How Not to Hold an 'Oversight' Hearing
I guess it all depends on your definition of "oversight."
If you think Congressional "oversight" of an unelected official who controls the everyday lives of over 200,000 American prisoners ought to include probing questions and candid answers about dubious life-or-death practices and policies, then you surely would have been disappointed Wednesday morning watching members of the Senate Judiciary Committee play patty-cake with Bureau of Prisons Director Charles Samuels.
But if you think "oversight" ought to include a series of mini-speeches by lawmakers, followed by a litany of shallow, leading questions posed to a bureaucrat who responds by talking past those lawmakers in empty sound-bites that offer no insight or candor, then you would have been satisfied by Wednesday's performance on Capitol Hill.
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But true accountability and transparency? No. Your senators permitted Samuels to ramble through his answers—the testimonial equivalent of a filibuster—or used him as a mere prop to make their own points. For example, Senator Charles Grassley, the Republican from Iowa, warned that too much prison reform would lead to higher crime—and then he quickly left for another hearing. And senators from both parties talked about the need for sentencing reform as a way to reduce the BOP's budget—an excellent point that, alas, has absolutely nothing to do with Samuel's job performance or whether he is presiding over a Bureau of Prisons that is complying with federal law and constitutional norms.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/how-not-to-hold-an-oversight-hearing/281207/