Thursday, October 15, 2015

What is there to investigate?

Of course it is nice that the media is starting to acknowledge what was obvious to everyone, that the only purpose of the Benghazi!tm hearings was to score political points. But it is pretty silly to open an investigation on the Republican-led investigation. What exactly is there to investigate? As I said, this has been obvious all along. We don't need to waste more tax dollars and time holding hearings.

Furthermore, am I the only one who still remembers what the point of Congressional hearings is supposed to be? There are really two points to them: (a) oversight of an agency in the executive branch that Congress has oversight authority over, and (b) fact-finding to aid Congress in the drafting of legislation. That's it. The are not supposed to be investigations for their own sake or for the sake of political circusing.

Republicans in Congress have abused the Congressional hearing process. But Congress does not have oversight authority over other members of Congress (it does have ethics rules, but that is a completely different process), and there is no legislation that can reign in Congressional witch hunts. So there is no basis for any hearings over misuse of Congressional hearings. The best way to cure that is to stop holding fucking hearings!