What's the significance of the Duke Cunningham, Tom Delay, Jack Abramhoff, Valerie Plame (Cooper and Miller), and other current investigations?
What can be inferred from the vigor in which they're being pursued?
Many things, of course, but one of the salient features, for me at least, is that there is a stunning and unappreciated number of honest and responsible people in the middle and lower ranks of the federal government, folks whose lives and careers have been dedicated to forthright and honest service to the American people.
Here's my example:
The government's top expert on Medicare costs was warned that he would be fired if he told key lawmakers about a series of Bush administration cost estimates that could have torpedoed congressional passage of the White House-backed Medicare prescription-drug plan.
Just imagine what it must be like to be a career, mid-level employee of the CIA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Social Security Administration, the Justice Department, or any other of the hundreds of agencies in the federal government?
Here you've been, moving along with your life, analyzing information, totaling figures, issuing findings, hewing as closely to the truth as you can, and along comes a Republican political appointee who twists the results of all that work into an untruthful abomination which supports what the White House wants rather than the truth.
Are you going to be pissed, appalled, and after four and a half years, just about ready to do something about it?
I happen to think we're seeing that frustration leaking out now in the vigor displayed in many of the current investigations---in short, I believe career government employees are an unheralded and underappreciated resource in our battle to return our country to rationality and sane government.
What's your example?