It’s Time to Place Bets on Trey Gowdy

 

A friend of mine who follows these things more closely than me has suggested that maybe, just maybe, Trey Gowdy won’t be quite the lunatic I think he is once he revs up the Benghazi select committee. Sure, Gowdy is a tea party true believer, but she thinks he actually has a smidgenof fair-mindedness about him, and looks at this committee as a way of gaining some respectability:

I don’t think Gowdy is into the more bizarre conspiracy theories. He’s not entirely convinced the military did all they could have, he thinks the administration hasn’t played straight in the way they handled the PR — and of course is beside himself with outrage about not having gotten that Rhodes email pre FOIA court case — and he thinks State bungled security overall. He’s right on the third point, the second is a matter of perspective, and a couple one-to-ones between him and General Ham or whoever would almost certainly deal with his remaining doubts on that score.

Maybe! But Dana Milbank isn’t so sure:

Asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about the possibility that his panel’s work would continue into the 2016 election campaign, Gowdy replied that “if an administration is slow-walking document production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.”

A trial? And the Obama administration is the defense? So much for that “serious investigation” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised….But [Gowdy’s] honesty is refreshing, and it confirms what seemed implicit in Boehner’s selection of the second-term South Carolinian to head the panel over more experienced and less combative colleagues.

It’s true that Gowdy is not a Jason Chaffetz kind of character: a slick, soulless young pol who wants to climb the greasy pole and is willing to adopt whatever views will get him to the top fastest. He’s a little more genuine than that. Still, he’s also a tea party nutball, and I doubt he’ll be able to rein in those instincts for long. He’s doing his best to seem sober and responsible right now (doing an interview with Charlie Rose!), but my guess is that he can’t keep it up. He’ll be in Dan Burton territory before long.

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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