The Daily Background

The WaPo has an article on the Jefferson raid, and how it served as a trigger or something. Quoth the Post:

Whether out of party loyalty or wartime solidarity, the Republican Congress largely deferred to the Republican president for five years as he expanded executive power.

When President Bush set up his own new military justice system for detainees, or invited industry lobbyists to secretly help shape energy policy, or declared he would ignore bills he signed into law if he deemed them out of bounds, Congress stepped aside.

The article continues that after the raid:

Suddenly, even Bush’s chief allies in Congress, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), were decrying executive overreach and defending the prerogatives of the legislature as an equal branch of government. And in a rare move, they faced Bush down, forcing him to take the extraordinary step of intervening in a criminal case to placate irate lawmakers.

“The administration has been pushing the envelope, and Congress hasn’t been doing proper oversight,” Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) said yesterday. “I think some members are going to start to step up to the plate and do more. . . . The executive branch has lost a sense of balance and proportion, and they’re just grabbing at everything. And if we were doing more oversight, we might have handled this in a different way.”

Certainly interesting indeed. Hopefully we’ll see more rebellion in the Republican ranks later this election year. Rove is supposedly going to try and dictate Republican strategy… ‘lend a helping hand’ for the midterms, and it’ll be interesting to see how well House Republicans in particular take to him- especially after he was reportedly snubbed by a number of conservatives on the immigration issue when he met with them recently and tried to convey the President’s point of view. More on this subject here.

Filed under: William Jefferson Related, Z-TDB Blog