Republicans are currently making noises about investigating the Democrats’ illegal and unprincipled acts. There are many targets, and it’s to be hoped that Republicans make good on their promises to expose Democrat wrongdoing.

On January 3, when the 118th Congress convenes, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky) will take the House Oversight and Reform Committee chair. To that end, The Wall Street Journal published Comer’s promise to investigate the past two years of Democrat scandals resulting from “unchecked one-party rule.” In plain English, congressional Democrats placed partisan aggrandizement above the national interest.

Rep. Comer’s op-ed piece was titled “Get Ready for Republican Oversight.” The Democrats, who are expected to remain focused on their partisan goals rather than America’s common good, will undoubtedly try to bedevil, flummox, and stymie Republicans as they use the hearings to give the American people “some of the answers, transparency and accountability they deserve—as well as real solutions” on matters of mishandled public policy by the Biden Administration. Objective observers will have great difficulty challenging Comer’s observation:

On every front President Biden’s policies have been a disaster. Americans are facing historic inflation, skyrocketing energy costs, the worst border crisis in U.S. history, and surging fentanyl overdoses.

(I would add “food” to the area of skyrocketing costs.)

Comer promises that, beginning in January, “Republicans will return the committee to its proper role: rooting out waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government.”

Image: Rep. James Comer. YouTube screen grab.

It’s not just traditional issues that need effective oversight. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. and Julie Kelly call attention to a vital need to hold the media and political establishment to account for improper interference with the 2020 presidential elections. Indeed, Jenkins points out that House Republicans must take on the task that the media once performed (reporting accurate facts to the public) because it became—in my words—handmaiden to the Democrats.

Comer is to be complimented for assuring the country that, under his leadership, a sense of national (not partisan) purpose will guide the House Oversight Community. In truth, though, effective congressional oversight is, in truth, the responsibility of the entire House Republican leadership.

What the leadership must do, in my humble estimation, is appoint Julie Kelly as oversight investigator-in-chief. To support this recommendation, I would direct the House GOP leadership’s attention to Kelly’s observations about prioritizing the numerous scandals that could occupy every working moment:

Republicans must request—and receive!—all records from the FBI, Department of Justice, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence related to interactions with Big Tech, the Biden campaign, and Democratic Party leaders. The inquiry should begin with departing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose San Francisco district includes many large technology companies, to unearth evidence of the conspiracy [to prevent Trump’s re-election].

[FBI officials] must testify publicly so the American people can watch them squirm. Investigate the possibility of perjury charges against Jack Dorsey and others who testified under oath that social media platforms applied an even hand in 2020.

And statewide GOP officials should comb through every state law to do what Democrats continue to do with a vengeance and to great success—find any arcane, ancient statute to sue or prosecute the people responsible.

Kelly sees the above as a beginning, not an end. She also urges the Republican National Committee to file suit regarding the unlawful contributions that Big Tech made to Biden’s campaign and suing the Biden campaign for failing to report those contributions. Individual candidates who were de-platformed over the last two years should do the same.

She also holds Elon Musk up as a courageous inspiration:

Elon Musk’s one-man crusade to expose the inner workings of the technology giant he now owns is admirable at a time when the level of courage needed to confront the massive beast of government, Silicon Valley, the Biden regime, and traditional media is frighteningly low. Courage, as Billy Graham once said, is contagious. Let’s hope House Republicans can catch a really potent case of it, and soon.

The national interest and the American spirit of liberty demand that other House Republicans act with Trump-like political courage to confront and defeat the massive beast of totalitarian government previously known as the Democrat party. Chief amongst those efforts was Pelosi’s House Select Committee to Destroy Two-Party Government, a committee that can be traced back in history not to the American Constitution but to Inquisitorial Spain. The House Judiciary Committee, with the indefatigable Jim Jordan as chair, should hold hearings on the support judges gave the diktats of this affront to the memory of Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton.