Evenin’.

Looking over some of today’s threads at emptywheel’s (especially here and here) has got me to reminiscing about the old days of the DeLay Congress and how information was managed under that regime, to the utter degradation of the legislative process. (It is not my custom to call people vermin …) Needing to refresh my memory on the tone of those days, I went rummaging in old clippings and bookmark listings.

It wasn’t long before I awakened that ol’ animus; those of you who’ve worried about losing that edge lately might give it a try. For instance here’s a commentary written by a fed-up former House staffer in 2006. She was on the Resources committee staff, so her examples are the Endangered Species and Healthy Forests Restoration Acts, but the GOP methods are quite general. Also I doubt that the fact that expected output in her article is a bill reported (or not) to the whole House where in our case the output was supervisory consent (or not) would be presumed to make a great difference in the chamber’s internal processing of information, though if anyone knows otherwise I’d happily stand corrected. From the article:

House Republicans have manipulated and truncated this process to rush their bills to a vote. As a result, the committee process no longer ensures that legislation is properly vetted. Hearings — when held — are mere formalities rather than opportunities for the public, experts and government agencies to provide information that might improve a bill. If a bill even gets a hearing (sometimes legislation goes straight to mark-up), Republican leaders often limit opponents’ time to prepare their arguments to change it. In June 2002, for instance, the Resources Committee announced a hearing on five bills a week in advance, even though the text of three of the bills was unavailable to Democrats, the public and the administration.

With that in mind, what in the world does Porter Goss think he can pull off? Or anyone else trying to create a tempest out of the notion that the minority members were the critical elements? (That we constituents would have held them to a higher standard of response than most seem to have shown is a different matter; my point here is that Mr. Goss can can it.)

Would the De-Lites that then were in charge of the House have violated their established protocols, in advance of discovering how serious the fallout of their participation in vetting the torture regime could be, in order to see to it that Dems would share the vulnerability? Maybe they would have, but somehow the idea seems awfully farsighted for that particular brigade.

Especially if they were convinced somehow that the torture program was the way of the true patriot and effective defender of the nation.