To Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:
If you think we can avoid the pitfalls of our taking scandal at “war’s” “atrocities”, or even post”war” tribunal reprisals prosecuted to obtain some national or ethnic sense of catharsis, in the present context of ushering the US out of invidiously becoming a longterm supporter of torture during many subsequent presidencies based upon the isolative executive theories advanced during the prior presidency, do you see a congressional path to support ways to overcome that heritage of torture as executive policy unilaterally devised.

Wish I was in NY to catch the awards. You deserve that award and many more.

RSVP’d this morning and am so looking forward to meeting you.

Question #2: How can the Congress, the WH, or the nation expect the military, intelligence, or related agencies to be able to attract and recruit ‘the best and the brightest’ when anyone can see that a VP ‘outed’ a CIA asset charged with tracking WMD, yet the VP and his network are never brought to justice? Does Congress honestly expect people to work for a bureaucracy that’s going to sell them, their hard work, and their valuable information out?

Question #3: Assume that the US public is weary of he-said/she-said, and also weary of what appears to be ‘political payback’ if they hear about Congressional Hearings related to the WMD, the Iraq War, torture, the economic meltdown, and related topics.

You are communicating to a public comprised of people who may be commuting 2+ hours/day, worried about credit card debt and/or employment issues, time-and-sleep deprived, and with very little experience of participating in government processes — not city council meetings, not commissions, not even public presentations. Would the Congress give care and thought to the educational obstacles involved in holding hearings?

How would the Congress seek to lay out a list of ‘objectives’ that are clear for citizens to follow — and use to assess whether Congress had fulfilled each, specific, simply worded objective?

How would the Congress ensure that any kind of ‘background materials’ for interested viewers would be either incorporated into committee hearings, and/or provided as supplemental materials through Congressional offices, news outlets, or other free, publicly available means?

(I have a specific interest in adult illiterates, so the idea that Congress is going to release a ’study’ or a ‘report’ or a ‘written document’ would not, IMHO, come close to educating adult illiterates — who may comprise as much as 30% of the US adult public — with the ‘tools’ they need to follow ‘the story’. This concerns me, as the adult illiterates that I’ve been fortunate to work with are often very smart people, extremely competent and quite skilled in fields where they are not required to read documents. Leaving this ‘educational role’ to the teevee networks strikes this onlooker as an impossible task, and also a failure on the part of Congress to take this problem seriously. If left to teevee, the whole hearings will be framed as ‘political conflict’, and if that’s the case then I’m convinced that many will ‘turn out’ due to extreme alienation.)

Question 4: Assuming that I’ve made a reasonable case in my previous question (and long digression), then how would Congress approach the key task of ‘refreshing’ viewers by summing up the previous meetings, and setting up objectives for each hearing.

(This is related to the ‘public education’ function, but is also used by episodic media: “In our first episode/meeting, we wanted to accomplish X, and we did. In our second episode, we built on X by adding Y. Today, we will add Z…)

As I’ve watched some of the Congressional hearings, one thing that I’ve found striking is the almost ‘modular’ aspect: I don’t know whether there was a previous hearing that I should have watched first, or what related hearings or materials I should know about — which makes it all rather befuddling.

If hearings were held, would someone please consider that many ‘out here’ like myself may be extremely interested, but need some better ‘information design’ to track the key issues, key materials, and figure out where in the Big Knot Of Events each hearing is located?

Should anyone on Sen. Whitehouse’s staff, or any committee members, read this comment, it’s my devout hope that at least one or two of the points will be given some consideration.

The Bush administration (and even it’s predecessors) assumed that ‘the little people’ like us taxpayers didn’t need to understand a thing about what they were doing in D.C. Having observed where that led, it’s my very humble view that if this nation is to have any form of democratic government, any hearings really need to do a better job of ‘teaching’ people how government should work, and why it matters.

It’s my view that the ‘educational function’ that FDL and EW lent to the Plame investigation are part of what made it so riveting to such a diverse group of onlookers. We didn’t feel stupid; we could ask for clarification and receive respectful explanations. You see the remarkable sense of curiosity that has resulted.

Kind Regards,

rOTL

I’ve emailed Democracy Now and suggested they contact you for a possible appearance while you are in NY. Don’t know if you’ve met Amy, but I think you are two of a kind.

Her show today with Jane Mayer and Phillippe Sand was excellent. The only thing missing was you.

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/20/torture