The news about a man jumping the fence and gaining access to the White House was alarming. How can this sort of thing happen? He had a knife. He could have had a bomb. That was scary, but it’s not what grabbed my attention. What followed is what bothers me.
One would think the incident would have been the subject of serious investigation, where meaningful questions were asked and security procedures were examined. Instead, what followed was political theater when the House Oversight Committee decided it should investigate.
These members of Congress have failed in doing their jobs, but they sure can investigate. America is still waiting for an immigration fix, tax reform, and an answer to the continuing deficit. Our representatives can’t seem to handle those issues, but they can conduct an investigation at a moment’s notice. What’s the last meaningful thing you can remember Congress doing in the last few years? Think hard. I can’t come up with anything.
What’s worse is that the committee didn’t actually investigate how Omar Gonzalez got into the east room of the White House. No, that would have some required thought and probing questioning. What the members did instead was castigate Secret Service Director Julia Peirson. While she may have deserved a dressing-down, why bother to call the process an investigation when it was anything but. The hearing should have been called “an opportunity for politicians, who fail at their jobs, to make sound bites at the expense of another government employee.”
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at how the committee acted. After all, asking pointed questions, intended to uncover meaningful information, takes hard work. That’s just asking for too much these days from Congress, or am I just looking at this the wrong way?
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Jack D’Aurora writes for considerthisbyjd.com
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