Last night we saw an unprecedented raid on the home of a former President.

What raids did we see when then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hid a server loaded with classified documents in her bathroom? Or when Sandy Berger stole classified documents from the National Archives on multiple occasions (down his pants)?

Abuse, and in this particular instance, politically-driven abuse, happens when we allow government to take too much power and too much freedom away from its citizens. It is a symptom of a larger disease: an out-of-control federal government and its agencies doing whatever the hell they want regardless of the legality, precedent or accepted protocols.

We see abuses of civil liberties (the Patriot Act) and unconstitutional, dishonest, and biased use of the FISA court against Americans. We see it in the war on drugs and mass incarceration.

And this Friday, the far left will win its push for 87,000 more IRS agents. What will those in unprecedented positions of power do to us then?

This isn’t a left or right issue. We should all care about abuses of government power and speak up when we see them.

This is why Congress’ authority to evaluate and report on the Executive branch is so important. It’s why the Oversight Committee must have the will as well as the ability to subpoena federal agencies and hold those in contempt when they don’t show up. As a member of Oversight, I cannot emphasize this enough: we have a lot of work to do.

November can’t come fast enough!

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