By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The nation endured an insurrection on Jan. 6.

The Department of Justice has charged more than 400 people involved in the riot that sought to overturn the results from the 2020 presidential election. DOJ expects the count to reach 500.

The riot resulted in the second impeachment of a president, the death of a police officer and four others, injuries to hundreds of individuals.

It was a concerted, planned attack on our federal government.

The question: Why hasn’t there been a non-partisan, blue-ribbon commission named to root out the cause of the riot and to make recommendations on how we can possibly avoid future attacks on our democracy?

Congress is dawdling. The Justice Department needs to get more involved as well. Attorney General Merrick Garland knows how this process should work, as he has experience gained from his own probe of the 1995 domestic terrorist bombing of the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City.

You may count me as one American patriot who demands answers to what we witnessed that day as crowds stormed into the Capitol Building, yelling for VP Mike Pence and threatening to hang him; they defecated on the floor of our government; they were looking for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Do not tell me that the word “insurrection” is incorrect or too, um, strident a term to describe what happened. That is precisely what we witnessed.

We need there to be a commission patterned after the panel formed in the wake of 9/11 to give us answers.