With the demand for more e-mails and the acknowledgement that many are missing, we now have a full-fledged Democratic witch hunt on the president.
Make no mistake, folks. This is a fishing expedition designed to find something--anything--with which Democrats can bring impeachment proceedings.
Let's face it. They struck out with Plamegate. They struck out with the U.S. attorney flap. So, now they have to go root around in RNC e-mails ostensibly to find out if the administration is "hiding" anything about Attorneygate, but actually to get unfettered access to private conversations of the minority party.
Captain Ed puts it best.
First, let's acknowledge one danger presented by the investigation into the termination of the prosecutors. Congress, led by Henry Waxman, now threatens to subpoena the internal communications of the minority party. That would not just expose whatever the Democrats claim the messages contain about the firings, but the political strategies of high-level Republican Party activists. The government has no business snooping in those deliberations; in fact, it would be the Congressional equivalent of the Watergate break-in.
If the federal government can force political parties to divulge those deliberations for anything less that an explicit criminal investigation, then Big Brother has arrived -- and we still have no underlying crime for this investigation. All we have is a very questionable decision to fire US Attorneys and a Keystone Kops follow-up to the ensuing criticism. The internal deliberations of political parties should remain shielded from the subpoena power of Congress or the executive branch for issues as petty as what we have here, lest we do permanent damage to our freedom of political action.
Nevertheless, as Captain Ed points out, this is all a direct result of the administration's mishandling of this affair. From the ill-prepared Gonzalez before Congress to the deletion of e-mails from RNC accounts, the administration hasn't handled this affair very well.
But Congress shouldn't use the supposedly legitimate excuse of wanting more info on the attorneys to allow them to root through private political correspondence. Such behavior will damage both parties and, I guarantee, will come back to bite the Democrats right on their big, fat behinds.
UPDATE: Patterico discusses the liberal spin the L.A. Times is putting on this story.
|