Keeping Them Honest

Whether or not the current flood of congressional investigations are a good idea seems to depend very much on one's political ideology.

Pity, that.

A simple test I use to determine if I'm falling sway to partisan spin on something is to ask myself, "How would I feel about [insert name of issue/scandal/event here] if it happened under President Obama?" For example, "How would I feel about illegal FBI spying if it occurred under Obama's administration?" Or, "How would I feel about the US Attorney firings if they occurred under Obama's administration?" If I feel the same about an issue under Bush as I would under Obama, then I'm probably being intellectually honest (assuming I've got the facts right).

I've had plenty of opportunity to test myself lately but let's face it -- after six years of absolute power and no oversight, you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that there's a lot of bad shit going on. It's been the classic fox and hen house scenario.

The recent GSA scandal, the US Attorney scandal (which got more interesting today with Kyle Sampson's testimony and also includes umbrella scandals like the voter fraud lie and, of course, the subversion of the Patriot Act), and the illegal spying scandal, to name a few, and I'm pretty sure the hits will keep coming.