House Oversight Committee Refuses to Oversee The House

This ended up being an update to a post I wrote on January 4, 2011. The idea came to me after I involuntarily burst out laughing at two juxtaposed articles on page 10 of today's Denver Post.

The First article was entitled House Panel Wants Freedom of Information Papers. It tells the story of our "other brother, Darrell" Issa, R, Calif., who is demanding documents from the Department of Homeland Security about their documented policies for reviewing Freedom of Information requests. As you might have guessed, Mr. McCarthy...I mean, Mr. Issa, seems to be requesting information which is already readily available on the internet. I checked. It’s there. I thought about doing my usual cut and paste job, including a few thousand of these government documents in my post, but I have already been warned about unwarranted wordiness so...not gonna do it. It’s there. You can go look.

I expect that what Mr. Nixon...I mean, Mr. Issa, is really talking about are documents about documents. Or maybe documents about documents about documents. If so, then he is not talking about the copious volumes of readily available material, but what he really wants is the deep and dark secrets, showing the filthy underbelly of Secretary Napolitano and her whole staff. You know, anything that he can use to fill the present vacuum of his second guesses, so he can have hearings about more second guesses about any and all requests for information that were granted or denied by the administration. And he can only do that...after he finds one he doesn't like.

Hearing about these fishing expeditions, which Mr. Gonzales…I mean, Issa, will call hearings, makes me think that, when he called President Obama corrupt and accused his administration of being the most corrupt in history, he did so in anticipation of finding actual corruption, of which he heretofore has not the slightest idea. But I think he may need to dig deeper. Mr. Star...I mean, Mr. Issa, I think needs to go after documents about documents about documents about documents. I am sure that there, he will find a word or two to fill a whole Fox News cycle!

As if that one article wasn’t funny enough, right next to it, was another one called House, Justice in Clash Over Constitution. Here, the U. S. House members are claiming that they enjoy complete constitutional immunity against any and all U. S. Department of Justice corruption investigations. The austere body of elected officials are trying to use the “speech or debate” clause to keep the FBI guys out of their freezers full of dirty cash. What we call graft, money laundering, and influence peddling, they call “legislative work.” And they are not going to take it anymore! What a hoot.

But, when you put the two stories together, you get a real sense of what the new House of Representatives is really up to and what I found so hilarious. Despite their campaign rhetoric, they have absolutely no interest in cleaning their own house, so to speak, but don’t mind spending enormous amounts of time and tax-payer dollars to dig up imaginary dirt on their political enemies. I laughed and laughed…and then I stopped laughing. And now, I am just a little bit angry.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo