I’ve written elsewhere about the troubling nature of the Democrats’ reluctance to actively investigate the Benghazi failure.
Now, after weeks of publicly professed angst, the Democrats have agreed to appoint members to the House Select Committee whose express purpose is to investigate that mess.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) named her members while insisting that
Democrats’ participation was the only way to assure Americans of a “fair process.”
She also claimed that Democrats must participate in order
to make [the investigation] a “fair process” and to bring “openness and transparency” to the investigation.
Elijah Cummings (D, MD), the Ranking Democrat on the Select Committee, added this:
I believe we need someone in the room to simply defend the truth.
With the Democrats approaching this insisting that Republicans are fundamentally dishonest, though, how will it be possible to trust the Democrats’ objectivity, and their own integrity, as they pretend to carry out their responsibilities on this committee and during this investigation?
Oh, and Congressman Pelosi: you keep using this term “openness and transparency.” I do not think it means what you think it means.
Can’t we move on to more important issues facing our country?! This is a dog and pony show to attack Hillary before 2016 and continue to stonewall Obama on every relevant issue. At every turn of the corner, the blame is placed solely on the POTUS as if he were an Emperor without a system of checks and balances. Watch the GOP apply the blackface and bamboozle our President at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2012/10/bamboozling-obama.html
The only one who’s talking about Clinton is you, Mr Alinsky. As to “stonewalling” Obama, bad ideas should be prevented from coming to fruition–and every idea Obama has put up has been terrible–as even he realizes with his Red Line ideas, away from which he’s walked every time another nation has called him on it.
Blame POTUS for “every turn of the corner?” Well, he is the guy in charge, as one of his predecessors, the Democratic President Harry Truman clearly understood. He keeps talking about holding people accountable, from Fast and Furious through Benghazi through the IRS to (so far) the VA. But that seems to be another bad idea that he’s stonewalling himself, as he’s actually held no one accountable.
Checks and balances? Indeed, what checks and balances? Executive Orders bypassing the people’s representatives–who were elected to limit government, just as Obama was elected to expand it (and that’s more a matter of us American citizens being conflicted than it is one party’s impudent demurral from Progressive demands). And EPA rules, approved by Obama, that do the very things Congress explicitly rejected. Immigration rules, also approved by Obama, that do the very things Congress explicitly rejected. Selective enforcement of laws, rejecting those he’s sworn to enforce whenever he disagrees with them.
Let’s say you’re right, though, on the particular matter of the Select Committee just being a tool to get Clinton before 2016. The Democrats on the Committee should be champing at the bit to get all those data out in front of the Committee and the press, especially the enormous number of documents that the White House still is withholding and/or heavily redacting (25,000 documents released all ready? A drop in the bucket compared to the number still withheld.): get them widely publicized. If you’re right, and this is just a Republican hatchet job, that’ll become painfully obvious in short order, and the Republicans will be blown up in 2016 for their mendacity.
Why, then, are the Democrats so reluctant to get those docs out in front of us?
Eric Hines