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Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

Never Overlook the Importance of Oversight

Now that we have a Democratic Congress, we’re starting to see what actual Congressional oversight looks like. From 2002 to 2007, every single call for investigation into any issue has been tabled, postponed or ignored. Every. Single. One.

Pick an issue:
Mark Foley harrassing Congressional pages
Voting irregularities
9-11 lead up and response
Misuse of intelligence
The outing of a CIA NOC agent for political payback
Iraq rebuilding contracts
“Missing” funds for Iraq reconstruction
The ongoing disasters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita and Gulf Coast reconstruction
Restricting taxpayer-funded events to Bush loyalists
Abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanimo Bay
The network of secret CIA prisons in Europe
The NSA Internet surveillance program
Unconstitutional signing statements

There has been at least one proposal for an investigation into each one of these issues, and it has been shot down. The administration has flat out told Congress to piss off on more than request for documentation. And Congress looked the other way.

That’s over now.

Witness the current scandal involving the firing of seven US Attorneys who dared to investigate Republican congressmen and lobbyists or refused to randomly indict Democrats to swing the election. (And, as Paul Krugman indicates, we only know what was asked of the Attorneys who refused: how many people were falsely prosecuted or allowed to slip free by the hundred-or-so US Attorneys who went along?)

Check out the response to the horrible conditions endured by our wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital.

Also see the investigation into the FBI illegally obtaining records on people in an acknowledged abuse of the Patriot Act’s “national emergency” provisions.

And these scandals are brand new: we actually get to find out what’s going on as it’s happening instead of waiting around until long after the public has calmed down and the press has moved on.

Maybe the American people and the press will remember this the next time a president stands at the podium and says “I never abused my sweeping law enforcement powers for political purposes. Trust me!” (Does this sound like “I am not a crook!” to anybody but me?)

Oversight. It’s not just a good idea: It’s the Constitution.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 3:10 pm and is filed under We The Sheeple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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