Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Congressfelon Darrell Issa - Witch Hunter or Narcissist


Certainly the blasts of buffoonery that he refers to as "investigations" have been called witch hunts, but when all is said and done, the focus of attention has always been Darrell Issa.
From the plush chairman’s seat on the dais in the cavernous hearing room of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Darrell Issa peered down at Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen and offered a rhetorical pat on the shoulder, followed shortly by a swift verbal kick in the pants.

“You were brought in to do a very hard job, and no doubt you ask yourself every day, ‘Why did I ever ask for and accept one of the hardest jobs anyone could ever have in Washington?’ ” Issa said in the opening at a hearing earlier this month on the IRS’s improper scrutiny of mostly conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. “Unfortunately, you’ve been more concerned with managing the political fallout than cooperating with Congress, or at least this committee.”

Issa’s probes into that IRS scandal, the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012, the flawed Operation Fast and Furious gun-tracking program and other Obama administration controversies have thrust the San Diego-area member of the House of Representatives into the spotlight...

“Issa’s propensity to overreach and sometimes exaggerate shifts the focus from the investigation to Issa,” said Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar on politics and Congress at the center-right American Enterprise Institute. “The fact that he hasn’t gotten the goods at any point reflects poorly on the committee and its chairman.”...

Issa sought to increase the heat on the White House and IRS when he pushed a vote Thursday to hold Lois Lerner, who headed an IRS division that reviews tax exemption applications, in contempt of Congress after she invoked her Fifth Amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination and refused to testify before the committee.

Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, lashed out at Issa on the eve of the vote, accusing him of engaging in tactics that Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., used in the 1950s to smear Americans he suspected of communism.

Ahead of the vote, Cummings’ office released a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that found 11 cases from the 1950s and ’60s in which witnesses were prosecuted for refusing to answer questions after invoking the Fifth Amendment.

The CRS study found that defendants in cases that dealt just with testimony were either found not guilty or eventually had their convictions overturned.

“Rep. Issa’s approach as chairman has been to accuse first and then launch massive investigations to seek evidence to back up his claims, which he has yet to find,” Cummings said.
But when all has been said and done, one thing remains clear. Darrell Issa, like Joseph McCarthy would still be unknown without his public antics so they must continue.

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