Who's Minding the Store

I suppose that Boehner over Blunt is the hot Beltway news of the day (how do you lose a race when you're ahead 110 to 79 on the first ballot, and you only need 117 to win? The Super Bowl has never seen a comeback like that).

But I'd argue there's something more important going on.

For five years, the concept of congressional oversight of the doings in the White House has been something of a joke. Nada. MIA. Hill Republicans issued more subpoenas for Whitewater documents in a week than they have since George W. Bush became president.

Lately, that was starting to change just a bit. (I'm sure it didn't have anything to do with Bush's sinking poll numbers.) Republicans have roused themselves on a couple of fronts to check up on what the executive branch has been doing, which happens to be their constitutional responsibility. (I say Republicans because, when it comes to calling hearings and approving subpoenas, the minority doesn't matter.)

One committee asks for documents related to the less-than-ideal response to Hurricane Katrina. The White House tells its members to go jump in Lake Pontchartrain.

Then Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee asks for the classified legal opinions on the domestic spying program. The Justice Department says no way. A "senior official" tells the NYT that all the arguments were in a 42-page paper already made public. So what would be the big deal in releasing the actual documents?

Here's the latest :

"Senate Democrats today angrily accused the Bush administration of conducting a public relations campaign to defend the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program while refusing to brief Congressional oversight committees about the secret eavesdropping.

"An annual hearing on national security threats, led for the first time by John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, was overtaken by partisan debate about the program. In response to the Democrats' complaints, Republicans and the administration's top intelligence officials said the real problem was leaks about N.S.A. eavesdropping and other classified matters.

"Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, compared the administration's public disclosures of information about the N.S.A. program in the six weeks since it was initially reported to what he described as a similarly misleading use of intelligence prior to the war in Iraq."

I think the stakes go well beyond this particular issue. We've just had a huge debate about the role of the Supreme Court. If Congress provides little or no oversight of the sprawling executive branch, then the president--any president--pretty much can do whatever he wants. There's a long bipartisan tradition in this country of Congress demanding accountability--as it did during Watergate--regardless of the party in power. We'll see whether this Congress has the stomach for a fight.

Bill Kristol is also complaining about a refusal to release information--on a different subject: