Gerry Connolly

Improvements in communication between local law enforcement and Federal background investigators could prevent and could perhaps have prevented a tragedy like that that occurred in the Washington Navy Yard.

I remain concerned that the government should not retain social media data of third parties who happen to engage with the applicant but have not consented to waiving their privacy rights.

I thank my friend, the chairman, for holding this hearing to examine the usefulness of social media and other crucial enhancements to the Federal background investigation process.

So we ought to be setting for ourselves a time frame that is acceptable. We don't go beyond that.

I think there is a growing concern as a management challenge what is happening in terms of wait times.

I would remind him that we will have the same conversation in 10 to 15 years when Iran has consolidated its gains in Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria, et cetera.

Listen, I am old enough to have lived through the Cold War. We had nuclear agreements with our bitter enemy that had promised to wipe us from the face of the earth, the Soviet Union.

But we have bought some time, and we didn't just buy time and freeze it in place. We reversed it.

And I think they should be, because objectively they are.

Sometimes we take incremental progress, real incremental progress that takes the immediate and short term existential threat and reduces it or reverses it significantly, that is better than the alternative, is it not?

I think this is our 30th hearing on Iran. And I don't know that this committee has cloaked itself in glory on the subject.

I think that's not useful counsel for them, and it's certainly not welcome counsel for me as a Member of Congress seeking guidance through a very meddlesome set of problems.

I approach the subject of home rule as a former local government official, having served in neighboring Fairfax County for 14 years on the governing body, 5 years as chairman, of the largest jurisdiction in metropolitan Washington.

I think the Heller ruling was wrong.

You're taking that out of context.

I don't get to ignore it. I don't get to dismiss it.

That's not what an elected official has to do.

He has sworn to uphold the law, Mr. Mendelson, and he's trying to do that.

My name is Connolly. You can address me by my name.

It seems you have a legal obligation, Ms. Perez, to take cognizance of a judicial ruling.

What happened in Nepal is almost unprecedented, and certainly the worst to happen in Nepal.

What are we doing to try to light a fire under folks to be seized with the mission?

I want to say publicly how much I appreciate working with you.

Those things, could they turn around that financial description you have offered in your report?

I share the sentiments of my friend Mr. Lynch from Massachusetts and am very hopeful we are going to get postal reform.