Congress Gets to Work

Today, the Senate Armed Services Committee will be holding a hearing on the Bush Administration’s torture policies. While most people would say that Congressional oversight is a good thing, the editors at the Wall Street Journal today take issue with the whole idea of checks and balances and blast the very idea of Congress doing its job. Here’s the opening:

Nearly seven years after 9/11, the U.S. homeland hasn’t been struck again and
American civil liberties remain intact. So how does Congress say “thank you”? By
trying to ruin the men who in good faith set the legal rules that have kept us
safe.

Who knew that Congress’s job was to say “thank you” to the executive branch!? I must have missed that line in the Constitution.

Despite the rantings of the Journal, today’s hearing promises to be informative. Here’s the AP:

Military psychologists were enlisted to help develop more aggressive
interrogation methods, including snarling dogs, forced nudity and long periods
of standing, against terrorism suspects, according to a Senate
investigation. Before they were approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld, such harsh. techniques had drawn warnings from military lawyers that
they could be illegal, an investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee
has found.

We’ll be providing updates from the hearing throughout the day.