The Frog is getting warmer.
November has barely begun--but at this rate the frog should be approaching medium-rare-to-well by mid-month.The social and political fabric of our society is being ripped--in some cases ever so gently, in others ever so ambiguously, that we don't even recognize the signs of destruction anymore.
From the Washington Post, Nov. 7 - way back in the bowels of the paper, on page 26:
The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.
The decision -- one that Democrats and scholars said is highly unusual -- was announced in an e-mail sent Wednesday to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House spent making and installing the "Mission Accomplished" banner for President Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled "congressional questions" to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing "the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process," he wrote: "Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee."
Once again, questions are in order:
- Why are they changing the formula for requesting information. It's not as if the senate, like the U.S. Hispanic population, has mushroomed in size in the last several years.
- Will an alternative style of information gathering permit the opposition to ask the same number and type of questions and get the answers in as prompt a fashion and in as much detail as previously?
- Is Paul Krugman right--that all this is part of a revolution that aims to eliminate a two-party system; a post new-deal arrangement that supports the middle class and aims to avoid class warfare; and basic rights such as representative government, freedom of speech, separation of powers, and the right to dissent.
11:01:48 AM 
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