Editors' Note: Many years ago, the Times fired their Public Editor, claiming that the job was no longer necessary because the Internets would keep them honest. In that spirit, we've appointed our own Public Editor who periodically shares his thoughts on what's in the Times, and, more to the point, what isn't.
By A.J. Liebling
Public Editor
The new Republican-run House of Representatives has got to be God's gift to reporters. With so much crazy running around, it's almost like there are too many stories to chase. So many lunatics, but only so many column-inches. That's why someone in the Washington bureau thought it made sense to provide readers with a “road map” to their plans to bring down [Surely, investigate? – Ed.] the Biden Administration.
We unfolded their road map and it drove us crazy, but not before leading us down one blind alley after another. It turned out their road map was missing a lot of important information, leaving the reader lost, dazed, and confused.
First stop on the map: the Weaponization Committee:
A special subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, led by Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio.
Substantive policy questions: This remains to be seen.
That sounds a little dubious. What's this Committee going to look at?
The text of the resolution establishing the subcommittee gives the panel essentially open-ended jurisdiction to scrutinize any issue related to civil liberties or to examine how any agency of the federal government has collected, analyzed and used information about Americans — including “ongoing criminal investigations.” It also gives the subcommittee the authority to obtain classified information typically only provided to the Intelligence Committee, including some of the government’s most protected secrets.
What could possibly go wrong? We've reached the end of the road map before getting some possibly useful background about the Committee's Chair, Jim Jordan. He's not just another Republican from Ohio. He's the same Jim Jordan who has concealed his extensive involvement in the January 6 insurrection that came within feet of overthrowing the Government of the United States and hanging Mike Pence:
Jordan indicated he doesn’t plan to cooperate with the committee’s request because he has “no relevant information that would assist the Select Committee.”
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| Is Gym Jordan's alliance with these guys relevant? |
Facts First: Though Jordan might not believe he has relevant information, what matters is that the Select Committee does. Committee Chair Bennie Thompson requested Jordan’s cooperation on the basis that he “had at least one and possibly multiple communications with President Trump on January 6th.” A January 6 select committee spokesperson said in response to Jordan’s letter that due to these communications he does have information the committee is seeking and is a “material witness.”
It’s worth noting that Jordan is a long-term Trump ally who objected to the certification of the November 2020 election in the House on January 6. In December 2020, Jordan attended meetings at the White House with Trump, then-Vice President Mike Pence, and a handful of other congressional Republicans to discuss how to overturn the election results. Ultimately, Jordan voted to overturn the results in the two states where Republicans’ objections made it to a vote – Arizona and Pennsylvania.
So the Republicans have put in charge of investigating subcommittee a man who ignored the legal subpoena of a duly constituted Congressional committee, participated actively in the January 6 insurrection, and to this day refuses to provide evidence relevant to determining the extent of his participation in illegal violent subversion?
Wouldn't some of that background help Times readers evaluate the likely role, purpose, and legitimacy as they, um, wrestle with the problems posed by putting an insurrectionist in charge of a wide-ranging inquiry into both legitimately constituted government and its efforts to protect itself from violent subversion?
As noted above, CNN thought this was worth noting. The Times? Not so much.
Moving along, the Times touched upon the second House Republican pile of whackjobs [Surely, Select Committee? – Ed.]:
What committees are involved: The Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is led by Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky, and potentially the new Judiciary subcommittee.
Substantive policy questions: The Oversight Committee says the purpose of its inquiry is to inform legislation to strengthen federal ethics laws....
Political agenda: Mr. Comer has pledged for months to investigate Mr. Biden’s family and its business connections. His staff has already obtained the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose business activities are under federal investigation. Mr. Comer and Mr. Jordan held a news conference on Capitol Hill detailing their plans to take the inquiry’s focus beyond the younger Mr. Biden. “This is an investigation of Joe Biden,” Mr. Comer has said.
Is there anything that inquiring Times readers might want to know about this Comer fellow? It's not like this loud proponent of fine Christian values like forced birth might have a skeleton or two in his closet, is it? That well-known Communist fake news source, the Louisville Courier-Journal, reported
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| “It's just a simple procedure.” |
A woman who dated gubernatorial candidate James Comer while the two were in college said in a letter to The Courier-Journal on Monday that he was physically and mentally abusive to her during what she said was a two-year relationship.
"Did Jamie Comer ever hit me? Yes," wrote Marilyn Thomas, who attended Western Kentucky University with Comer in the early 1990s....
In the four-page letter, Thomas detailed a relationship that she said "was toxic, abusive and caused me a lot of suffering. His controlling and aggressive personality alienated me from most of my family and friends at the time."...
In the letter, Thomas does not offer specific details of the alleged physical abuse other than to say Comer struck her. She told a reporter that she never filed a police complaint against him. In the letter, she said she had been "emotionally weak" at the time.
"Everything I did, everywhere I went, and everyone with whom I interacted had to be approved" by Comer, Thomas wrote. "Consequences were violent and swift otherwise."
She said Comer became "enraged" in 1991 after they visited a Louisville abortion clinic and learned that she had used his real name on a form requiring proof that she had an escort to drive her home.
...
Wendy Curley, who said she shared a dorm room at Western Kentucky with Thomas, said that Thomas and Comer had "a very rocky relationship."
"I would see bruises on her wrists and stuff where she'd say, 'Oh, I ran into a table,' 'I fell,' just that kind of stuff," Curley said....
She also said Comer took Thomas for an abortion.
"I know she ended up getting pregnant in like October of 1991 and had an abortion in the beginning of November, and I remember him seeing her to the dorm and just dropping her off after they got back from the abortion," Curley said.
Certainly a guy you'd trust to investigate allegedly unethical conduct. (Just as a side note, don't expect to read much more journalism like this in the once mighty Courier-Journal, now owned by the bloodsucking vampire finaglers running all Gannett papers into the dust.)
...Chairman Comer made news for two remarks (both seen in the clip below): calling Ukraine – which is fighting to protect democracy in Europe and thus around the globe – an “adversary” of the United States, and strongly suggesting President Joe Biden is “compromised.”
So Comer both supports Putin's violent Russian aggression in Europe and makes baseless charges about President Biden, who, unlike his crooked predecessor, is compromised apparently by having children.
We'd think that Times readers would be interested to learn that the Congressman in charge of investigations into “ethics” beat his girlfriend, helped her get an abortion (despite publicly proclaiming his opposition to abortion), and promotes Putin's anti-U.S. subversive agenda.
The Times thinks otherwise.
How about the COVID Committee? Now that seems like a subject ripe for congressional inquiry and oversight. How is it that the richest and most advanced country in the world suffered over 1,100,000 deaths and millions more seriously ill, while dropping virtually all public health efforts to control the pandemic?
Nah, we're just s***in' you. The House Republican COVID Committee will focus on:
whether the U.S. government should be funding so-called gain-of-function research, a narrow sliver of scientific inquiry that can involve tinkering with viruses in a way that could make them more dangerous. Such research is at the heart of Republican assertions that the pandemic may have been caused by a laboratory leak — a suggestion disputed by scientists whose research shows the outbreak most likely originated at a live animal market in Wuhan, China.
The point of course is to smear Anthony Fauci as somehow behind the epidemic (a lie pushed by bats**t crazy pride of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul), rather than to come up with any serious effort to evaluate the success of America's pandemic response program.
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| Cathy Rodgers has always hated the environment |
And which deep scientific thinker will be running this inquiry? Even though George Santos won several Nobel Prizes in medicine (according to him),
A special subcommittee of the Oversight Committee, and the Energy and Commerce Committee, [will be] led by Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington.
Perhaps Times readers would like to hear something about her grasp of science, not to mention facts in general. Spoiler alert: it's not too good.
She's a climate change denier:
In her 20 years in the House, she has compiled a strong anti-environmental record. According to the League of Conservation Voters, she has cast pro-environment votes just 5% of the time during her career.
In 2012, McMorris Rodgers parroted climate denialist talking points to the Spokane Spokesman-Review, falsely stating, "Scientific reports are inconclusive at best on human culpability for global warming." The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that humans are the major driver of climate change.
She told the same newspaper in 2018 that humans are "partially" to blame for climate change, but still opposed government efforts to curb the problem.
She's been lying about health-related issues for some time too. A thousand years ago, in 2014, she gaveg the Republican response to the State of the Union. She chose to highlight a manufactured Obamacare horror story, which turned out to be nothing more than a person who believed Republican lies and therefore didn't bother to sign up for the benefits the Democrats had bestowed upon her.
Her inability to distinguish fact from fiction in both science and health care might have helped Times readers evaluate her bona fides on the Lynch Fauci Committee. Again, the Times thought these details unworthy of mention.
What accounts for this reluctance to fill in the blanks in the Republican investigation road map? We'll make a few guesses. First, the Times presumes Republican bad faith and insanity and therefore does not regard it as newsworthy. Second, the Times may think that pointing out the sordid pasts of these esteemed Republicans might be considered unfair or slanted, even if true.
But the House Republican plan to convene lynch mobs under the leadership of already-discredited liars, cheats, election deniers, and fraudsters is news. Big news.
Why isn't it fit to print?
STOP PRESS: As the Spy went to press, it finally received a response to these questions from an assistant to Times Executive Editor Joe Kahn. He wrote:
How dare you criticize the world-famous Times Washington Bureau? What do you know about journalism? Have you ever written for the Harvard Crimson? We thought not. Why don't you just crawl back into whatever hipster hairy vegan hellhole you inhabit and let our brilliant, objective, fair-minded reporters shine their light without any more interference from the peanut gallery?
PS Please enjoy our special Opinion section today on the future of the Republican Party, featuring the brilliant insights of Kellyanne Conway and twelve ordinary typical patriotic diner-loving Republicans!
The Spy appreciates Kahn's thoughtful and nuanced response to our concerns.
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