The Republican Notion of Oversight
I feel like I’ve gone back through time. We’re back to talking about Plame. And nolo discovered another USA Purge document dump. There’s a potentially damning email in here–all redacted (I’ll return to that in a later post). But there’s also proof of something we’ve long suspected. Congressional Republicans were getting talking points from Gonzales’ DOJ to use in hearings on the USA purge.
Or let me be more exact: the White House (in this case Christoper Frech) is making sure that the Office of Legislative Affairs at DOJ (in this case, Richard Hertling) is giving the Republicans in the House Judiciary Committee tips on strategy for the hearing with four fired USAs.
This is what it looks like when the White House (which isn’t supposed to be involved in this scandal, remember) makes sure DOJ prepares the HJC Republicans.
Frech: Good morning Richard, regarding the Tuesday hearing with the USAs, have you had any conversation with the committee and specific members on strategy, etc?
Hertling: We have had some preliminary conversations and will be meeting internally to finalize questions and strategy to provide HJC Rs. They will get all of that later today.
No wonder the Republican Congress never exercised any oversight over the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration never gave them the script so they could do so.
Yet more evidence that the Republicans have a hard time thinking for themselves?
Republican oversight?! Seems to be a contrdiction in terms.
Nice to have validation for what we were seeing and hearing from the committee.
Some of those Repugs are too stoopit to generate some of the chatter that came out of their mouths, and it was all too highly organized.
Rayne, perhaps you and EW are being too hard on the stoopits? They were probably only attempting to ‘create coherence’ in their testimony. Think of it as ‘Remedial Hearing Preparation’. I’m sure some contractor got a good sized off-the-books contract to help them prep.
rOTL, from these idiots I mind less that they attempt coherency.
But don’t offend my intelligence at the same time; cripes, we could see somebody’s arm up their backsides while their mouths were moving. The least they could do for the audience is make it look something less like a freaking publicly-funded puppet show.
Kukla, Fran and Ollie were better quality entertainment.
You would think at least some of the Rs would have some personal or institutional pride, but I guess not.
What was it I read somewhere… it was something about separation of powers… ummm, three co-equal branches of government… Huh. I must be mistaken since we now have proof of members of Congress taking their marching orders from the Executive branch. No wonder they don’t bother to listen to their constituents. Congress represents the President. Guess the rest of us are on our own. Nice.
Ok, any suggestions on how to deal with punctuation like ellipses and apostrophes on this site?
Wow, was that a moderator or does punctuation fix itself? Thanks
Hmmm… I’m using Safari. Is that what’s putting in the odd characters that I see…?
I like Safari. I’d prefer to use it on this site.
Are those odd characters a browser behavior…?
rotl — it appears that submitting the comment or clicking the link at the bottom of the comments makes the punctuation look funny in Safari. If you click the hard reload button at the top, it fixes it. Weird, but that appears to do the trick. Still no luck with colons or semicolons though…
And wouldn’t that House Judiciary Committee include my dear friend Darrell Issa? Let me check.
Why, yes it does!
not surprising to me that congressional Republicans require a script … it’s annoying that it is taking so long to get these details into the sunlight! and, thankfully, that is beginning to happen on a nearly daily basis it seems.
congratulations on having your own space to bounce about in! what a perfect setup.
Loo Hoo
Oh yes, that almost certainly means particularly Darrell Issa.
Loo Hoo! did you get your name back??
marcy, really enjoying your posts and the place makes it much more comfortable to stop by
and your content is updated very nicely….me gonna make my one of my hourly hits
thanx for another great source of info
And as I said last night EW at your old digs:
Thanks MadDog!
That email address for Ms. Perino, would that be an appropriate spot to voice my complaint of her treatment of Helen Thomas the other day?
ew,
Don’t miss the contempt reportdocuments (includes some interview pages and other goodies).
Wow, the Republicans on the HJC included 700 pages of interview transcripts and hearing transcripts in the minority view. I think they were trying to win by sheer volume.
I seem em now, WO. I guess I’ve got work to do, huh?
I sneaked a peek at them last night and decided that going to bed a midnite was probably a better idea than reading that 30+mb of a PDF.
And since you volunteered, better thee than me. *g*
EW you know what the Republicans notion of oversight looks like. Investigate lying about a bjob…forget the WMD intelligence snowjob that has resulted in millions of deaths, thousands of injuries and millions displaced.
Republicans do have their priorities.
Does nobody remember the Reichstag officially approved the repressive conduct of the BrownShirts prior to the 1933 legal take over by Hitler as the sole ruler of Germany? The Germans too had checks and balances and gave them away in the name of security. There was the very scary threat from the League of Nations from outside and the very scary threat of subversive Communists, appeasers, Jews, etc., from within.
We in the United States have the very scary threat of the Muslim religion from without and the very scary threat of us, the critics, the left wing press, and the brown people from withing. The Congress, even now under the Democratic party majority, is giving the potential dictators exactly what they want. More money for private military, more money for secret prisons, more money for incommunicado detentions, more money for officially approved torture, and all we do is comment on the obvious jokes about corrupted politicians.
Please think about how to interest the citizenry in restoring our independence as a democracy and fighting this move toward oligarchic dictatorship. We don’t have post WW1 Germany here, we have pre-fascist America. All the lies and propaganda techniques used by every dictator that ever existed is being used against us by George Bush and his cronies. Mr. Rove is STILL trying to convince us that lie is truth and so far no one is really calling him on it in the popular media. In fact, he has gotten away with treason.