{"id":3069,"date":"2009-06-08T12:20:40","date_gmt":"2009-06-08T17:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=3069"},"modified":"2009-06-08T12:20:40","modified_gmt":"2009-06-08T17:20:40","slug":"closed-door-hearings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=3069","title":{"rendered":"Closed-Door Hearings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing, Republican members claim they were told “the truth that enhanced interrogation of detainees is effective.” The members did not offer details as to what they learned – but by speaking about this, they clearly violated the closed-door policy. As Democrat\u00a0Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky<\/a> said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI am absolutely shocked that members of the Intelligence committee who attended a closed-door hearing \u2026 then walked out that hearing \u2014 early, by the way \u2014 and characterized anything that happened in that hearing. My understanding is that\u2019s a violation of the rules. It may be more than that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reminds me of the recent controversies regarding Nancy Pelosi and the allegations of abuse of the Gang of Eight process<\/a>. Wikipedia describes it:<\/p>\n

[T]he\u00a0President\u00a0may elect to report instead to the\u00a0Gang of Eight\u00a0when he feels “it is essential to limit access” to information about a covert action.<\/p>\n

They are all sworn to secrecy and there is no vote required.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In each of these circumstances, the power of legislators to do their job – and check the executive branch – is curtailed by secrecy. This is a situation crying for judicial oversight – or for political courage. Either immunity could be offered for Congressmen and -women – allowing them immunity from prosecution for what they reveal of classified information; or perhaps, they could create some judicial process to force classified information to be revealed.<\/p>\n

This would help counteract the increasing trend to classify every document possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing, Republican members claim they were told “the truth that enhanced interrogation of detainees is effective.” The members did not offer details as to what they learned – but by speaking about this, they clearly violated the closed-door policy. As Democrat\u00a0Oversight and Investigations Chairwoman Jan Schakowsky said: \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[143,36,367,4,9],"tags":[1630,1881],"class_list":["post-3069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-law","category-national-security","category-politics","category-the-war-on-terrorism","tag-classification","tag-immunity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-Nv","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3069"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3073,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069\/revisions\/3073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}