Once upon a time — before newspapers began their long, slow slide into potential oblivion — journalists were given a chance to learn from their peers.

While working for two newspapers in Texas, in Beaumont and in Amarillo, I belonged to a professional group called the National Conference of Editorial Writers. At its peak, NCEW comprised about 600 or 700 members worldwide. 

NCEW no longer exists. It has morphed into the Association of Opinion Journalists. I am no longer a member.

However, I was a proud NCEW member who thoroughly enjoyed the professional relationships I developed over roughly two decades. Many of those relationships have become deep personal friendships.

NCEW met annually somewhere in either the United States or Canada. The meetings lasted usually about four days. Members would gather at the location, get reacquainted and then take part in several business meetings.

I was able to attend NCEW gatherings in Lexington, Ky.; Phoenix; Ottawa, Canada; Baltimore, Seattle; Providence, R.I.; and Kansas City, Mo.

The highlight of these get-togethers always was the critique session. They were structure in a couple of ways: We could submit entire opinion pages or sections of our newspapers for a full critique, or we could submit writing samples of editorials or signed columns.

NCEW’s support staff would assign us to critique groups in advance of the meetings. We would pair up with another member and submit our work to that individual for his or her critique; the individual would send his or her work to me to critique.

We called these sessions our annual “blood-letting.” They could be brutal. Journalists as a sub-species of human being generally can be tough. Indeed, I heard stories at more than one of our annual meetings about editorial writers or editors being brought to tears by overly harsh critiques by colleagues.

I am happy to report to you that I managed to avoid such harsh treatment by my peers. One of my frequent critique partners, for instance, was Rick Horowitz, a humorist/columnist/writing coach who lives in Milwaukee, Wis. Horowitz writes with impeccable precision, but the good news is that while he demanded it of those whom he critiqued, he did so with kindness.

The sessions always were helpful. I always took plenty of good advice away from them. Sure, I shed a lot of proverbial “blood” during those critique sessions. Those colleagues who also are my friends didn’t flinch when they had the chance to assess the quality of the work I presented.

In the spirit of not taking myself too seriously, though, the good news is that we remain friends to this day.

If there is any aspect of my working life that I miss, it would be those sessions that spilled a lot of “blood.”

Vice President Mike Pence made a startling declaration just today, only hours after terrorists detonated a bomb in Syria.

He said the Islamic State “has been defeated.” Really, Mr. Vice President?

ISIS took responsibility for the bomb blast that killed several people, including at least one American. Pence, though, doubled down on Donald Trump’s decision to bring our troops home, out of Syria, after declaring too that ISIS has been defeated.

Today’s bomb blast demonstrates quite clearly that ISIS remains a threat.

Yet the president and vice president continue to foment a blatant lie about the fate of our sworn enemy.

Astounding!

I have heard it said many times over the past few days, that George H.W. Bush is the “last president who has seen combat.”

I don’t fancy myself as a grammarian or much of a wordsmith, but I want to quibble just a bit with the term “last president.”

It connotes that there will never be another individual who will have gone to war in defense of the nation. Granted, President Bush is the last of The Greatest Generation — the World War II generation — who will become our commander in chief. Those of that generation are in their 90s now. Korean War veterans are right behind them. The Vietnam War generation is in its 60s and 70s; I know because I am one of them.

However, as the latest midterm election has demonstrated, we have elected a number of veterans who have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Let us also not forget those who served in Somalia, or the Balkans or during the Persian Gulf War.

It is to the nation’s great credit that it is electing men and women who have answered the call to duty just as their military forebears did centuries earlier. They are serving in elective offices throughout the nation, at many levels of government.

One of them, maybe more of them, are likely to ascend to the nation’s highest office eventually. That is my hope, that they will carry on the tradition demonstrated by so many of their presidential predecessors — such as George Herbert Walker Bush.

The likely next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives doesn’t want the House to hurtle full speed toward impeaching Donald John Trump.

Nancy Pelosi offers high-minded reasons for saying impeachment is a non-starter: Democrats need to work with the president on legislation, impeachment would be too divisive, Americans have no appetite for it . . . blah, blah, blah.

I get all that. Pelosi isn’t giving the real reason for her public reluctance to impeach the president.

The new House will have a 235-200 Democratic majority in January. That’s enough votes to impeach the Republican president. Indeed, special counsel Robert Mueller well might give Democrats ample reason to impeach Trump once he releases his final report on the exhaustive investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians who attacked our electoral system in 2016.

Here’s the rub: Republicans will have a 53-47 majority in the next Senate. An impeachment would produce a trial in the Senate, where senators need 67 votes to convict a president on trial. That means all the Democrats — plus the two independent senators who caucus with them — would need to pull 20 Republican votes over to convict the president.

Do you believe that is going to happen, given the gutlessness exhibited by the Senate’s GOP majority? More to the point, does Speaker-to-be Pelosi believe that will happen? No and no.

The only possibility I could see occurring would be if a significant number of GOP senators declare they won’t seek re-election when their terms expire, which could imbue them with the courage they need to cast a vote to convict the impeached president.

Do I want the House to impeach the president? I’ll wait for Mueller’s report to make that call. I will stipulate, though, that my desire is that Mueller delivers the goods that include “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

My belief, moreover, tells me that Mueller is likely to reveal a lot more than what we know at this moment.

Some guy I hadn’t given a single thought about has emerged as a key player in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into The Russia Thing.

Jerome Corsi is an associate of Roger Stone, a right wing gadfly who is close to Donald J. Trump, the president of the United States. Mueller is trying to determine whether Trump’s campaign “colluded” with Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign. He’s also looking at some other issues related to this matter, including obstruction of justice.

I should not wish ill on anyone, but Corsi deserves some bad vibe.

This is the author, the guy who gave birth (pun intended) to the Barack Obama “birther” lie, that the former president wasn’t eligible to serve as president because he was born in Africa. Donald Trump picked up on the lie and carried it forward for years.

Corsi’s defamation is despicable on its face.

So was his involvement in the “Swift-boating” of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Corsi fabricated another lie, that Kerry — a former U.S. senator and secretary of state — didn’t deserve the medals he earned as a Navy officer during the Vietnam War. Kerry served on Swift boats during the war, was wounded in action and received several medals for valor. Corsi had plenty of help in this defamatory action; it came from none other than former Amarillo oilman T. Boone Pickens, to name just one man.

Corsi was at the center of that lie and sought to discredit Kerry in a shameful act of defamation.

Do I want this guy to escape the clutch of Robert Mueller? No. I want him to pay.