This is your government at work, as reported in The Hill.
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present.
Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s reported sweetheart deals to VIPs.
For months Towns has refused Republican requests to subpoena records in the case. Last Thursday Committee Republicans, led by Issa, were poised to force an open vote on the subpoenas at a Committee mark-up meeting. The mark-up was abruptly canceled. Only Republicans showed up while Democrats chairs remained empty.
Republicans charged that Towns cancelled the meeting to avoid the subpoena vote. Democrats first claimed the mark-up was canceled due to a conflict with the Financial Services Committee. Later they said it was abandoned after a disagreement among Democratic members on whether to subpoena records on the mortgage industry’s political contributions to Republicans.
A GOP committee staffer captured video of Democrats leaving their separate meeting in private chambers after the mark-up was supposed to have begun. He spliced the video to other footage of the Democrats’ empty chairs at the hearing room, set it to the tune of “Hit the Road, Jack” and posted it on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s minority webpage, where it remained as of press time.
Towns’s staffers told Republicans they were not happy about the presence of the video camera in the hearing room when they were not present. Issa’s spokesman said the Democrats readily acknowledged to Republicans that they changed the locks in retaliation to the videotape of the Democrats’ absence from the business meeting even though committee rules allow meetings to be taped.
“It’s not surprising that they would choose to retaliate given the embarrassment we caused by catching them in a lie on tape,” said Issa spokesman Kurt Bardella. “If only they
would use their creative energy to do some actual oversight rather than resorting to immature tactics, but I guess we’re getting some insight into what lengths they’ll go to avoid addressing the Countrywide VIP issue.”Towns’s office said in a statement the locks were changed on Republicans “because they don’t know how to behave.” As for the video the GOP made, Towns’s office pointed out: “The minority is using taxpayer dollars to make these campaign style videos.”
Cato The Elder says:
Here’s the video of the Democratic congressmen skulking away when the meeting was supposed to start.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 12:07 amjosh bornstein says:
Neither side is covered in glory in this matter. Since the Dems are in power, I find their behavior here especially smarmy. Politics as usual. Sigh. (Beneath the calm exterior of Congress, lies all the maturity and stability of a nursery-school recess.)
Quote
October 21, 2009, 12:14 amPeteP says:
The same crap is going on in the Senate right now, too, where Hairy Reed & Co ( Liberal Dems only, please ! ) are reconciling the various Senate versions of the Health care ‘reform’ bill.
Reputed to clock in at around 2,000 pages of dense legalese, they will propound that ‘it must be passed in a great big all fired hurry’, and anyone who wants to read it or change it before voting ( or, worse yet, vote AGAINST it ! ) is ‘an obstructionist racist who is just trying to make President Obama fail because he’s black’.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 12:47 amPeteP says:
“(Beneath the calm exterior of Congress, lies all the maturity and stability of a nursery-school recess.)”
You owe an aplogoy to nursery schools all over the country.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 12:49 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
The VIP stuff is just a distraction. I think I have a VIP-type Mortgage (not from Countrywide) simply because, like highly-compensated politicians, I have an excellent FICO score. I’m willing to change my mind if someone shows me that Countrywide gave Congressmen a better deal than other top-credit customers, and so far, I don’t think there is any such evidence.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 12:56 amSteve says:
This is the same crap the Republican majority pulled for all those years. Very disappointing. One of the underlying problems is that the majority party enjoys virtually unlimited investigatory/subpoena power and the minority has virtually none, except whatever the majority decides to give them. Elections have consequences, but I don’t think the American people realize they are giving an immunity totem to the winning party for so long as they retain a majority.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 1:55 ambgates says:
so far, I don’t think there is any such evidence
And if there’s no evidence — and no one has suggested any impropriety besides the wingnuts at the Journal, NYT, and Mother Jones — there’s no need to investigate! Case closed!
This is the same crap the Republican majority pulled for all those years.
For example?
Quote
October 21, 2009, 3:06 amJake Foote says:
Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to The Party. Caution: The Party may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. If The Party begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head. The Party may stick to certain types of skin. When not in use, The Party should be returned to its special container and kept under refrigeration. The Party has been shipped to our troops in Saudi Arabia and is being dropped by our warplanes on Iraq. Do not taunt The Party.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 3:26 amDisintelligentsia says:
Fixed that for you Mr. Town.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 4:25 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Keystone Congress -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Charles Seymour Jr, Bisexual Porn Movies. Bisexual Porn Movies said: The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Keystone Congress: Jonathan H. Adler • October 20, 2009 11:40 pm. This i.. http://bit.ly/qANRg [...]
Jeff Hall says:
We need more legislators who “don’t know how to behave”.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 6:38 amNo Problem Here At All says:
Uh, no, so far there’s no evidence, and Towns and Company want to make sure there never is any evidence. If you read the Hill story, it says that Towns wants to wait until Eric Holder’s Justice Department completes its investigation of this matter. And you know how long these investigations can take...
Quote
October 21, 2009, 6:59 ammls says:
Obviously the Rs need to make a new video to the tune of “I will Survive”:
“I should have changed my stupid lock
I should have made you leave your key
If I had known for just one moment
You’d be back to bother me”
Quote
October 21, 2009, 7:53 amChris says:
Kansas v. Marsh issue in second paragraph–“Towns’ action” v. “Towns’s office.”
Quote
October 21, 2009, 10:02 amSteve says:
For example?
Funny how hardcore partisans have a way of forgetting how, for example, the Democrats were forced to hold a hearing on the Downing Street Memo in the Capitol basement because the majority not only refused to let them in the hearing room, but wouldn’t give them so much as a conference room.
The purpose of my post was not a tu quoque, however, because I am genuinely disappointed to see the Democrats acting as childishly in the majority as the Republicans did. The voters take note of such things.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 10:58 amdavod says:
“Funny how hardcore partisans have a way of forgetting how, for example, the Democrats were forced to hold a hearing on the Downing Street Memo in the Capitol basement because the majority not only refused to let them in the hearing room, but wouldn’t give them so much as a conference room.”
Was this really the reason the DEMS went into the basement?
Quote
October 21, 2009, 11:21 amEli Rabett says:
Payback is a bitch
Quote
October 21, 2009, 11:51 amShelbyC says:
Well, the dems acted just as childishly before ’92, too, and they got thrown out. Prediction: The dems will get thrown out again and replaced by repubs, who will act just as childishly.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 12:01 pmzuch says:
Prof. Adler:
I fail to see what the problem is. They could just hold their “sessions” in some storage room in the basement with no lights or microphones....
Cheers,
Quote
October 21, 2009, 12:45 pmSigivald says:
When the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee can’t do a vote related to its job of oversight and reform, on a domestic issue, you try and say it’s just like a “hearing” that was... unofficial in the first place and thus not owed any Congressional space at all?
Not official business and political theater (as a “hearing” always is), compared to a vote on the very business of a properly constituted committee, as if the two things were not just comparable but equivalent?
Very non-partisan, I guess.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 1:07 pmDavid (another sockpuppet) says:
Is there any way we can get someone to change the locks on the Capitol building and refuse entry to EITHER party? Then our wallets might be safe for a day or two.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 1:37 pmSteve says:
When the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee can’t do a vote related to its job of oversight and reform, on a domestic issue, you try and say it’s just like a “hearing” that was… unofficial in the first place and thus not owed any Congressional space at all?
Both cases are the exact same thing: the majority party telling the minority party that it can’t hold a hearing on something it wants to investigate. You have to be seriously in the tank for one party or the other to perceive a difference.
Quote
October 21, 2009, 2:35 pmDuracomm says:
Eli Rabett said,
Looks like the soaring rhetoric the democrats produced vowing to create an ethical congress and promising to drain the corrupt congressional swamp were lofty words with no substance behind them.
Apparently banks like countrywide are evil unless and until they are found to have been bribing democratic politicians. After they bribe democratic politicians the banks a paragons of virtue, always to be trusted, never to be investigated.
Quote
October 22, 2009, 4:36 amArthurKirkland says:
The Democrats should conduct the hearing, with a vote.
If the Democrats perceive a cheap-shot risk, they should respond with substance: make the raped-in-Iraq-by-contractors/rescued-from-the-company-by-a-Congressman employee of Halliburton/KBR a national story, forbid federal contractors from using arbitration provisions, and bar Halliburton/KBR from federal contracts.
Quote
October 22, 2009, 10:56 am