A Commitment to . . . Commissions?
When the GOP controls Congress in January, their "Commitment to America" promises oversight and investigations of Biden Administration and DOJ malfeasance. Here's a good idea from Conrad Black.
A favorite writer is Lord Conrad Black. The Quebec-born Canadian media mogul and British subject writes for Canada’s estimable National Post and a relatively new media outlet, the New York Sun. His work occasionally surfaces elsewhere.
Below, he outlines how the “Church Commission” - not named after a place of worship but an aggressive partisan Democratic Senator from Idaho and staunch CIA critic from the 1970s - is a valuable template for a like-minded commission to investigate political infiltration and abuses at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and our intelligence agencies. It resulted in useful reforms.
House GOP Leader and Speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) unveiled his caucus’s “Commitment to America” on Thursday and Friday. Under the headline “Hold Washington Accountable,” they promise serious oversight on six topics, from the disgraceful tragedy at the southern border and fentanyl overdoses (they’re related) and the origins of Covid to the shameful 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal and the politicization of the Justice Department, including the FBI and our intelligence agencies. Let’s hope they do what they promise when they win in November.
They can accomplish this in a few ways, from regular “oversight,” coupled with new subpoena power, to “special” or “select committees,” even bipartisan, bicameral congressional commissions to do the job. It makes no sense to involve the deeply corrupted Biden Administration in their constructs other than having them conscripted as duly sworn if uncooperative and stonewalling witnesses.
And that makes total sense. With GOP control of Congress as the Biden crew amble towards a reelection campaign (I still don’t believe Biden will run for reelection), they expect House and Senate Republicans to overreach and dispatch legislation that our infirm President will ceremoniously veto and triangulate to divide Republicans. It’s what Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did, with much success, after the 1994 and 2010 elections. Republicans hopefully will show they’ve learned their lessons by focusing on oversight and investigations. Save the legislative accomplishments when a GOP President is elected in 2024 if they don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
McCarthy should resist the urge to follow outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s highly partisan “January 6th” committee approach. However, removing the deeply partisan and corrupt Adam Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee should be a priority. A serious ethics investigation into his illegal media leaks could precede his expulsion from the committee, but why wait? He’s a bad actor and a serious threat to national security.
From a media perspective, running all these investigations and oversight activities simultaneously is OK, with some coordination on days when blockbuster disclosures or hearings occur. It will keep the media busy so long as the GOP plays offense, which is not normal for them. And candidly, they will need to play the media as Democrats have done expertly for decades. A single congressional hearing should be worth at least 3 days of well-executed media, from pre-hearing leaks to post-hearing reactions for action.
The legislative showdowns will come from budget and reconciliation bills. And if Biden vetoes smartly-crafted bills, he will be responsible for “shutting down the government.” The mainstream media, of course, will gaslight otherwise. But most people are onto their game by now. As we know, only mindless sheep trust the media these days.
I’ve already suggested a serious, inclusive, bipartisan commission on how the federal government and the states responded to and managed the pandemic. In the meantime, I’m happy to share suggestions from Lord Black and others about how they should model oversight on other topics. More to come.
A Bipartisan Commission Is the Tried and True Way To Probe the Conduct of the FBI, Intelligence Agencies
The committee headed in the 1970s by Senator Church would be a good template.
There has been a good deal of discussion about the virtues of resurrecting something like Senator Frank Church’s committee that in the mid-1970s inquired into the conduct of the FBI, senior intelligence agencies, and the IRS. He was at the time a somewhat notoriously partisan liberal Democrat, but also on the committee were such eminent figures as Barry Goldwater, Howard Baker, Walter Mondale, John Tower, Philip Hart, and Gary Hart.
The committee’s report was not rabidly partisan, and it led to executive orders from Presidents Ford and Carter banning “political assassination.” It would not be easy today to identify anyone who might be so effective and as little suspected of inappropriately partisan motives, but by most definitions, political assassination is a principal pastime of the political process and national press.
No former president or presidential candidate or vice president is adequately youthful or credible as a nonpartisan or bipartisan figure to lead such an inquiry now. It is a terribly unpromising climate and atmosphere for such a mission. The respected filmmaker but rather predictable leftist, Ken Burns, was on television over the weekend comparing sending 50 illegally arrived migrants across the Texas border to Martha’s Vineyard with the actions of Nazi governments.
As an aside on the general subject, I wish to record my agreement with my good and flamboyant friend Ann Coulter who has awarded her not widely coveted “Pompous Douchebag of the Week” citation to the chief counsel of the Mueller Commission, Andrew Weissmann, and his slavish Harvard comrade Laurence Tribe.
It went to Mr. Weissmann for circulating photographs of a 1939 Deutsch-America Bund rally with the audience giving the straight right arm Nazi salute and a recent Trump rally in Ohio where the audience are largely raising their right arms vertically with the index finger extended signifying unideological, usually sports, success. Mr. Weissmann’s email address includes the words “Citizens for Ethics,” and Mr. Tribe emailed back his admiration for Mr. Weissmann’s “courage.”
They are illustrative of the mental sickness and moral bankruptcy of the American professional and academic left. And they exhibit far more evident and disconcerting Nazi tendencies than have ever been discernible in the conduct of Donald Trump (of whom Ann Coulter is not an admirer). A former Republican attorney general, Alberto Rodriquez, might be suitable for such a task, and a former Democratic senator from Virginia, Jim Webb, if he were willing and able.
They are examples of possible chairmen, and perhaps some more current people, such as the outgoing Republican senator, Rob Portman, or even the incumbent Delaware senator, Chris Coons, might be acceptable, despite Mr. Coons’ intimacy with the Bidens. Many current and retired judges and justices would be reliable. No conscientious observer can dispute that such an inquiry, if seriously conducted, would be vitally useful and timely.
Finish the rest here.