I did sit through the entire Congressional hearing on Homeland Security yesterday morning, and I must say….I never ceased to be amazed. There were three witnesses, Secretary Kristi Noem, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, and the head of the FBI national security branch, Michael Glasheen. I felt sorry for Glasheen, who seems to be unable to speak well (or sometimes at all), a necessity for someone testifying before Congress and on television. As to Kent, for some reason, just looking at him scares me. I shouldn’t hold that against him, I know. But I do.

Now, it is true that everyone was yelling at everyone else and doing their best to insult each other, that no questioner was really interested in answers to their questions, and that the biggest game in town seemed to be to see who would stop speaking first when the questioner and answerer were speaking over each other as if the other wasn’t really there. I will put that all aside for now, although it obviously set the tone of, and controlled the information flow within, the session.

What I want to discuss are some real conflicts between Democrats and Republicans that should (but can’t be) narrowed or resolved, by parties sitting down, laying out facts and bases for the facts, and trying to reach a workable compromise that, in fact, may not satisfy anyone but will move several steps in the right direction. Of course, that doesn’t happen. Instead, the parties just double down on their positions.

For example, to a question about why ICE arrests and confines American citizens or people here on  legitimate work permits, Kristi Noem can’t give an honest answer, I guess. She responds by saying: We don’t do that; we don’t confine citizens or those authorized to be in the country.  Well, that just isn’t true. So why does she say it?

When given examples of people arrested without apparent cause, such as the California landscaper who has been in the U.S. for 30 years, raised three sons each of whom were U.S. Marines, and never was in any legal trouble, and asked for an explanation, she responds: We are enforcing all the laws; we make no exceptions. Say, what? What does that even mean? How does it fit into the mother of Trump’s silly spokeslady Katherine Leavitt’s niece, who was arrested and now was released. I guess it pays who you know.

And then, of course, there is the standard Republican answer to every single question: It was Joe Biden’s fault. I, for one, am a bit tired of that one. Maybe others are as well. But for the Republicans in the room yesterday? Maybe they have to put a quarter in the penalty jar if they answer a question without using Biden’s name.

One thing that did surprise me was that two Republican Congressmen (they will remain nameless because I don’t remember their names) talked about Muslim criminality, each of them saying that Muslims were much more likely to commit crimes than the restroom us. One of them mentioned the Somali-led COVID fraud scheme now unfolding in Minnesota, and both of them gave horrific statistics on Muslim crime. All of those statistics (whether they are accurate or not, I have no idea) came from various European sources and dealt with crime in particular European locations. I went back to my friends at Google AI to see about Muslim crime in the United States, and was told that not only is there no evidence that Muslims in the U.S. commit more crimes than others, but there is some evidence that they commit fewer crimes. This is similar, of course, to the oft heard Republican chant that immigrants commit more crimes, when statistics show the opposite.

But yesterday’s rants by these two nameless-to-me Congressmen went beyond typical showings of GOP bias. One of them showed a video, a compilation of man-in-the-street questions to (I assume) Muslims, who were asked either “What law do you follow, American or sharia?” or “Would you rather live under American or sharia law?” And, lo and behold, it was 100% opted for sharia. 0% for American. Just wait. Someone will soon show that each of the responders was paid for their answers.

To end this charade, one of the two Congressmen proudly said of Muslims: “I want to deport each and every one of them!!”. As usual, that’s a paraphrase, but this is “what he said”.

One more thing for today: I see that 95,000 photos turned over to Congress by the Epstein estate are now ready for public viewing. If I look at 100 per day, I will have seen them all by Thanksgiving 2028. I already saw about a half dozen this morning on Morning Joe.

My favorite? The one showing Woody Allen and Steve Bannon engaged in a friendly conversation. What could be better than this? In second place is Alan Dershowitz and Jeffrey Epstein talking – with Epstein wearing a Harvard sweat shirt. Of course, Epstein never went to Harvard, but Dershowitz spent his entire career teaching there. So, can we assume that the sweat shirt was a gift from Alan to his buddy Jeffrey? Or do we think that Jeffrey wore that sweatshirt whenever he was visited by any of his Harvard friends, not only Dershowitz, but maybe Larry Summers when he was advising Summers how to pick up girls at a bar (or wherever): You have to be assertive, Larry, don’t hold back, exude confidence.

Sigh.