Chinks In The BushCo Armor

One of the reasons the GOP is so worried about the upcoming mid-term elections is that if the Democrats take control of either the House or Senate, then real investigations into Republican wrongdoing will ensue. The Bush Administration has -- thanks to its allies in Congress -- been able to avoid any serious congressional inquiries into matters such as the manipulation of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq Debacle and the related Plame TraitorGate Scandal.

But the days of weak Congressional oversight on the Bush Administration may be coming to an end:

A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program.

The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why.

Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush's father, is the first Republican on either the House's Intelligence Committee or the Senate's to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists.

I'm certain we'll see BushCo-spawned attacks on the patriotism of Rep. Wilson ensue very soon, particularly given that she is "a former Air Force officer who is the only female veteran currently in Congress." Our Deserter-In-Chief and his deputy Chickenhawks seem to relish the chance to go after veterans who speak out against their corrupt regime.

And speaking of BushCo-spawned attacks on our veterans, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -- a paper that has been critical of John Murtha in the past -- now endorses Murtha's plan with regard to Iraq:

The nuclear saber-rattling of neighboring Iran is heading for a showdown. To meet that threat should diplomacy fail, the United States must begin the six- to nine-month logistical process of drawing down its Iraqi force and repositioning it to respond, if need be, to the Iranian threat.

This is not retreat. This is not cut-and-run. This is a recognition of the reality in Iraq -- one that has evolved into an Iraqi problem that only the Iraqis now can solve -- and that the paramount world security threat now is Iran.

On CBS's "60 Minutes" Sunday night, Jack Murtha predicted the "vast majority" of U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by year's end if not sooner. We hope he's right. The time has come.

As Arianna points out, this flip-flop is an interesting one because of who owns this particular paper:

What makes this so significant is not the Tribune-Review's reach (circulation 102,000) but its provenance. It's part of a seven-paper chain that is published -- and controlled -- by Richard Mellon Scaife, the arch-conservative icon who has donated so much money to conservative causes and institutions that the Washington Post dubbed him the "Funding Father of the Right."

Besides infamously backing the American Spectator's smear-Clinton Arkansas Project, Scaife has given hundreds of millions of dollars to a who's who of right-leaning groups including the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Judicial Watch, the Federalist Society, Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation, David Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Brent Bozell's Media Research Center, and many others. He's also part owner of NewsMax.

Scaife is clearly starting to read the writing on the wall. He must have realized that if Bush doesn't start pulling out of Iraq soon, the G.O.P. will pay a heavy political price in November.