When watchdog groups and oversight committees are formed, the semi-paranoid question "who watches the watchers?" sometimes comes up. Now, with respect to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the answer can be anybody (or everybody) with access to YouTube.
A post on the YouTube Blog announced, "Just after Representative John Boehner was sworn in as the 61st Speaker of the House earlier today, he and new House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa made an early move to make the activities of the House of Representatives more accessible to citizens via YouTube. Starting in this 112th Congress, all committee hearings of the House Oversight committee will be available on YouTube, on a new channel called HouseResourceOrg."
We’ll grant that not a lot of people are likely to watch the channel. Politicians aren’t half as interesting as most of the other subjects of YouTube clips, and hearing about government waste is bound to be depressing. But this isn’t in any sense a minor development.
The YouTube Blog post explained, "This is the first congressional committee to ever put all of its hearings online, and the new Speaker hopes it’s the first step towards getting all House committee hearings available to all citizens on the web.
Meanwhile, transcripts and archived videos of old House Oversight committee meetings will be uploaded if anyone’s interested in older discussions.