If the charges against Raymond and Vanessa Jackson of Collingswood, New Jersey, are true, then, yes, they're monsters -- but why does the House Ways and Means Committee need to get involved?

A congressional committee will join the investigation into the case of a Collingswood couple accused of starving their four adopted boys over a period of years.

The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources will hold its first hearing on Thursday in the case, the subcommittee chairman said in a statement.

"It is hard to imagine how adults could intentionally starve children," Rep. Wally Herger, R-Calif., said in the statement on Friday. "It is also hard to accept the grim reality that we, as taxpayers, subsidized their terrible neglect to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars."

...The four adopted boys, ages 9, 10, 14 and 19, were removed from the Jacksons' home Oct. 10.

I don't seem to recall anything like this happening in Washington when Florida's scandal-plagued Department of Children and Families literally lost 5-year-old Rilya Wilson and mismanaged several other cases.

Do you think maybe the difference is that Florida's governor at the time the Rilya Wilson story broke was a Republican (up for reelection) by the name of Bush, while New Jersey's governor is Jim McGreevey, a Democrat (up for reelection next year) who's struggling at the polls?

Nawwww! That would be playing politics with childrens' lives, and Republicans would never do that, would they?

(UPDATE: Whoops -- Jim McGreevey's up for reelection in 2005, not 2004. But I still think what I said above holds.)