The Republicans are crying like babies:
WASHINGTON — Republicans are getting fed up with what they call “fishing expeditions” and hearings to nowhere conducted by majority Democrats thriving in their newfound oversight authority.
Annoyed by ongoing inquiries into everything from the firing of eight U.S. attorneys to the Bush administration’s 2003 charges that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium in Niger, Republicans inside and outside Congress say Democrats have gone overboard.
“We understand that the Congress has a role to play, which is oversight over the Executive Branch,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said during a recent press briefing. However, “I do think there is a difference between oversight and overreaching.”
What Dana Perino calls ‘overreach’, the Washington Post editorial page calls:
“…an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source…”
Of course, that’s a reference to former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s recent testimony. If you need a little reminder about that testimony, here you go:
After the hospital-room stand-off, Card summoned Comey. From the transcript:
“COMEY: Mr. Card was very upset and demanded that I come to the White House immediately. I responded that, after the conduct I had just witnessed, I would not meet with him without a witness present.
“He replied, ‘What conduct? We were just there to wish him well.’
“And I said again, ‘After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness. And I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States.'”
That conversation eventually took place, but Comey said it resolved nothing.
“SCHUMER: OK. Can you tell us what happened the next day?
“COMEY: The program was reauthorized without us and without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality. And I prepared a letter of resignation, intending to resign the next day, Friday, March the 12th. . . .
“I believed that I couldn’t — I couldn’t stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis. I just simply couldn’t stay.”
Technically speaking, Comey explained, Bush signed the presidential order himself but the signature line for the attorney general to attest to its legality was apparently left blank.
Which leads the USA Today to conclude:
Perhaps most compelling is what Comey’s testimony says about the danger of White House arrogance. It’s easy for a president or his advisers to find the law inconvenient, to dismiss facts that get in their way and to stampede those who disagree.
When that happens, a Comey or an Ashcroft can turn a president away from running roughshod over citizens’ rights or rushing into an ill-conceived war.
If only this administration had learned that lesson sooner.
Unsurprisingly, the Wall Street Journal disagrees:
What’s really going on here is a different form of political theater: Democrats are trying to whip up an aura of “illegality” to create the political leverage to strip a Republican President of his surveillance authority in wartime. They’ve tried to do this since the program was revealed, and back in 2006 Russ Feingold compared it to Watergate. But unfortunately for the Democrats, wiretapping aimed at America’s terrorist enemies is politically popular.
So, rather than arguing the legal merits, Democrats are spinning a yarn about shady deeds perpetrated in a hospital room at night. They are using half-truths to achieve a partisan goal that is dangerous policy, and they shouldn’t get away with it.
Right. The Democrats shouldn’t get away with it. The Republicans are so incredibly stupid for failing to understand the critical need to remove Bush and Cheney from power. They should take their own advice.
“We’re not hostile to the administration,” one prominent conservative House member who did not want his name used told me. “We just want it to be over.”
So does everyone. Get cracking.
