{"id":1193,"date":"2004-02-04T12:51:07","date_gmt":"2004-02-04T17:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1193.html"},"modified":"2004-02-04T12:51:07","modified_gmt":"2004-02-04T17:51:07","slug":"ongoing-pressure-on-capitol-hill-for-a-plame-investigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/ongoing-pressure-on-capitol-hill-for-a-plame-investigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ongoing pressure on Capitol Hill for a Plame investigation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking of the Dems getting tough on White House scandals (see below), I wanted to follow up on something I mentioned<\/a> two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) unveiled a resolution in late-January to authorize an independent House inquiry into the Plame Game scandal. Holt, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, seems to be under the impression that there’s a problem with the White House illegally leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent out of political spite. He and 11 other House Dems sponsored a resolution<\/a> that would require the administration to turn over “all documents…relating to the disclosure of the identity of Valerie Plame” to the House for an official investigation.<\/p>\n

Alas, House Republicans killed Holt’s reoslution in committee, but as The Hill noted<\/a> today, even some GOP lawmakers seem troubled by the scandal.<\/p>\n

Holt told The Hill that Republican lawmakers, including members of the House intelligence committee, have told him privately that he is “doing the right thing” in pushing for a Plame Game investigation in the House, but that they could not support his effort publicly because of pressure from GOP leaders.<\/p>\n

Holt added that some of these Republicans “shifted their eyes to the Speaker’s chair” when saying they could not support his resolution when it was voted on in committee.<\/p>\n

“Someone has decided that this is a partisan issue,” Holt said.<\/p>\n

Ya think<\/i>?
\n
\nFortunately, Holt isn’t giving up and is challenging Bush’s allies in the House to move forward. The GOP’s unswerving response to Dem demands for a formal inquiry is that the Department of Justice is already looking into the Plame Game scandal and, as such, a congressional investigation is unnecessary.<\/p>\n

It’s an unpersuasive argument, to say the least. When Clinton was president, the House routinely held hearings — some times for weeks on end — on controversies that were being investigated by the Justice Department and an independent counsel. Then, the Congress operated under a “the more investigations the better” philosophy.<\/p>\n

As Holt noted, it’s tantamount to saying that Congress should not have investigated Enron because the Securities and Exchange Commission already was looking into the matter.<\/p>\n

No matter how much the Republicans stall, this one isn’t going away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of the Dems getting tough on White House scandals (see below), I wanted to follow up on something I mentioned two weeks ago. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) unveiled a resolution in late-January to authorize an independent House inquiry into the Plame Game scandal. Holt, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}