Why The Elections Matter

Which party controls Congress matters. The character of the individuals in charge matters.

It's not just that the Republicans have governed with an explicit dedication to partisan polarization. It's not just that they have lowered the public debate on important issues into a rhetorical cesspool. It's not just that they've shown themselves to be hypocritical and in many cases criminal. It's not just that they've enriched their cronies and themselves at the public expense. It's not just that they've weakened the country and increased our peril. It's not just that they are vindictive. It's not just that they cheat.

Though they do:

Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

...

Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into what is called the conference report, which reconciles differences between House and Senate versions of a bill.

Neither the House nor the Senate version contained such a termination clause before the conference, all involved agree.

“It’s truly a mystery to me,” Ms. Collins said. “I looked at what I thought was the final version of the conference report and that provision was not in at that time.”

“The one thing I can confirm is that this was a last-minute insertion,” she said.

...

The termination language was inserted into the bill by Congressional staff members working for Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and who declared on Monday that he plans to run for president in 2008.

Mr. Holly, who is the House Armed Services spokesman as well as a member of Mr. Hunter’s staff, said that politics played no role and that there had been no direction from the administration or lobbying from the companies whose work in Iraq Mr. Bowen’s office has severely critiqued. Three of the companies that have been a particular focus of Mr. Bowen’s investigations, Halliburton, Parsons and Bechtel, said that they had made no effort to lobby against his office.

Duncan Hunter? That name seems familiar. Something about Duke Cunningham?

Cunningham resigned Monday after pleading guilty to tax evasion and conspiracy to accept bribes. He admitted accepting $2.4 million in bribes from two defense contractors and two other businessmen in exchange for helping those companies get contracts.

Wilkes, whose home and company headquarters were searched by federal agents this year during the Cunningham investigation, wasn't named in the plea documents. The documents say "co-conspirator No. 1" spent more than $636,000 on Cunningham. Wilkes' attorney, Michael Lipman, acknowledged that his client is "co-conspirator No. 1." He declined to comment further about the case.

Since 1994, Wilkes and ADCS gave $40,700 in campaign contributions to Rep. Duncan Hunter, a San Diego Republican who now chairs the House Armed Services Committee. Hunter has acknowledged that he joined with Cunningham in 1999 to contact Pentagon officials who reversed a decision and gave ADCS one of its first big contracts, for nearly $10 million.

Ah, yes. Well, one can imagine that a Congressman involved in a bribery and conspiracy investigation might have an issue with an office that investigates bribery and conspiracy. It's only natural.

That said Congressman is still the Chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee, and able to pull stunts like inserting last-minute provisions in bills that not even those paying attention know about, though, that's not natural. That's Republican.

Did I mention that he's planning on running for President?