George Mason, “the father of the Bill of Rights.”
Your 21st century American lifestyle may have led you to overlook “oversight.”
Perhaps you vaguely recall its mention during an American government class sometime in your educational past.
Thankfully, our founders did not overlook it, as they stated clearly in Article I, Section I, of our Constitution that “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”
Virginia’s George Mason made a compelling case for oversight at the Constitutional Convention, where he stated that federal lawmakers “are not only legislators but they possess inquisitorial powers. They must meet frequently to inspect the conduct of the public offices.”
Sadly, the conduct of some federal legislators leads casual observers to mistake congressional oversight hearings as a venue for partisan playground palaver.
Still other congressional hearings serve as a cure for insomnia. So deep is the dive into the technocratic that it defies description as either Republican or Democratic.
Dwight Eisenhower decried such stultifying detail as “sophisticated nonsense”; John McCain joked of “MEGO…” the acronym for “My Eyes Glaze Over!”
And yet, there are congressional hearings that compel Americans to sit up and listen.
The last day of February brought a first-rate example of such an inquiry, as Rebecca Kiessling testified before the House Homeland Security Committee.
Though trained as an attorney, she was testifying as a mother, having lost her two sons to fentanyl in July 2020.
Her emotional testimony served as a powerful indictment of the federal government’s largely ineffective response to the illicit importation of the powerful, poisonous drug.
“If we had Chinese troops lining up along our southern border — with weapons aimed at our people; with weapons of mass destruction aimed at our cities — you damn well know you would do something about it!”
“My children were taken away from me!”
Kiessling concluded her statement with an appeal that she must have known would go unheeded: “This should not be politicized! It is not about race; fentanyl doesn’t care about race!”
But in Washington, D.C. — where politics is the principal professionand where the next political race is always the most important — elected officials didn’t hesitate to politicize a tearful mother’s testimony.
The following day, during a “political field trip” to nearby Baltimore for an event commonly known as a “congressional retreat,” our politician-in-chief tried to advance the notion that he was victimized by Rebecca Kiessling’s testimony.
President J. Marionette Biden
Joe Biden stood before his fellow Democrats, wearing the half-grin of the cognitively challenged that he always displays when he’s about to let us in on a “little secret” which only he understands.
Ol’ Joe mistakenly thought that he could invoke the name of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, and use that as a “rhetorical shield” for his own response to the heartfelt testimony of a grieving mother.
“She — she’s very specific recently, saying that a mom — a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl — that I, that I killed her sons! Well, the interesting thing is — that fentanyl they took — came during the last administration.”
And then, Biden laughed.
Even worse was the social media response of a Biden backer from Portland, Oregon.
Matthew Slavin, Ph.D., must have picked up his advanced degree in cruelty and profanity. You see below what the not-so-good doctor posted to Kiessling LinkedIn.
“Big Guy,” J.D. Hayworth, Author
“You ignorant Trollop. How dare you try to score some cheap points for the traitorously criminal syndicate called the Republicans by holding up your dead sons in vain. It was Trump’s fentanyl. … You should go shoot your self.”
Don’t expect criticism of either Biden or his profane supporter in Portland from the Washington Press Corps; those “journalists” will keep their powder dry until they can lecture conservatives over some intemperate remark from the right.
Unfortunately, the oversight function also afforded the Fourth Estate by the First Amendment has transmogrified into an oft-deliberate distortion of conservative beliefs.
The “public sins” of the left are often overlooked by a partisan press … but increasing numbers of Americans are not forgetting — or forgiving them.
Written by J.D. Hayworth for The West Valley View ~ March 17, 2022