Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Oval-office politics

What's with the White House refusing to release the name of its e-mail contractor to Congress? It seems Rep. Henry Waxman has demanded the name of the company running the e-mail server after the White House reported losing some 5 million messages requested by Congress for its investigation into the U.S. Attorney firings. But the White House has refused to turn over the name of the company, even though Congress is paying the bills and, presumably, the Treasury Department has written the checks. Why would the lawmakers stand for this? Talk about contempt of Congress! Actually, it's Congress that's been contemptible. This is the result of years of letting George W. Bush and Dick Cheney get their way over and over again on issues that used to be of concern to other branches of the government. They don't even pretend to have legal justification for many of the things they do; Congressional leaders just let them get away with it. After all, why would members of Congress agree to expand the administration's power under the Patriot Act after its sorry record running the war in Iraq and policing the conduct of U.S. soldiers in that country?

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