THE COUNTRY'S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS.

It figures, doesn't it, that if the House Oversight Committee includes Lauren Boebert, Sandy Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, and Marjorie Taylor-Greene, sooner or later you'd get all the decorum of the Mean Girls' Table at Johnson Middle School.

The whole thing together is a work of art. Put it in a time capsule for future generations, or whatever the digital equivalent is. Note the expressions on the faces of the men. pic.twitter.com/lQrjx7PRrR

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) May 17, 2024

Mitch "Shot in the Dark" Berg offers the Most Trenchant Observation. "Have to wonder what the suffragettes would think."  And one of his commenters Went There!  “The Ghettosberg Address live from the Waffle House of Representatives”.

Well, maybe.  I'm old enough to recall second-wave feminism, and almost old enough to have lived through the aftereffects of suffrage, and didn't the politically active women of the era talk about how women would practice restraint and avoid conflict, and it would all be for that mythical Greater Good.

That I invoked the middle school reflects only what I saw during the Consciousness Revolution.

The Sixties feminism that pushed for subsidized day care and universal preschool was one that made it possible for professional women to neglect their children the same way professional men could. I hesitate to dip further into the culture wars, although the possibility that the ambitious women came off as angry harridans is out there. Or, more generously, that a high-powered career might be at odds with married life; this being equally true for the men and for the women.

Thus, if political women figured out that they could be at least as nasty as political men it would be of a piece with being the toxic colleague at work or the neglectful parent at home.

The dust-up in the hearing room suggests the one reason I might hesitate to go along with enlarging the House of Representatives.  On the one hand, more districts might mean more time for individual Members to be attentive to their constituents.  On the other hand, the interests of those constituents might converge, not necessarily in a good way.

More districts might make election of a legislative body that more closely approximates the multicultural makeup of the population, even with more sensibly drawn simplest closed regions for the districts. On the other hand, the likes of Ilhan Omar or Marjorie Taylor Greene might become more common in more politically homogeneous districts. That's a case for limiting the scope of government, something that might happen organically as those True Believers gridlock themselves. Like all else in life, it's about the tradeoffs.

Yes, self-governance is hard.  I still prefer it to delegating the Hard Decisions to Wise Experts.  That hasn't turned out so well this century, has it?

SECOND SECTION.  The slanging match continued with even more Right Honorable Members getting into the action.  I mean, when Mediaite finds something kind to say about ... Lauren Boebert?  "Voters get an apology for the wild hearing…from Lauren Boebert."  No, seriously.

“I don’t think this is the best use of our time when we are squabbling. It’s one thing to have fun and laugh as members of Congress and try to find humor or some sort of light-heartedness in what we are doing.  But when things get as heated as they have, it’s unfortunately an embarrassment on our body as a whole. So, I just want to personally apologize to the American people for that.”

That comes before Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman apologized to the Jerry Springer show.

Meanwhile, the money printing and deferral of any serious talk about Social Security and Medicare running out of assets continues.