Cross-posted at Public Access to Public Hearings
Those of you who have read Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy may remember the scene at the beginning of the book where Arthur Dent wakes up and finds that his house is being demolished. He goes to complain to L. Prosser, the bureaucrat in charge of knocking the house down:
Mr. Prosser said, “You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time, you know.”
“Appropriate time?” hooted Arthur. “Appropriate time? The first time I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no, he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.”
“But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”
“Oh yes, well, as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.”
“But the plans were on display …”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.'”
What’s so funny about the scene is the sheer irrationality of the planning office. But at least the planning office made its documents available to the public, even if only in a basement filing cabinet marked “Beware of the Leopard”! The Joint Committee on the Judiciary’s policy is every bit as irrational—the idea that witnesses who have already agreed to testify publicly might be deterred if their testimony would be made available to the public makes no sense—but unlike L. Prosser’s planning office, the Committee doesn’t even have a basement filing cabinet where you can find it’s documents. They simply aren’t available to the public.
The bureaucracy can always find a process to do whatever dirty deal that it wants.
You read my mind! The Trial is next.
The analogy isn’t perfect, as those who know the book will see, but here is how I promoted my post on Twitter:
Arthur Dent:Vogons::Citizens of Massachusetts:Joint Committee on the Judiciary