House Select Committee on the January 6th attack on the U.S. Congress

I, for one, am very happy that this Select Committee has been created. To the Republicans and Trump supporters who complain that this will be a partisan investigation, the answer is, “you had your chance”. The earlier effort to create a non-partisan commission to look into the events of January 6, 2021 were strongly supported by the Democratic side, and by the American public, but the Republicans in the House and Senate shot it down. As of today, I don’t think that the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, has named anyone on his side to serve on the committee, but I was happy to hear that Adam Schiff and Jamie Raskin, along with (Republican) Liz Cheney were chosen by Speaker Pelosi–I’m sure they’ll all do very well.

The Republican “excuse” for voting down an investigative commission, and resisting the idea of this Special Committee, is that we, as a nation, need to “get past” the events of earlier this year, especially January 6th (while many of them still don’t recognize Joe Biden’s win as legitimate). The new committee ensures that this won’t happen–the MAGA movement’s efforts to overturn to results of last November’s Presidential election will be “front and center” in our country’s eyes for a long time, at least until the mid-term elections, if not longer.