When I first read this report by Sean Higgins of the Washington Examiner, I couldn’t help but notice that Eleanor Holmes Norton represents the District of Columbia:
Eleanor Holmes Norton says ‘you don’t have a right to know’ what’s going on in governmentEleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, angrily sputtered during a congressional hearing Friday that the White House should not be held up to scrutiny, saying that there was no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors.”You don’t have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government,” Norton said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing.It was, to put mildly, a significant departure from the more traditional liberal stance that openness and transparency are must to prevent abuses of power by government officials. Instead the leading advocate for statehood for the District of Columbia literally argued that even the congressional committee charged with oversight shouldn’t be asking questions in the first place.
Here’s the video. Hat tip to Soopermexican of The Right Scoop.
What a telling moment. Under Bush, liberals claimed dissent was the highest form of patriotism.
In the age of Obama their message is loud and clear: Stop asking questions.
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