http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12/opinion/12Brand.html<snip>
THE Democrats’ victory has stoked the fire beneath an already brewing debate within the party regarding the need for investigations of the executive branch during the Bush administration’s two remaining years. Some Democratic members of Congress are reluctant to pursue investigations into war profiteering, detainee interrogation or other controversial issues, fearing that such scrutiny of the administration will make Democrats appear petty and partisan and cost them electoral support in 2008.
A vigorous examination of the administration’s conduct, however, is not only the appropriate action as a matter of constitutional prerogative, it is the politically necessary response to voters’ overwhelming rejection of the current Congress’s failure to assert itself in this area.
Nothing is better established in constitutional history and jurisprudence than Congress’s power to investigate the executive. Centuries of precedents in Parliament, colonial legislatures and United States law endorse it. In 1742, William Pitt the Elder summarized the powers of Parliament: “We are called the grand inquest of the nation, and as such it is our duty to inquire into every step of public management, either at home or abroad, in order to see that nothing has been done amiss.”
Indeed, the very first example of congressional oversight in our history was an inquiry into President George Washington’s deployment of the military. In that case, a committee appointed by the House in 1792 was authorized to investigate the disastrous defeat the year before of Gen. Arthur St. Clair by Indians in the Ohio Territory, with the power to issue subpoenas for “persons, papers and records as may be necessary to assist their inquiries.”
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