ALTERMAN: Accountability Questions; More than Answers - Bush

[dArKeR]

Questions about Bush administration conduct outnumber answers, but is anyone holding them accountable?

What Democratic Accountability?  Stolen from Slate’s Today's Papers:

"The LAT teases on Page One word that House Republicans effectively killed a congressional inquiry into administration officials' keeping estimates of the prescription drug bill's cost from Congress.  The Republicans declined to challenge the White House's refusal to allow two officials likely involved to testify.  A White House spokesman explained that there were 'separation of power' issues, the same argument they used with Condi, until they backed down.  Health and Human Services has launched its own internal investigation, which is continuing.  The WP runs wire copy inside on the kibosh and the NYT seems to skip it altogether.”

Actually, take a look at the entire TP today.  It’s the Medicare story writ large.  The Bush Administration is hiding Clinton administration documents from the 9/11 Commission.  Why is that?  Could it be because they fear the documents will bear out Richard Clarke’s charges against them?  And why did they appoint a right-wing partisan extremist to investigate whether they lied about the WMD threat?  Why did they reveal the identity of a CIA agent to discredit a truth-teller about their phony WMD threats? 

Why do they feel they can “smear with impunity?”  Is it because the likes of Wolf Blitzer mindlessly pass along these smears on allegedly liberal CNN?  Is it because they can threaten to fire a civil servant for telling the truth to Congress on a matter involving a $150 billion deception and get away with it, because the Washington Post runs wire copy inside and the NYT skips it altogether?  I could go on, but it depresses me, given that I’ve sort of published two books on this topic in the past year or so.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/