House Republicans' hearings on the purported "weaponization" of the federal government against conservatives have gotten off to a rocky start, with even some Fox News personalities complaining that they've so far failed to dig up anything significant.
The hearings continue to misfire on Thursday, and USA Today reporter Bart Jansen likened them to a "Monty Python sketch" in his latest dispatch from the Capitol.
At issue was the fact that two witnesses called by House Republicans made incendiary claims about the federal government "censoring" them under President Joe Biden's direction, but then left the hearing before they could be asked any questions by Democratic members of the committee.
Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) called out Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for not allowing anyone to question the witnesses he brought before the committee.
"They have scurried away with your complicity,” he scolded Jordan. “That’s pretty disgraceful.”
A defensive Jordan replied that the two witnesses didn't "scurry" despite the fact that they had left before any of their claims could be scrutinized.
One witness who didn't "scurry," noted Jansen, was Stanford constitutional scholar Matthew Seligman, who emphasized to the committee that private companies such as Twitter and Facebook are not obligated to let everyone use them and that their decision to remove certain content did not amount to government-sponsored censorship.
"Once again it bears repeating: the First Amendment applies to governmental restrictions of speech, not private conduct," he said.
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