An empty exercise

MANIFESTO

While I certainly appreciate the sentiment behind John Conyers's hearing on "executive power and its constitutional limitations" today, it seems like it'll be so much blather.

Conyers certainly doesn't need the hearing to cement his position in his district: It's his until he dies. And certainly nothing will come of it given Nancy Pelosi's intransigence on the issue. Finally, Dennis Kucinich already aired any impeachment issues a few weeks ago, and that effort came to naught.

In the end, then, the hearing seems to have been called to make Conyers—and the hearing's witnesses—feel better, an exercise in self-indulgence that seems superfluous at best.