After years of deception and cover-up, the American people, through the hard work of their congressional representatives, finally learned the ugly truth this week about terrible acts done in their name but without their knowledge. While many of those responsible continue to defend their handiwork, the revelations are sure to leave a permanent stain on those in government who played any role in the atrocities revealed.
Of course, I’m talking about what MIT Professor Jonathan “the stupidity of the American people” Gruber was forced to cough up when he was hauled before the House Oversight Committee this week. Even Democrats on the panel took their whacks at the good professor, as he had to admit the misrepresentations and outright lies employed by President Obama and his Democratic allies to get Obamacare passed in 2010.
That said, it’s instructive but not surprising to contrast the attention given to the House Gruber hearing with the saturation coverage lavished on Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein’s release of the partisan Democratic investigation into the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques used on terrorists after 9/11.
The Gruber hearing, which included new revelations of inflated participation number for the Obamacare exchanges, was deeply embarrassing for Mr. Obama and his party. The Feinstein report (a dissenting minority report from her committee’s Republicans apparently disappeared down the media memory hole) was intended to be deeply embarrassing for the George W. Bush administration, the CIA and all those who fought the good fight in the global war on terrorism in those dark days after we were attacked.
Guess which story led the mainstream liberals newspapers and cable broadcasts (Fox News and this newspaper excepted) and guess which story was pretty much ignored (Fox News and this newspaper excepted)?
What’s most galling here is that of the two stories, the partisan hack job was clearly the Feinstein report, not the Gruber hearing. Just like their president, Senate Democrats are basically thumbing their nose at the American people and the choice voters made barely a month ago. At one point, amazingly, Mrs. Feinstein admitted on the Senate floor she and her fellow Democrats rushed the report into the public domain before the Republicans could officially take over both chambers of Congress in January. How that contributed to a careful and balanced presentation, she did not say.
The so-called “torture” report reflects a Democratic Party that hates the CIA and clearly doesn’t understand the meaning of fair comment. How do you write such a damning report and not even talk to the people whose careers and reputations you are trying to ruin? No CIA officials were interviewed by Mrs. Feinstein’s bloodhounds, perhaps for fear they would actually explain how the enhanced interrogation programs worked, what legal justifications were used, and what actual intelligence was learned from the terrorists.
Mrs. Feinstein’s argument that the enhanced interrogation programs produced no good information is plainly ludicrous, one that every intelligence officer and CIA chief has rejected. The irony here is that it is the chairwoman who is rewriting history here. Mrs. Feinstein was regularly briefed on all these programs. She knew — or could have known if she bothered to read her briefs — exactly what was going on.
By contrast, the Gruber hearing was an exercise in true bipartisanship — even Maryland Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the oversight panel, took a turn whacking the groveling MIT professor. And the witness was revealing truly shocking details of how the Affordable Care Act was falsely sold, while declining to say how many hundreds of thousands of dollars he was paid to help make the sale.
It may not shock you to learn that neither CNN nor MSNBC thought the hearing was worth a second of coverage in real time, even though the hearing dealt with actual lies told by our president (“If you like your health plan, you can keep it”) and the Democrats to get the law passed, lies we are living with to this day.
If you truly wanted a symbol of how our elected leaders mislead us, it’s an easy choice: Go with the Gruber hearing over the Feinstein report.
• Tom DeLay, a former congressman from Texas and House majority leader from 2003 to 2005, writes a weekly column for The Washington Times and WashingtonTimes.com.
SEE ALSO: Jonathan Gruber to face hostile House panel, tea party ‘I’m with Stupid’ T-shirts
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