McCarthy is dead.

Via Steve from Brisbane comes a link to a Fairfax piece on why the home insulation program royal commission has been a political flop. The yarn is full of unsourced quotes from Labor insiders, so its conclusions should be taken with a grain of salt, but there's a kernel of truth there.

As with the endless IRS and Benghazi inquiries in the American Congress, there is a point after which these witch hunts become tiresome and pointless. That point is usually when the prosecution runs out of new evidence and can't find anything that clinches the case, which has already happened in the case of the IRS and Benghazi situations, and already happened long ago with the HIP and with the union corruption royal commission that is also ongoing. The right can point to Fairfax, the ABC and other "left-leaning" outlets and how they fail to report the proceedings of these hearings as an abrogation of journalistic duties, but if there's nothing newsworthy to report, why should they be reported when they have devolved into grandstanding show trials for partisan consumption only?

The height of this practice of using politicians to prosecute for partisanship was of course in the McCarthy era, but it should really have run its course when the US Congress impeached Bill Clinton. In America, these Clayton's scandals are still ginned up to fuel wingnut money raising ventures through constant email bombardment and newsletter rants, despite a near complete lack of basis for ongoing investigation. In Australia, where thankfully we haven't seen the rise of a massive partisan political services industry, there doesn't seem to be much reason for wasting all this taxpayer money. Waste, though, has never actually worried this government when they are pursuing their selfish goals.