Capitol Hill's Forgotten Knowledge: What Hearings Are For
Real Housewife vibes have replaced Advise and Consent
If you tune in to a Congressional hearing these days — something you should never do unless you’re a journalist, lobbyist, or masochist, but I repeat myself — instead of the scenes of diligent oversight, tough fact-based questions, or necessary debate, you’re more likely to discover a scene like this:
(Every time the lovely Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett slips into that voice, all I can hear is:) *fire alarm chirp*
The state of affairs is one mourned by Capitol Hill journos who yearn for fireworks with an outcome other than fundraising, as you can see in this Politico piece titled “The death of the Senate confirmation hearing” which takes the lesson from the Democrats’ Pete Hegseth flop yesterday that confirmation hearings just don’t matter any more:
The first — and at one time, the most troubled of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees — entered the Senate crucible today.
Entering his confirmation hearing to become secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth had been dogged by questions about his alcohol use, sexual assault allegations levied against him and his lack of experience at leading a complex government bureaucracy. His views on the prospective use of the military against Americans and on women in combat needed to be further explained.
But today we learned only one thing: after decades of smash mouth Senate confirmation hearings, they’ve become all but useless as a vetting exercise or a check on presidential power. Little that’s new about the former Army National Guard officer and Fox News host surfaced as Democrats predictably hammered away at him and Republicans steadfastly defended and praised him. The political stakes are too high to do otherwise — the Democratic base will tolerate nothing less and most of the GOP Senate lives in fear of the incoming president and the primary election challenges he might unleash on them…
The modern hearing format itself, however, doesn’t lend itself to anything more. Senators have a limited amount of time, and there are only so many ways to make a big splash or produce a standout social media clip.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) pressed Hegseth on whether he would resign if he drank in office (he declined to answer directly) and Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) gave the former Fox host a pop quiz, asking him to name nations in ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), which he failed to do.
These moments popped on cable news and on X, where various liberal influencers called questioning from some Democratic senators “mic drops” or argued that they “put the hammer down,” but the day ended essentially where it began — with Hegseth maintaining a narrow but seemingly secure path to confirmation based on the Senate partisan math, and little illumination of his character or qualifications to lead the Pentagon.
The only real news of the day may have come from outside the hearing room, when Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said that he remained undecided about Hegseth’s nomination, something of a surprise revelation given the ferocity of the attacks against GOP colleagues who, weeks ago, also admitted to being uneasy about Hegseth’s qualifications. Just today, prominent conservative activist Charlie Kirk warned that “If anyone in the Senate GOP votes against confirming Pete Hegseth after his stellar performance today, there will be a primary challenge waiting for you.”
This is the nature of the modern confirmation hearing process. They are useful in forging future political stars, speaking to the party base and advocacy groups or signaling fealty to the White House. They rarely are for the rest of us.
Yeah, but hey, some Democrat staffer probably thinks they won because they got Hegseth to explain what a JAG off is — and no, it’s not just yinzer talk.
For more of my thoughts on this, here’s today’s podcast:
Jill Biden Blames Nancy Pelosi for Betrayal
In her interview with the Post, the First Lady reflected bitterly on Pelosi’s betrayal.
“Let’s just say I was disappointed with how it unfolded,” said Biden about her husband’s sidelining. “I learned a lot about human nature.”
Asked specifically about Pelosi, Biden said “I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships.”
“It’s been on my mind a lot lately, and-” she continued. “We were friends for 50 years. It was disappointing.”
Jack Smith Was Dishonest About His Motives
Just before 1 a.m. Tuesday, the Biden Justice Department’s hand-picked Trump prosecutor, Jack Smith, released a report on the investigation that resulted in the indictment of Donald Trump on four counts involving the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The report did not have a lot of new information in it — Smith has poured out his evidence in filing after filing for more than a year — but it did contain Smith’s assessment that he could have convicted Trump had Trump not won the presidency and is thus no longer subject to federal prosecution.
What else could Smith say? That he had spent all that time and money, and stirred up the country so much, on a case he thought he would lose? Of course Smith would express confidence. He had no other option. Now that he has quit, he leaves muttering, “I coulda won, I coulda won.”
In retrospect, one aspect of Smith’s prosecution stands out. The single guiding fact of his prosecution — that he was working to indict, try, convict, and jail Trump before the 2024 election — was something he could never, ever admit. Justice Department guidelines unambiguously forbid such political moves: “Federal prosecutors and agents may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”
That is exactly what Smith was doing. Many Democrats, including President Joe Biden himself, were angry that Smith and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appointed Smith on Nov. 18, 2022, got a slow start in the Trump prosecution. Smith indicted Trump on Aug. 1, 2023, and by the end of the year, the prosecutor was racing to get the former president into a courtroom. But Smith would never say why he was in such a hurry.
In December 2023, Smith and Trump were arguing over Trump’s contention that he was immune from Smith’s prosecution. The matter was set to go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, but all of a sudden Smith made what he acknowledged was an “extraordinary request.” He asked the Supreme Court to jump into the case, take it away from the appeals court, and decide it once and for all. The idea was that the case was headed to the Supreme Court in the end anyway, so why not just eliminate the step at the appeals court and save a lot of time?
But why the rush? Smith would not say. Instead, he argued, “It is of paramount public importance that [Trump’s] claims of immunity be resolved as expeditiously as possible — and, if [Trump] is not immune, that he receive a fair and speedy trial on these charges.” If the case went through what Smith conceded was the “ordinary” appeals process, “it is unclear whether the [Supreme Court] would be able to hear and resolve the threshold immunity issues during its current term.”
In another paragraph, Smith said that the “public interest” in the case “requires immediate resolution of the immunity question to permit the trial to occur on an appropriate timetable.” And then Smith said it was of “imperative public importance” that Trump’s “trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected.” Smith was in such a hurry that he simultaneously filed the case with the appeals court so they could be working on it in the event that the Supreme Court turned him down.
And that is what happened. The Supreme Court told Smith he had to go through the regular appeals process, which meant he had to wait for the case to get through the appeals court before it could be appealed to the highest court. As expected, the appeals court ruled against Trump, who of course appealed to the Supreme Court. By February, Smith was urging the Supreme Court to rush, rush, rush to decide the case as quickly as possible.
But why should the court hurry so much? Again, Smith did not mention the election. Instead, he said that the public had a “compelling interest” of “unique national importance” in putting Trump on trial ASAP. Smith wrote that there would be “serious harm to the government — and to the public — [in] postponing the resolution of the criminal charges.”
All this time, Smith never, ever mentioned the election he was racing to beat. Obviously, if he said, “I am trying to put the Republican presidential nominee in jail before the election,” that wouldn’t have gone over too well with many people. But that is exactly what Smith was trying to do.
The Plot to Ban X in France
Clara Chappaz is the minister delegate for Artificial Intelligence and the digital economy in the government of Emmanuel Macron. At the weekend she appeared on a television discussion entitled ‘Trump-Musk: Are we ready?’
Chappaz, 35, is very much a Macronist, an entrepreneur who did her MBA at Harvard Business School before launching a successful start-up.
She expressed her growing concern about the direction certain social media platforms were headed, and the consequences for millions of French people who use them. ‘We have to make sure that wrong opinions are taken off the platforms,’ she declared.
The programme’s moderator interrupted and wondered what constituted a ‘wrong opinion’. A look of embarrassment swept the face of Chappaz. She had, of course, meant to say ‘wrong information’.
Chappaz’s faux pas occurred just days after Macron had warned France’s ambassadors about Elon Musk, declaring in an address: ‘Ten years ago, who could have imagined it if we had been told that the owner of one of the largest social networks in the world would support a new international reactionary movement.’
As I wrote for Coffee House, Musk is not the leader of an international reactionary movement, he is simply challenging the progressive orthodoxy that has prevailed in the West for much of this century. Their standard bearers despise him for it, and in France this hatred reveals how much Macron’s centrists have in common with the radical left.
They may differ economically – an entrepreneur like Chappaz isn’t going to have much in common with the communists in Jean-Luc Melenchon’s New Popular Front coalition – but socially there is little to separate them. They champion identity politics, they are in favour of free movement and they see no harm in censorship if it silences those opposed to progressivism.
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Tech
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A life shaped by father’s bedtime stories.
Quote
“Why, if there is anything in supply and demand, life is the cheapest thing in the world. There is only so much water, so much earth, so much air; but the life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents. Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.”
— Jack London