Common sense made a surprise appearance in the Democrat-controlled House January 30, as Democrat members of the House Committee on Natural Resources reversed themselves and voted to retain the phrase “so help you God” in the oath individuals are required to take prior to testifying before the committee.
As reported previously by Fox News, a Democrat member of the committee had proposed changing the oath to read: “Do you solemnly swear or affirm, under penalty of law, that the testimony that you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
In the revised oath, the phrase “so help you God” at the end would have been eliminated, and the words “under penalty of law” would have been added, in an apparent effort to add the weight that had previously been provided by the reference to God.
But after debate on the issue, along with a firestorm of backlash from Republican House leaders, on January 30 committee members voted to retain the reference to God in the oath. Among those criticizing the move was House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who quipped: “It is incredible, but not surprising, that the Democrats would try to remove God from committee proceedings in one of their first acts in the majority. They really have become the party of Karl Marx.”
As reported by Jason Calvi, the Capitol Hill correspondent for the Catholic EWTN television network, the vote to retain the reference to God came after the committee’s chairman, Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), conceded that the effort to delete the phrase had been a “mistake.”
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