The irony is a little too delicious to pass up. The House Homeland Security Committee is holding hearings this month on how well the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission are being implemented by the Department of Homeland Security.
Guess what won’t be on the agenda? Congress’s own failure to act.
Various members of Congress and the long list of committees spend righteous days on end — months on end — analyzing and scrutinizing and poking and oversighting everybody else in the world about how well they are implementing the recommendations, but they are incapable of even acknowledging the 9/11 Commission’s (and that of just about every other homeland security expert and policy wonk) urging Congress to streamline its absurdly unwieldy potpourri of committees claiming oversight jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security.
Sometimes it seems like the poor folks at DHS spend more time answering questions during congressional committees than they do actually trying to protect the homeland.
