From all the crowing journalists do about busting
the occasional secret meetings of their school boards, city zoning
organizations or county commissions, you’d think they’d be going full-on Watergate-Iran/Contra-Colonel Sanders’- secret-recipe-hair-on-fire about the
closed-door impeachment hearings being held by Democrats in the U.S. Congress.
But oddly, not a peep.
There’s been a v-e-r-y
rare silence from Jim Acosta; Wolf
Blitzer must be tied up watching re-runs of the first night of the bombing of
Baghdad in the first Gulf War; George Stephanopoulos is apparently busy buying
himself another vowel.
No, us righteous wranglers of the Fourth Estate,
otherwise so bent on going to extremes to protect the people’s right to know,
are standing mute these past weeks about the historic abuse of power by
Democrats who control the U.S. Congress. Even among a national press corps so
demonstrably biased as the American mainstream media has been since the election
of President Donald Trump, one would think the conduct of secret hearings to
impeach a sitting U.S. president would raise just a thimble full of anxiety
from journalists typically so aghast at governmental secrecy.
After all, these Star Chamber-style hearings of
subpoenaed witnesses, conducted by Democrats in the House Intelligence
Committee specifically so they can be done in secret (the HIC typically hears
information on issues of national security), provide perfect fodder for
accusations of abuse of power. Before Donald Trump became president, that used
to be one of conventional journalism’s favorite and most justified targets.
In the grand old days of impeachment
hearings aimed at Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, a vote in
the House declared the body’s intent to formally launch an impeachment effort and those
proceedings were held publicly in the House Judiciary Committee. House speaker
Nancy Pelosi announced in an unprecedented move that there will be no
House vote, providing cover to Democrat congressmen concerned about their prospects for re-election in 2020, so they can remain off the radar of constituents. The move toward secrecy and away from public scrutiny also further silences House
Republicans who would be allowed to debate the issues in public. Because Pelosi and Democrats control the House, Republicans aren’t even allowed to subpoena witnesses in the secret
hearings.
Imagine for a minute if the investigation
into the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., had been conducted by
a secret panel. What if members of
congress closed the door on testimony by Big Tobacco executives back in the
1990s, or on Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault against Supreme
Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings? Would the
American press corps have mustered up an editorial opinion if those proceedings had
been covered up and kept from public view?
No matter your opinion of Donald Trump,
when a handful of congressmen have the power to attempt to threaten a legally
elected president with impeachment and keep the record, testimony and witnesses
secret from the American public – that ought to scare the hell out of you….unless
you’re Joseph Stalin.
But then again all the floodlights from
the past three years have been shining this direction since Trump’s election win
in November 2016. Democrats swore to impeach him before he even took office and have made numerous attempts
with the help of a complicit mainstream media – Stormy Daniels, The Russians,
Comey-gate, Mueller-gate, The Wall, Travel Ban just to name a few. Each week
brings a new attack, and the mainstream press has never tired of its role as
ally and collaborator, regardless of the number of failed attempts made.
Perhaps there’s an opinion to be rendered about a party bent on nothing short of a coup of a sitting, legally-elected
American president? It’s another perspective the American press is entitled to
ignore, and there’s no secret about that.
-Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.
-Dane Hicks is publisher of The Anderson County Review in Garnett, Kan.
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