It’s pretty pathetic to watch Congress try to conduct basic oversight. Look at this:
Senior Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sharply criticized a Justice Department official yesterday for refusing to say whether the Bush administration has ever considered prosecuting journalists for publishing leaked national security information.
The senators also bristled when Deputy U.S. Attorney Matthew W. Friedrich declined to answer questions about the rationale for the FBI’s attempts to review the papers of the late columnist Jack Anderson.
“You’re basically taking what would be called a testifying Fifth Amendment. You should be ashamed of yourself, or your superiors should be ashamed of themselves,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) told Friedrich after he declined to answer questions from committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
…Grassley sought to follow up on questions he had posed to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III at a hearing last month about the bureau’s attempts to access Anderson’s files. Friedrich declined to answer but said that “hopefully the bureau will be submitting some type of factual submission to you on that.”
Grassley responded: “I would think that the department would send somebody here to testify that could answer our questions if they [had] any respect for this committee whatsoever.”
But, if you think that is bad, take a look at this:
Phone company executives won’t be grilled by a Senate panel anytime soon about their roles in the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said Tuesday he will hold off subpoenaing the telecommunications chiefs while he works with the White House on his legislation that would ask a secretive federal court to review the constitutionality of Bush’s surveillance operations.
Democrats accused Specter of abdicating Congress’ oversight responsibilities.
“Why don’t we just recess for the rest of the year?” the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont, asked sarcastically. “Vice President Cheney will just tell the nation what laws we’ll have.”
I can’t think of a better example of just how pathetic the GOP’s oversight is than the idea of Dick Cheney working out a deal with Arlen Specter rather than Specter finding out the facts about illegal domestic surveillance of American citizens. We need to beat the Republicans very badly in November. And our new crop of Democrats need to show some extremism in the defense of liberty. Someone told me that that isn’t a vice.