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Comment by betterunix | Hacker News Reader

It is already known that the NSA chief received the questions Sen. Wyden planned to ask him in advance, to give him time to prepare a response, a few months ago. This is said as if it is business as usual (and used to paint him in a worse light, since he lied before Congress after being given time to plan his answers), and I have no reason to think it is not.

Yet another reason to vote third party.

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It was a clever move by Wyden to try to catch him in a perjury trap.

Maybe so, but the fact that nobody even seemed surprised that someone would be sent questions in advance of their appearance before Congress is what concerns me. This seems to be a normal, expected thing that happens when powerful people are questioned by Congress -- the whole thing is just for show. If you are going to email your questions to the person in advance, you might as well just have them email their responses.

I don't know what I find more disturbing: the complete and utter disregard for the rule of law by our elected and appointed officials, or the fact that some people find no fault with that.

It's not always the case. But sending a witness questions in advance: a) increases the odds you can nail them for perjury and b) takes away the opportunity to say "I haven't been briefed on this and I'll get back to you later."

This came up about 10 minutes ago with FBI director Mueller's Judiciary appearance as well. Chaffetz wanted to nail him on geolocation surveillance and sent questions in advance, and Mueller said he ignored his aides and didn't read the briefing. Bad form.

I had a little trouble parsing your first paragraph. But vote third party? Now you're speaking my language :)

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