You can say whatever you want about hominids, we are not related to any of them. The problem is at the top of the chain and not lower. DNA evidence has eliminated the neanderthal as a human ancestor(too far away genetically) and all other hominids are much further removed from us THAN the neanderthal. Trying to claim, as evos do, that we AND the neanderthal are descended from some more remote ancestor is like claiming that dogs could not be descended from wolves, and must therefore be descended directly from fish. I think I corrected you on this once before.
The only hominid for which we have DNA is Neanderthal, and it shows we are not closely related. But the lack of DNA does not eliminate other specimens as being in our ancestral line.
For the other hominids we have to rely on morphology. There is no problem with inferring relationships with several of the archaic humans, and from there on back.
This is one of the interesting specimens:
Herto skulls (Homo sapiens idaltu)
Some new fossils from Herto in Ethiopia, are the oldest known modern human fossils, at 160,000 yrs. The discoverers have assigned them to a new subspecies, Homo sapiens idaltu, and say that they are anatomically and chronologically intermediate between older archaic humans and more recent fully modern humans. Their age and anatomy is cited as strong evidence for the emergence of modern humans from Africa, and against the multiregional theory which argues that modern humans evolved in many places around the world.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/herto.html
I'm not quite sure what to make of those skulls just yet, they appear to be within what you might call a microevolutionary development from modern man and I don't see how they could be descended from neanderthals or anything more primitive than a neanderthal any more than we could. There actually is a reason why hominid remains turn up around the Afar triangle area, but it's a sort of a long story.
I don't doubt that hominids were real, particularly homo erectus and the neanderthal; I simply do not think we're related to any of them, at least not via any process resembling evolution. Moreover, when you go back to Lucy and her kin, I strongly suspect you're talking about monkeys and not apes or hominids.