New House Intel Chairman Knows Less About Middle East Than Most MoJoBlog Readers

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I’ve long believed that the skills that make someone good at getting elected are not the skills that make someone good at governing. And yet, I’m still a bit shocked and disappointed when I read stories like this one from Congressional Quarterly‘s Jeff Stein. I won’t bother to block quote it because it’s worth reading in full, but suffice to say Stein sat down with new House Intelligence Committee head Silvestre Reyes and asked a series of questions that are right in Reyes’ new wheelhouse: Is al Qaeda Sunni or Shiite? What is Hezbollah? And so on. Reyes, like the Republicans that held his position before him, did very poorly. Demoralizingly so.

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BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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