Democrats are still weighing whether and to what extent they will participate in the GOP's new #Benghazi committee, but with House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa
pressing forward with his own #Benghazi investigation, the new committee can't afford complacency lest they lose the limelight.
Therefore...
...the seven Republicans appointed by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, are scheduled to convene later this week for what a House GOP aide described Monday as an “organizational” meeting.
Moreover, the committee as already established internal rules. Among them, a rule guaranteed to bring a burst of even more hot air to the Benghazi process by giving committee members more than five minutes to
ask questions give self-absorbed stump speeches:
Granting select committee members, during panel hearings, more than five minutes at a time to question witnesses. [Note: It's a select committee, so that refers to all committee members, not just select ones. -JL]
If you've ever seen one of these hearings, you know what that means: It means committee members will deliver even longer prefaces to their questions. On the one hand, that'll make C-SPAN coverage of their hearings even more intolerable. On the other, the more Republicans speak about this stuff, the more they come off as rambling incoherent tinfoil conspiracy nuts.
Also worth noting: The committee will be given access to intelligence data that had been denied to Issa's committee and will also have the authority to review any document it desires from any other committee in the House. In short, not only will this committee be a dedicated to fueling the fantasies of every #Benghazi conspiracy theorist on the right, it will also serve as a giant raised middle finger to Darrell Issa. And that might be the best possible thing you could say about it.