The upshot is that Congressional Democrats want to avoid the Harry Truman label, "Do Nothing Congress," in an election year. The McCain-Palin ticket already beat that drum during the RNC, and given the historically low approval ratings (yes, the American public is more disgusted with Congress than with W.), I'm sure they want to do SOMETHING before November. Hmmm... you think they could try to actually do their jobs and pass some legislation? Naaah, it's far easier to beat up the Director of the FBI during hearings that allow Honorable Members of the House Judiciary Committee to preen on national TV, even if it is C-SPAN.
Now, I certainly don't know anything about the inner workings of the Federal BI. I don't doubt that warning signs pointing to Bruce Ivins were missed during the entire anthrax investigation. The practice of hounding a "person of interest" was dissected by a WSJ opinion piece here (subscription req'd), and certainly, Steven Hatfill can feel vindicated these days. I actually really liked a previous opinion piece where the WSJ attributed the "Steven Hatfill = Mad Scientist" theory to the left in general and Nicholas Kristoff of the NY Times in particular (story here) because they (the left) didn't want the anthrax attacks pinned to Iraq or Al Qaeda.
What I have a harder time with is the second punch the Congressional Democrats want to inflict upon Robert Mueller. Quoting verbatim from GovExec:
"We are ... concerned about recent reports indicating that the FBI may have contributed to the current subprime mortgage crisis by failing to act on its knowledge of wide-scale mortgage fraud," they wrote. "It also appears that the FBI failed to prioritize this crime, as evidenced by the reported decrease in the number of agents devoted to the issue and the attorney general's refusal to create a national task force to centralize FBI mortgage fraud investigations."
Again, I really know nothing about the inner workings of the FBI. I don't know how they prioritize their case load, and whether fraud of any sort would ever rise above the level of drug trafficking, murder, racketeering, or whatever else they investigate. But given that the private companies involved in the massive collateralization or securitization of mortgage loans did everything in their power to hide the underlying shakiness of many of those loans ("Bundle that shinola up as quickly as possible and sell it to some other sucker!" I can imagine the brokers saying), I kinda doubt the FBI had much advance warning of mortgage-related fraud until after the press started exploring it. Which is the same time as the rest of us really woke up to it.
Should the FBI have known what was going on in the real estate markets? Maybe. Was there an obvious crime being committed? Were there any advance indicators that mortgage brokers were engaging in fraudulent activities? Or is the FBI just being scapegoated here? Basically, this is another example of passing the buck from the Legislative Branch, who probably could have written tighter laws preventing mortgage lenders from engaging in deceptive or outright fraudulent activities, to the Executive Branch, who is charged with enforcement of the existing laws.
All of which is being done after the fact, in an election year, for the purposes of political grandstanding. Look at us, voters! We have your best interests at heart!
Nice.
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I think that there's probably a tendency to avoid taking risks in an election year. And as I recall, there's a historical trend towards a lack of legislative accomplishments during this stretch of the electoral cycle. Still, trying to distract attention by blaming the FBI seems silly.
It is noteworthy, though, that the Dems are actually pushing for a second stimulus package (against resistance from the Reps) to focus on stimulating job growth. So maybe they'll do something with legislation after all.
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