dear colleagues, your subcommittee could become part of a proud history of serious, bipartisan oversight, stretching from the teapot dome investigation to the boeing investigation to the watergate hearings to the tobacco hearings to the select committee on the january 6th attack. or you could take oversight down a very dark alley, filled with conspiracy theories and disinformation. a place where facts are the enemy and partisan destruction is the overriding goal. appears house republicans are going to go with the dark alley path. the first hearing for the subcommittee to investigate the, quote, weaponization of the federal government was nothing but grievance politics. meanwhile, in the senate, minority leader mitch mcconnell is trying to distance the party from a fellow republican senator. who could that be? it comes as president joe biden takes his post state of the union message to florida, keeping the focus on the fate of social security and medicare. and the admi
too, love the charts. i like we re getting them twice a week. we want steve to stick around to talk about china here. we re learning more about the surveillance balloon shot off the coast of south carolina saturday. according to a senior state department official, the balloon was fitted with multiple antennas capable of collecting signals intelligence. the balloon was described by the official as carrying equipment designed to carry communications. china insisted it was a weather balloon. the equipment was described as inconsistent as to what is typically aboard a weather balloon. yesterday, the house approved a resolution, condemning china s use of the balloon, calling it a, quote, brazen violation of united states sovereignty. that vote following briefings given to the full house and senate earlier in the day. during a senate appropriations defense subcommittee hearing on the balloon, senator jon tester of montana was frustrated during his questioning of witnesses.