Benghazi Select Committee: GOP Makes Picks, Dems Negotiating Rules of "Kangaroo Court"

Speaker John Boehner announced today his choices to fill the seven Republican seats on the select committee that will be investigating Benghazi after it was created along a party-line vote yesterday. Boehner selected Rep. Trey Goudy (S.C.) to chair. The other six members will be Susan Brooks ( Jim Jordan (Ohio), Mike Pompeo (Kan.), Martha Roby (Ala.), Peter Roskam (Ill.), and Lynn Westmoreland (Ga.). The Hill notes Goudy and Brooks are former federal prosecutors. The committee has several other lawyers, but only one veteran of the military, Pompeo.

Democrats, who pushed to also receive seven seats but got five, aren't sure yet whether they'll make any appointments or whether they'll boycott the committee. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) called the committee a "political stunt" and even Gowdy admitted "everything seems to be partisan."

Pelosi is reportedly negotiating with Boehner about the rules of the committee before making any appointments. She says she wants a guarantee Democrats will get fair access to documents, a chance to subpoena witnesses, and an equal opportunity to question them, conditions she says they didn't get in a previous Benghazi probe. "We must have standards," she said at a news conference this week.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called the committee a "kangaroo court" and a "waste of taxpayer dollars," but says Democrats would participate anyway if the rules were fair. Partisanship par excellence.

The select committee is supposed to investigate security failures before and during the attack and cover ups afterward. Matthew Feeney reviewed the story so far with Benghazi—the alleged security failures and the efforts to control the narrative after the attack—for Reason 24/7 earlier this month.

Last November, I wrote about how the partisan wrangling over Benghazi missed an important point about interventionism:

Finding out whether (or when) Obama and his spokespeople started dissembling about the Benghazi attack is important, but it's ultimately less important than confronting the mind-set that will lead to more half-baked interventions that then lead to more death and destruction of American lives.

"It is harder to recognize Congress' role in the failure to stop the drone attacks that are still killing innocent civilians and strengthening radical elements abroad," Kucinich told fellow congressmen at the Benghazi hearing. "We want to stop the attacks on embassies? Let's stop trying to overthrow governments." Kucinich is out of Congress after losing his primary after his district was joined with another Democrat's. Democrats may not have anyone like Kucinich they could, or would be interested in, placing on the committee.

And check out Reason TV's Three Reasons Benghazi Still Matters:

Comments

[JWatts]

"Kucinich is out of Congress after losing his primary after his district was joined with another Democrat's."

That's disheartening news. I thought Dennis Kucinich was one of the best Democrats in Washington DC.

[Stickler Meeseeks]

The partisan bitching of Pelosi et al. on the lack of fairness regarding this issue truly reaches the heights of irony. They'd know a thing or two about wasting taxpayer dollars. I wonder whether or not they will conduct themselves with the same degree of high mindedness and seriousness on this as they have on the IRS scandal.

[LizzyMikezbuk]

my co-worker's step-mother makes $63 /hour on the computer . She has been without a job for eight months but last month her payment was $19211 just working on the computer for a few hours. try this site......
http://www.Works23.us

[Game of Thrones fan]

Your co-worker's step-mother is a lying whore with a cunt mouth.

[SiliconDoc]

Can the administration succeed in lying to us forever on this matter ?

We are told to believe without a doubt the official JFK single assassin story. Years (almost 2 decades I think) later some House committee half concluded something happened but they said they didn't know what.

Currently our sham of a potus is hiding all sorts of personal history truths and offered a forged digital compilation BC as "evidence" to We The People.

No one seems to be capable of seriously believing the government anymore, and it appears there are multiple stovepipes that can hide everything from everyone else, forever, even in the face of public evidence for criminal convictions that flow from surrounding government parties.

So expect nothing. The criminally active stove-piped government groupings with effective total secrecy is likely in the hundreds and the whole truth disclosed in even a tenth of current situations this year would probably cause national congressional, executive and supreme recall across the board.

Zero confidence is a terrible understatement.

[american socialist]

We must hump Ambassador Stevens' corpse until someone, someday cares about where exactly Susan Rice got her information from. Was it the CIA, the FBI, the Obama WH? Stay tuned as top sleuth (2009-)Darrell Issa, who carried out his investigations into the Iraq War with unflagging tenacity, carries this fishing expedition into the 22nd century.

Here's my idea for the Democratic minority... Investigate why libertarians support a multi-million dollar investigation into why 4 u.s. Citizens died in a unstable and chaotic country with a long history of anti-Americanism.

[Craig@NC]

As was the case in 2012, the current administration just needs to delay and then marginalize any findings until the 2014 elections pass. I don't think Hillary Clinton stands much chance of the whole thing going away entirely before her 2016 presidential bid (if that ever happens) but they may be able to sell this as some brand of witch hunt conspiracy theory long enough to make a run at the House in November. In other words, I think the administration is solely concerned with election cycle politics and has no interest in complying with any Constitutionally-mandated congressional oversight.

For avid, blind supporters of the current administration, I'd ask them to contemplate the sort of precedent this is setting and what they'll think years down the road when a GOP White House has a stronger case for ignoring Congressional oversight entirely.