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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsQuestion on House rules
Can the house pass a rule that anybody that crashes a hearing will not be ALLOWED on ANY future committees?
ddr007
(25 posts)This could be misused against an uninvited person that had something constructive to add to the discussion. However, in this case, there doesn't need to be a rule. There is already a law against entering a secured location without authorization. It needs to be applied. This isn't just any secure location. It's a meeting of the House Intelligence Committee. Breaking into this area is a matter of national security. They're lucky they weren't shot and given a funeral fit for a traitor, involving a dump truck and a land fill.
StarfishSaver
(18,486 posts)As ddr007 said, this could be used against Members who have a good reason to engage in this kind of civil disobedience. For example, closed hearing on reproductive rights with no women in the room might need to have some women barge in. Or a closed hearing decimating minority rights would be ripe for such an action.
The problem here was not that they crashed a closed hearing, but the way that they did it AND that they breached a SCIF and undermined national security, which is a much bigger issue.
onenote
(42,383 posts)Committee assignments are determined by the leaders of each party and neither party is going to want to give up their control over those decisions. The Republicans voted to strip Steve King of his assignments, but they would have howled if the Democrats had made that decision.