Hiding From Oversight (NYT Editorial)

[kpete]

How many months will be spend rebuilding the investigations infrastructed needed before any investiagtive work can start?


Editorial
Hiding From Oversight
Published: November 13, 2006

There have been many examples of the shambles that the Republican-controlled Congress made of its responsibility for oversight of the Bush administration. But none was so peremptory as the mass firing of 60 House appropriations investigators last month — virtually the entire hired staff responsible for tracking spending abuses in such money pits as the Iraq war, intelligence operations and the $62 billion Hurricane Katrina relief effort.

The dismissed investigators — former F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents and other professionals — did not have their contracts renewed because their work has “not been that good,” in the words of a Republican spokesman who offered no compelling evidence. An attempt was made to sell the purge as a bipartisan decision, but it turned out to be the unilateral order of the committee’s Republican chairman, Jerry Lewis of California.

The result is that, until the Democrats assume committee control in January, there’s an investigatory vacuum on such matters as soldiers’ body armor in Iraq and levee and dam spending along the Gulf Coast. A year ago, amid public outrage over the administration’s bungling of Katrina relief, Mr. Lewis promised that a timely public report would be made. No such report has surfaced.

There had been a bipartisan tradition on the committee, with majority and minority leaders proposing and signing off on investigation assignments. But that degraded with the arrival of one-party rule as Republicans shirked their oversight duty. This was obvious three years ago when the ranking Democrat, David Obey of Wisconsin, was rebuffed in his proposal for an investigation of the freewheeling intelligence operation quietly constructed by the administration in the Pentagon.

more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/13/opinion/13mon2.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[JDPriestly]

1. Democrats will hire new investigators. No problem with that.

[Frustratedlady]

2. Maybe the Dems should look into the reason these 60 were fired...

there may be a lot of information they refused to cover up. It would speed up the "uncovering" process. I have a feeling there will be many employees who will come forth with information they were told to hide.

Gotta buy some more popcorn. I believe the pieces of the puzzle are going to fall into place real quick like.

[bryant69]

4. I agree

This Republican Congress was clearly defective in any number of ways.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Mist]

6. Yes, they should talk to everyone who was fired--there's probably lots

of good info there.

[renate]

3. It's really starting to sink in how different our country will be....

This alone should have been a huge scandal, but it got buried in all the others.

Now with the Dems in charge, SO much dirty laundry and bad governing will be out in the daylight for all to see.

I can't wait till January!

:woohoo:

[rodeodance]

5. i think i read somewhere that the contracts run out next summer/fall?

.........Mr. Obey takes the committee gavel in January, and among his tasks will be restocking the investigation staff and setting the committee back on a productive, bipartisan course. This should not be a matter of party vengeance, as some Republicans fear. Rather, it’s a necessity of the course set by the voters to end one-party rule and find out what the government is actually up to.

[peacetalksforall]

7. Yep, Republicans are all about getting someone rich. Why even

have a country with representative employees of the citizens if you abolish oversight? These Republicans are the ones who told us they were going to run the government like a business. We all know now that they meant a criminal business with no auditors and in this case no IRS, no GAO.

There is no doubt in my mind that they were aiding in creating and forming us into a military totalitarian dictatorship with the strategies and ideologies of fascism, communisim, nazism, barbarianism and mafioso methods.

[gratuitous]

8. Wait, aren't we supposed to be all bipartisan and stuff?

I'm confused; are the popular media telling Democrats that investigating governmental crimes of the last five years is wallowing in revenge, or are Democrats supposed to take a hard look at the malfeasance and misfeasance of the Republicans? Oh well, it doesn't matter much, because either way they go, the popular media, egged on by the likes of Drudge (who rules their world), Limbaugh, Hannity and O'Reilly, will blast the Democrats unmercifully for the next two years whatever they do.

Might as well send a few folks like Mr. Lewis of California to the slammer, though. Like the coach tells his receivers, "That defensive back is going to wallop you anyway, you might as well catch the ball while you're getting tagged."

[applegrove]

9. Is there no shame?