There is nothing unusual about televising Congressional hearings.
When I was in elementary school, I came home to find my mom watching the
Army-McCarthy hearings. I did not understand what was happening, but
TV was new to our house. Anything on the screen was miraculous and
gripping to me. My mom believed what she was hearing from Joe McCarthy even
though she was a Democrat. Sometimes religion overpowered politics in
our house. McCarthy was Irish Catholic so he could not possibly be
leading us all astray, could he?
McCarthy operated under a belief
system that had nothing to do with the Vatican. His credo was that the
military and government agencies were infiltrated with "card-carrying"
Communists. Not only did he believe that the State Department, the
Pentagon, information services, and military research facilities were
crawling with seditious moles, he was an evangelist as powerful as Billy
Graham at the time.
Of course he was wrong. He was wrong in his
beliefs and in his methods, and he came to a sorry end but not before
instilling an undercurrent of fear and paranoia among ordinary,
patriotic Americans. Perhaps some petition signed years ago, maybe a
union affiliation, possibly an offhand remark at a party or in a bar - any innocent
past action or comment could boomerang and become one's undoing. They
spoke of him - the grown-ups did - in hushed tones.
Following an investigative report about the senator on his program,
See It Now, Edward R. Murrow offered the following.
No
one familiar with the history of this country can deny that
congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate
before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting
is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped
over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the
public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of
Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember
always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon
evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of
another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we
dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not
descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak,
to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
Joseph
R. McCarthy maintained a vise-like grip on the psyche of the nation
until Army representative Joseph N. Welch finally stood up to him with
the famous, "Have you, at long last, no sense of decency?" Only then
did his influence begin to erode. Only then could our long national
recovery commence.
Records of closed sessions, the ones we did not
see on TV, were made public in 2003-2004, a full 50 years after they
were held. Senators Susan Collins and Carl Levin prefaced the documents
thus.
Senator McCarthy’s zeal to uncover subversion
and espionage led to disturbing excesses. His browbeating tactics
destroyed careers of people who were not involved in the infiltration of
our government. His freewheeling style caused both the Senate and the
Subcommittee to revise the rules governing future investigations, and
prompted the courts to act to protect the Constitutional rights of
witnesses at Congressional hearings ... These hearings are a part of our
national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to
reoccur.
Congress is always investigating something.
Our two houses have a multitude of committees and subcommittees all
busily pursuing information. Sometimes committees work in tandem. When
the secretary of defense has a budget proposal to present, both armed
services and appropriations committees need to hear the proposal and ask
their questions. Now that we have C-SPAN, our government at work - or
not - has become more accessible than back in the day when McCarthy and
Kefauver interrupted the soap operas. It seems that important testimony
should, in our information age, be easily accessible and visible.
Last night,
Politico shared this.
Wow!
That's one way to get them all back to DC and on the job. But what,
exactly,
is the job? Originally, the Select Committee on Benghazi was
assembled to find out what went wrong there and how to avoid similar
incidents in the future. That commission has been retrofitted for
political reasons as Democrats on the committee made clear in a July 15
letter.
July 15, 2015
An article in The Hill
today reveals a letter from Select Committee Democrats to their GOP
counterparts accusing them of refitting the objectives of the committee
from inquiry and prevention into a political weapon aimed at the former
secretary of state.
Read more and see letter >>>>
So,
while public, televised testimony is as old as TV networks in this
country, the GOP is using its leadership power to prevent the public
from hearing a witness. This is unfair to Ms. Mills and to the nation.
Certainly all parties, including the media, are well-versed in cutting
into broadcasts when sensitive testimony arises. What is to be feared
from broadcasting Cheryl's testimony?
Given the true GOP agenda,
throwing a veil of secrecy wholesale over the proceedings succeeds in
accomplishing one objective, promoting the false and toxic allegation that Hillary
Clinton and her staff have something to hide.
Hillary has made
55,000 pages of email available, has agreed to testify and answer all of
the questions the committee might have, and has explained time and
again her decision to use a private server.
Cheryl Mills is an
accomplished attorney who served as legal counsel at the State
Department and was referred to by another witness in hearings at the
House Oversight Committee as the person who reminded him of the rules
of engagement for department staff interacting with members of Congress.
May 10, 2013
Spin:
Gregory Hicks, demoted for speaking out. Leaving aside for the moment
that you chose to speak to a Congress person without a lawyer present as
that terrible witch Cheryl Mills pointed out to be State Department
protocol....
Read more >>>>
Note: Hicks did not name her, but we all knew who advised him.
She
knows her stuff. She also knows theirs, and that is why she asked for
her testimony to be public. The GOP, and in particular, Trey Gowdy,
should honor that request.
- Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, leaves the White House after a
national security team meeting with President Barack Obama on Tuesday,
Jan. 5, 2010, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Someone should give us a reason why we should trust that we will see and hear all that we should. When I see this in the
Politico
article, I remember that statement above from Senators Collins and
Levin. I have a fear that it will be a 50 year wait before closed
session documents are released.
Republicans did not
wish to comment specifically on the Mills request but have said they’ll
release the information after they’re completed their entire
investigation and issued their final report.
Let Cheryl Mills testify publicly!
