House Defensiveness to FBI Raid?

Dear President Bush,

I have a theory as to the vocal defensiveness by House leadership on the FBI search of Congressmen Jefferson’s office after hours. Their positions that even a search of a Congressional office has Constitutional separation of powers implications seems a bit of a stretch. I think something else is going on here.

1. House leaders are aware of your penchant for playing dirty politics, of playing “pay back” with those who cross you.

2. House intelligence committee members know full well the means, methods, and capabilities of your spy agencies. Do they quiver in fear of those tactics being used against them?

3. Elected officials are stained from years of gorging at the campaign money trough. Virtually anywhere one might look in a Congressional office, could one find evidence of influence peddling?

Combine the above and what do you have? A Congress ready to pee in their boots should the cone of the intelligence apparatus aim at them.

I have a request. Please aim that apparatus at both the White House and the Capital simultaneously. If you can squeeze in all of Pennsylvania Avenue and K Street it might get the donors of corporate largesse and the recipients of that quid pro quo, legislative influence.

Please study the whole problem and don’t throw up a few sacrificial lambs for public appeasement. We noted the military torture cases and the latest round of civilian executions, all from “rogue warriors and bad actors”. What will we learn about the systemic nature of these events fifty years later? Were they ordered from the top like the Korean civilian refugee executions in 1950-51? Even fifty five years later, the Pentagon is sticking to the panicky soldiers defense despite documented letters and orders to the contrary.

Time will show the extent of the heinous behavior perpetrated by the world’s “greatest” democracy. What I am interested in now, it the behavior of our democratic officials. Please open wide the doors of the White House, the NSA, and Congress for an accounting of suspected influence peddling and insider favor granting.

If you would start with the omission of LifeCare Hospitals where 24 patients died post Katrina from the White House Lessons Learned report, I would be most appreciative. Then if you could move on to for profit hospital corporate influence buying on the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committees, I would be grateful. That 2005 hearing on the unfair advantage of tax exempt (non profit community) hospitals smells a bit like a cow pie. How much money changed hands for that bit of important public policy to occur?