How Republican Stall Tactics Could Capsize Guam!

I really wish I could say this was an April Fool’s hoax or a Mensa audition gone horribly awry. Actually, it’s a hearing in the House Armed Services Committee:

Which seems like a good time to mention that Senator Carl Levin is filled with angst over all the wise on-the-spot guidance our general officers are missing out on because of a Republican parliamentary stall tactic somehow related to health care collectivization reform:

“Lives are at stake here. American lives and Afghan lives,” said Levin, who would have led the hearing on US national security in Asia. “It’s unconscionable.” [….] Defiant Republicans rolled their eyes, with one leadership aide asking “Do they really believe that a hearing is the difference between life and death? Seriously?” [….]

The Michigan lawmaker said he had hoped to question them about “pressing national security topics such as North Korea’s nuclear program, Chinese military capability and the threat of cyber-warfare.” [AFP]

The government is best that governs least, and that’s never more true that when your national brain trust is comprised of pompous, talentless buffoons like John Kerry and the shallow waters of the Foreign Relations Committee. I’ve given kind reviews to President Obama’s North Korea policy, but the current Congress — and the Democrats in particular — represents an intellectual vacuum whose collective impulse always defaults to the Sisyphean diplomacy of appeasement and agreed frameworks. Are we really missing anything by having 40% less of that?