrate a similar sensitivity to his behavior in the halls of government.
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