I think other brother Darrell Issa (pronounced “ice-uh”) must have read my post about using Congressional oversight power:
California Rep. Darrell Issa is already eyeing a massive expansion of oversight for next year, including hundreds of hearings; creating new subcommittees; and launching fresh investigations into the bank bailout, the stimulus and, potentially, health care reform.
Issa told POLITICO in an interview that he wants each of his seven subcommittees to hold “one or two hearings each week.”
“I want seven hearings a week times 40 weeks,” Issa said.
Issa is also targeting some ambitious up-and-comers like Reps. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, Patrick McHenry of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio — all aggressive partisans — to chair some of his subcommittees.
He also wants to organize aggressive oversight beyond his committee and plans to refer inquiries to other House panels, drawing even more incoming GOP chairmen to the cause of investigating the executive branch.
I’m sure that Obama and the Democrats have nothing to worry about, right?
It’s just too bad Dirty Harry and Nancy Pelousy didn’t think of it first. I guess they didn’t want to upset David Broder and their financial backers on Wall Street.
This is my final blog post for The Atlantic. Five years ago, as a way to boost the competitive metabolism of The Hotline, Chuck Todd hired me away from ABC News to create “Hotline On Call.” I was to be the first political reporter working for a mainstream news organization whose output would be exclusively online. “On Call” made its debut in early September, the same week that Chris Cillizza began “The Fix.” Back then, reporters didn’t blog. Newspapers and magazines hired curators to update their websites, and reporters would occasionally post online, but there was a strict separation based on platform. You were considered legitimate only if your byline appeared in print. You were considered a blogger if it didn’t. And you didn’t want to be a blogger, because bloggers back then were second-class citizens of the country of journalism. Bloggers were partisan activists, yellers, provocateurs and upstarts.
[…]
Really good print journalism is ego-free. By that I do not mean that the writer has no skin in the game, or that the writer lacks a perspective, or even that the writer does not write from a perspective. What I mean is that the writer is able to let the story and the reporting process, to the highest possible extent, unfold without a reporter’s insecurities or parochial concerns intervening. Blogging is an ego-intensive process. Even in straight news stories, the format always requires you to put yourself into narrative. You are expected to not only have a point of view and reveal it, but be confident that it is the correct point of view. There is nothing wrong with this. As much as a writer can fabricate a detachment, or a “view from nowhere,” as Jay Rosen has put it, the writer can also also fabricate a view from somewhere. You can’t really be a reporter without it. I don’t care whether people know how I feel about particular political issues; it’s no secret where I stand on gay marriage, or on the science of climate change, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. What I hope I will find refreshing about the change of formats is that I will no longer be compelled to turn every piece of prose into a personal, conclusive argument, to try and fit it into a coherent framework that belongs to a web-based personality called “Marc Ambinder” that people read because it’s “Marc Ambinder,” rather than because it’s good or interesting.
[…]
I loved the freedom to write about whatever I wished, but I missed the discipline of learning to write about what needed to be written. I loved the light editorial touch of blogging , but I missed the heavy hand of an editor who tells you when something sucks and tells you to go back and rewrite it.
I love blogging because I have lots of opinions and an obsessive-compulsive need to inflict them on other people. Plus I love getting called names and being psychoanalyzed by total strangers.
As for that “light editorial touch,” bloggers have lots of volunteer editors more than willing to tell us what we’re doing wrong. Ironically, one person who has never told me I’m doing it wrong is the person whose blog I’ve been ruining for over two years now.
Liberal groups had taken on Olbermann’s suspension as a cause. An online petition calling for his reinstatement, run by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, had exceeded 300,000 signatures Sunday, and Michael Moore had tweeted his support. The committee’s Adam Green said Griffin was repeatedly e-mailed updates on the petition drives.
“Progressives proved that when one of our own are targeted, we will have their backs,” he said.
That’s right. Why fight for REAL Health Care Reform or hold some kind of rally for the unemployed when you can fight to get a screaming moron back on the air?
In an interview with Fox News Sunday this morning, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), the #2 Republican in the House, threatened to take the nation’s economy hostage if President Obama does not comply with House GOPers’ as yet undefined demands. When asked if he would take a government shutdown on forcing the United States to default on its debt off the table, Cantor responded that it would somehow be President Obama’s fault if House Republicans press this agenda:
QUESTION: Are you willing to say right now we’re not going to let the country go into default, and we won’t allow a government shutdown?
CANTOR: Chris, look at this now. The chief executive, the president, is as responsible as any in terms of running this government. The president has a responsibility, as much or more so than Congress, to make sure that we are continuing to function in a way that the people want.
Wow. Do these imbeciles ever learn? Never mind the fact that the public sector is almost the only place where people actually have jobs now, Obama is ALL READY saying he will compromise on extending the Bush Tax cuts. I wouldn’t worry, folks. No way is Bam going to have the cojones to let it come to a showdown between him and the House GOP. He might actually have to stand on his principles if that happens, and he has none. Even if it’s true that the GOP won’t accept compromise now, he will cave.
Cantor elaborates on The Hill about what message electing Nancy as House Minority Leader would send to Americans:
“I mean, the voters outright rejected the agenda that she’s been about. And here they’re going to put her back in charge,” Cantor, in line to become the House majority leader in the next Congress, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“I mean this is the woman who really, I think, puts ideology first, and there have been no results for the American people,” he said. “And that seems the direction they want to take again. It just doesn’t make sense.”
She hardly puts her ideology first. This is a gal who claims to be pro choice and then passed HCR on our uteruses to please her backers in the Insurance Industry. Maybe if she had stuck to her scary socialist ideology more women would have showed up at the polls when she and Harry needed them.
Republicans, who will control the House starting in January but will remain in the minority in the Senate, acknowledge that they do not have the votes for their ultimate goal of repealing the health law, the most polarizing of Mr. Obama’s signature initiatives.
But they said they hoped to use the power of the purse to challenge main elements of the law, forcing Democrats — especially those in the Senate who will be up for re-election in 2012 — into a series of votes to defend it.
The Confluence 