Once again the old say "A picture speaks a thousand words" can pop into ones mind.

Thomas, over at G.I. Special - Military Project starts out his latest News Letter with the following recent photo of 'The War pResident'.

There was one bright spot in today's Oversight Committee Hearing on Iraq Corruption.  

New York's Rep. Carolyn Maloney took a noticeably less deferential tone when questioning Condoleezza Rice about the State Dept.'s inability to account for $1.2 billion in its contract with the DynCorp. Company.

First of all, Secretary Rice was making her contempt for the Representatives and the process of oversight very clear.  She was unnecessarily argumentative and condescending, and Rep. Waxman's ability to keep her in line and on message was tenuous at best.

Then comes Rep. Maloney.

Henry Waxman, is starting to see major red where Inspector General Howard Krongard is concerned.  (H/T to Nolo at IndictDickCheney Blogspot)

Krongard is "apparently" threatening his employees with retaliation (he'll can their ass) if they appear before Waxman's committee.

ThinkProgress also has a post, and has a link to the letter.  [PDF warning]

I've copied and pasted Waxman's letter below the fold.

Everybody knew that Blackwater was the reason four Americans were dragged from their car in Fallujah beaten and burned to death. Now Congress is officially blaming the incident on Blackwater's rushed procedures which led to their employees driving into a heavily fortified area.

With that the US Military was forced to enter Fallujah and kill thousands and thousand of innocent civilians.

Today, after reading such disappointing news coming from actions taken by Democrats in the House and well as Democrats in the Senate, prompted me, as a citizen, to call and attempt to speak to a deputy of my representative in Congress, Nancy Pelosi, as well as a staff member on Mr. Waxman's Oversight & Government Reform Committee.

I called Speaker Pelosi's two offices: First her San Francisco office, then her Washington DC Speaker's office. In both calls, I asked to speak to a Deputy on staff who is on point for the Speaker's initiative she has called "Draining the Swamp". The local SF office told me they would connect me to someone, and then connected me to a general voicemail comment line. This was not what I had asked for. (MORE re my efforts to have my government be responsive to my questions, as a taxpaying citizen. Starting with phone calls to Pelosi's offices, then to Waxman's.)

First it was Ellen Tauscher insisting Gonzales wasn't impeachable (a stance she was forced to correct).

Now, after all our discussion on the subject of inherent contempt and the necessity of keeping it in our toolkit, AfterDowningStreet.org reports this:

Towards the end of the meeting, Dorothy Reik, President of Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, urged Waxman to use the "inherent contempt" power of Congress to bring criminal charges against Bush and Cheney and their aides, hold a hearing in Congress on those charges, and then hand down the punishment, prison time. Reik expressed frustration with the refusal of Bush administration officials to testify before congressional committees, despite the fact that subpoenas had been issued.

"Your witnesses aren't showing up -- They're ignoring your subpoenas," said Reik, "so it is time for you, Congressman Waxman, to recognize that there is a precedent for members of congress to initiate criminal proceedings."

Waxman said he was unaware of the "inherent contempt" power. In a follow-up letter after the meeting, Winograd emailed him information on the "inherent contempt" precedent.

WTF?

This is the Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight.

Do you want to know where I learned about inherent contempt? In the Congressional Oversight Manual (PDF).

Yeah. Tough to find. Starts on page 36 if you know anyone who might be interested in, you know, enforcing their subpoena power.

Now I don't know how accurate that quote -- or rather, paraphrase, I guess -- actually is. But the truth, unfortunate as it is, is that you can never simply assume your Members of Congress know what they're doing. That's why I asked back in April, "Does your delegation know what inherent contempt is?"

Did anybody write Waxman? Or did we just figure he knew?

Henry Waxman over at the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has recently received a response from the US Department of Justice on the subject of "political briefings the White House gave to executive agency officials." The letter reveals that at least 11 White House briefings were given to Department of Justice officials by the Office of Political Affairs.

I have ran the PDF file through an OCR program and corrected as many errors as I could. You can view the text of the letter from the DoJ below.

Today, Donald Rumsfeld and four of Bush's chief generals testified in the investigation into the friendly fire death of Pat Tillman. You can read all of the transcripts of the testimony here.

But what really struck me was how dehumanized the process had become and how much these high-ranking members of the Pentagon had routinely evaded any kind of responsibility for their actions in the misinformation on Pat Tillman's death.

Nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast while George Bush played the guitar, this administration continues to screw over the victims however and whenever they can:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suppressed warnings from its own Gulf coast field workers since the middle of 2006 about suspected health problems that may be linked to elevated levels of formaldehyde gas released in FEMA-provided trailers, lawmakers said today.

At a hearing this morning of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, investigators released internal e-mails indicating that FEMA lawyers rejected environmental testing out of fear that the agency would then become legally liable if health problems emerged among as many as 120,000 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lived in trailers.

FEMA's Office of General Counsel "has advised that we do not do testing," because this "would imply FEMA's ownership of this issue,"  [...]

Another FEMA attorney on June 15 advised, "[d]o not initiate any testing until we give the OK. . . . Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them."

Committee Chairman Henry Waxman called this "sickening."  He is the master of understatement.

Update:  To watch video highlights (or lowlights, as the case may be) of the hearing, go here.

That pesky House is at it again with the oversight thing.  Today they're revisiting the safety of our food supply.

List of witnesses here

Watch on C-SPAN3 here

Committee is back from a voting break.  Second panel has just resumed giving opening statements.

First panel was testimony from the Committee's investigators.  Although both sides of the aisle participated in this investigation, only the Dem side guys showed up to present.

I'll give some updates of what I caught from the first panel in the comments or on edit.

[UPDATES AT END: 1) The FDA has appointed a "food safety czar," 2) FDA Coalition lobbies Congress -- support them!, and 3) VIDEO of Waxman's opening remarks, and The Gavel blog's report]

First, Henry Waxman's Oversight Committee is holding a live hearing on the "FDA's Vital Mission and Challenges for the Future."  Watch/listen here.  (NEW: Waxman's Opening Statement -- see latest update.)

BREAKING NEWS from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce:

Contamination of Chinese Wheat Gluten Widespread
Dingell, Stupak Dispatch Investigators to West Coast Ports

Reps. John D. Dingell, the Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee today dispatched Committee investigators to the west coast to pursue reports of extensive melamine contamination of wheat gluten, rice protein, and other vegetable protein.

This is the weekly review of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.   Last week's highlights included a hearing about the misinformation lies and propaganda the military used to portray Pat Tillman's friendly fire death and Jessica Lynch's capture and rescue from a hospital in Iraq.  The other big story was the issuing of subpoenas to Condoleezza Rice and to the Republican National Committee for emails related to the US Attorney scandal and other White House shenanigans.

All that and more below...

CSPAN's Capitol Hill News is reporting that the House has authorized subpoenas for the RNC and for Secretary Rice.

Alrighty... it's coming in baby:

In rapid succession, congressional committees Wednesday ramped up their investigations of the Bush administration by approving a subpoena for Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and granting immunity to a former key aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that
Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

I was JUST on the House Committee on Oversight & Governmental Reform yesterday doing a little checking on the Committee Members on behalf of a client.  That done, I finished up my email to client, hit "Send", then came to Kos to check on what's news.  And I see this Committee's made the FP story.  Hmmm...

Anyway, I have a little story to tell about corruption (or, at the least, law-breaking sliminess) by a Bush Appointee and, well, I've never done this before, a request for you good folks, especially the lawyers, to weigh-in with your opinions and advice.

Before going forward, please forgive me in advance for keeping the Agency in question unnamed, as well as the Bad Guys (there are a couple).  Gotta keep the thing "low key" for now, even though I'm going on the World Wide Intertubes for advice.  Ironic, that.

See below the fold.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is now considering subpoenas on several WH staff members.
Today's hearing is to consider subpoenas for several White House staff members Condoleezza Rice, Andrew Card, Mike Duncan for Republican National Committee documents, and Fred Fielding.

Watch Live on CSPAN 3 or on the Committee's Website

Henry Waxman coming off yesterdays Tillman and Lynch hearing is ready to hit another one out of the park.

UPDATE: After lots of whining and complaining by republicans, the committee voted to issue subpoenas to Mike Duncan and Condoleeza Rice.

(cross-posted at glad you asked)

the wonder twins are in the house — and the senate!

house oversight chair waxman and senate judiciary chair leahy power up

Misleading Information from the Battlefield

Hearing on Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch

WEBCAST:

Oversight Committee Website

C-SPAN 3

This is the weekly review of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  

Highlight this week, 4/24: Hearing on "Misleading Information from the Battlefield"  

The hearing will focus on the death of Army Ranger Specialist Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture and rescue of Army Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq. The Committee will examine why inaccurate accounts of these two incidents were disseminated, the sources and motivations for the accounts, and whether the appropriate Administration officials have been held accountable.

Photos from Wikimedia Commons