I diaried this yesterday evening and woke up still pissed about it - why isn't the Dem's making a HUGE deal of this today???
http://thinkprogress.org/
Veterans Day Outrage: Conservatives End 55-Year-Old Practice of Hearings for Vet Groups
On Tuesday -- three days before Veterans Day -- House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-IN) announced that for the first time in at least 55 years, "veterans service organizations will no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees."
Remember that Buyer was handpicked by criminally-indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) to replace former veterans committee chairman Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who had been extremely vocal about the consistent underfunding of veterans causes.
The Disabled American Veterans, the "official voice of America's service-connected disabled veterans," just issued a scathing release calling the move "an insult to all who have fought, sacrificed and died to defend the Constitution." The timing, they said, "could not have been worse."