Biden seeks review of State Department screening (no Bush critics allowed)

[sabra]

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/politics/14262872.htm

Biden seeks review of State Department screening
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - A senior Democratic senator has asked the State Department's inspector general to determine whether the department has been using a political litmus test to screen private American citizens before sending them abroad to represent the United States.

Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a letter to the inspector general that he was requesting the review in part because of a Dec. 2 Knight Ridder report that such a test was being used to weed out critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

"If these allegations are true, such a policy appears to be inconsistent" with a State Department requirement "that speakers must be `representative of a broad range of responsible and informed opinion' in the United States," Biden said in the letter, which was dated Monday and sent to State Department Inspector General Howard J. Krongard.

"Moreover, it would undermine a public diplomacy purpose of the program - to show the world that we are not afraid of, and indeed actively encourage, full and open discussion of important issues," said the letter, a copy of which Knight Ridder obtained Tuesday.

[Schema Thing]

1. Ok, then, he's got my vote

over Lieberman

[sabra]

2. good one. :-)