A few readers reply to my post on the sorry state of congressional hearings:

Without doing any actual research to verify this, I seem to remember Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) asking a NASA official on the event of the Mars landing, if the rover could track over to were the American flag was planted by our astronauts.

That would be even better if it were true, but it isn’t. Not quite, anyway. She asked the question while on a fact finding mission to a jet-propulsion laboratory. But she did sit on the House Science committee’s Space subcommittee at the time. That’s bad enough, isn’t it?

Another note, from an unrepentant liberal reader of The Corner:

Excellent idea! Can we do the same for the State of the Union?

In fact, that’s the way they used to do it — I believe it was Woodrow Wilson who ruined that fine tradition.

Another:

First off, there’s no chance for the members to get on the TV news that way, so good luck with that. Second, in the kabuki theater that is Capitol Hill, deft witnesses know that the best tactic as a witness is to read your written statement, the entire written statement and not just brief “oral remarks.” This way, they suck all the air out of the room in the period between the member’s opening statements and the first round of questions. If a witness plays his/her cards right, there’s time at best for one round of questions, and in a big full-SASC/HASC hearing, very little time at that.

Oh, you just had to ruin it with the reality, didn’t you? Seriously, though, I’d love to see a chairman begin a hearing by telling members he is tired of hearing speeches, so could they please submit the text for the record. At least it would put some shame into them.

And one more:

Wasn’t Senator Smith the guy who asked, during the Titanic hearings, what an iceberg was made of? The witness’ answer, as I recall: “Ice, sir.”

Even if that isn’t true, it’s good enough that I’m still willing to pretend it is.