Last week, Rep. Patrick McHenry, chairman of a House Oversight and Government Affairs subcommittee, reached a new low of legislative immaturity when he accused Obama advisor Elizabeth Warren of lying about the schedule she had set with his staff. Now, it seems, committee chair Darrell Issa is trying to top him.

Issa has demanded that, in a departure from the way House committees traditionally select witnesses for hearings – where the majority and minority party each pick a certain number – Issa would now be picking some of the witnesses allotted to his committee’s Democratic minority. Whenever the committee’s Republicans call a witness from the Obama Administration, Issa declared, that witness would be docked from the total number allowed to the committee’s Democrats….even if Democrats never wanted that witness in the first place.

Given that our democratic government is built on the idea that minority viewpoints still can get a voice, this change of rules was not happily met with by some of the more reasonable members of the committee.

Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly gave a heated response, saying he would advise the administration not to send any witnesses to the committee until the rules were reversed: “But the minority has rights, and if the majority wishes to actually join on this issue and dare to tell us who our witnesses will be, and to designate administration witnesses as our witnesses against our wishes, then we’re going to advise that administration to not cooperate with the members of the majority until our rights are recognized and respected.” Rep. Elijah Cummings, ranking member of the committee agreed.

This prompted Issa’s staff to send a note to reporters with Connolly’s remarks asking, “If Committee Democrats are encouraging the Administration to decline all witnesses, how does obstruction advance legitimate government oversight?”

Better questions to ask might be: “If a committee’s chair is busy making politically-motivated rules changes, how much time is he actually spending on legitimate government oversight?” or “Do we really want to be giving government oversight power to a man who doesn’t believe in the basic democratic principle of the rights of political minorities?”