The Scandals that Ate the Galaxy (John McQuaid at HuffPost)

[marmar]

John McQuaid

03.29.2007
The Scandals that Ate the Galaxy (6 comments )

If it continues at its current pace, the ever-expanding scale of the Bush administration scandals threatens to consume not just Washington, but all matter and energy in this part of the galaxy. There are so many inquiries, yielding so much damaging, politically salient information, that right now we have a vast and unwieldy organism, a barely differentiated investigation incorporating the U.S. Attorney flap, the FBI's Patriot Act screwups, problems in Iraq, political shenanigans at the GSA and administration attempts to silence government scientists with anything to say on the subject of global climate change.

And we don't know what Henry Waxman will come up with next week.

It was clear when the Democrats got subpoena power that the White House was just a piñata waiting to be struck. But I don't think anyone understood the scope of the investigatory challenge. Eve Fairbanks at TNR captures the moment well:

In the last couple of weeks, even in the minds of the lawmakers tasked with oversight, the administration's scandals and screw-ups have started to blur together into one Meta Screw-Up--a situation in which every procedural safeguard, institutional norm, and carefully designed plan seems to have "just melted into oblivion with this sloppy administration," as Senator Dianne Feinstein put it at the Mueller hearing.

But the notion of a scandal, or even a meta-scandal, does not capture what's really going on. A scandal implies something episodic; what we'e looking at is systemic. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcquaid/the-scandals-that-ate-the_b_44524.html

[htuttle]

1. Kleptocracy

aka, "Government by Thieves".