{"id":6655,"date":"2006-02-18T10:44:12","date_gmt":"2006-02-18T15:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6655"},"modified":"2006-02-18T10:44:12","modified_gmt":"2006-02-18T15:44:12","slug":"its-the-accountability-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-the-accountability-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s the accountability, stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few of the Republican senators who’ve caved to an “all-out White House lobbying campaign” and reversed course<\/a> on Bush’s warrantless-search program have made some revealing comments the past few days. It points to their fundamental misunderstanding of the role of accountability in the political process.<\/p>\n

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), for example, was one of a handful of Republican senators who said Bush’s legally-dubious surveillance should be scrutinized<\/a> by a Senate investigation. This week, he backed away<\/a> from his earlier commitment. His explanation:<\/p>\n

“If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I’m not so sure that I would support that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said<\/a> on Fox News last night:<\/p>\n

“You know, there’s been some controversy about whether or not this program is legal or is not legal. I think we need to get beyond that. And the vast majority of American people believe these calls need to be listened to. But we don’t want to have any kind of debate about whether it’s constitutional or not constitutional. So I think we need to put that beyond us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both Hagel and DeWine are looking for a resolution that ends this controversy without asking uncomfortable questions and without a “punitive inquiry.” The goal, as they characterize it, is to put the matter behind as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

The principal problem with this approach is that it effectively tells the president, “Do whatever you want. If you get caught exceeding your authority, we’ll change your authority — and there will be no negative consequences.”<\/p>\n

For Hagel and DeWine, there’s no need for any accountability at all. And these are two of the less<\/i> sycophantic GOP senators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few of the Republican senators who’ve caved to an “all-out White House lobbying campaign” and reversed course on Bush’s warrantless-search program have made some revealing comments the past few days. It points to their fundamental misunderstanding of the role of accountability in the political process. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), for example, was one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6655","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}