WhatsappHouse Oversight Committees are a good thing. They provide a necessary layer of checks and balances to the power of governmental agencies. They are the main reason that people with enormous power in the Executive Branch and other branches of government think twice before doing things that straddle the line of legality.
Yes, oversight committees are bureaucratic and slow down the ability of governmental employees to implement policy. Many people in government literally hate them. But they serve as a safeguard to democracy and complicate the ability of any small group of people to usurp more power than they have been elected to.
It is a good thing that their ought to be representatives of both parties in the oversight committees in order to have as much balance as possible. It is a good thing that these committees end up being quite political in nature. That is natural. It is also good that they should be done in public so that as many people are exposed to the controversies that they unearth.
The problem is that the oversight committee of a secret agency such as the oversight committee for the FBI and other intelligence agencies cannot be done in public. Too many things are classified. That is why it is so important that there at least be a committee that is privy to the classified info. Ten elected Congressmen and Congresswomen who argue about the legality of actions by FBI agents makes sure that the United States does not go back into the J. Edgar Hoover situation. Hoover basically ran a shadow government in the USA for decades who scared the living daylights over everybody else in government with all of his closet skeletons that he kept on everybody else in power.
The United States is progressing on this matter. Ben Shapiro is right on in speaking up about the oversight committee’s hypocrisy. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
