Senate Hearing on Sexual Misconduct in Military Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the sexual misconduct crisis in the military started off with testimony from a nearly all-male panel of a dozen Pentagon officials. Exactly one was female. And there were no assault victims. That imbalance conjured memories of the all-male panel of witnesses at the much-mocked 2012 House hearings on the so-called birth-control mandate - and set expectations suitably low. During the opening session, both committee members and the chiefs of the different service branches expressed concern. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that he took his "eye off the ball" and that little had changed despite two decades of successive scandals and bad publicity. Of course there's rather a lot of distance between concern and decisive action. If lawmakers really want to change the culture of sexual misconduct in the military, and encourage more victims to come forward, they must repair the structural flaw in how sexual assault cases are reviewed. As we explained in a recent editorial, "as things stand, senior officers with no legal training but ample conflicts of interest can decide whether court-martial charges can be brought against subordinates and whether to throw out a verdict once it is rendered." It would make more sense to circumvent the chain-of-command, and leave such sensitive decisions up to independent military lawyers. But several members of the committee, starting with its Democratic chairman, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, indicated their opposition to legislation (proposed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand) that would make that happen. Their opposition seemed reflexive and not well thought out. They offered no persuasive reason why using independent lawyers would hurt good order and discipline.