| The House Judiciary Committee launched a new page on their website to Lamar Smith’s disdain.
Lamar Smith saw first hand last cycle how powerful the internet can be when John Courage made a strong run at him, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars online. If it hadn’t been for a sudden Supreme Court ruling, Smith may have been on the early side of retirement.
Seeing the power of the internet Smith made some demands. Of course, Fox's bias reigns supreme in their "reporting".
The response came after Texas Rep. Lamar Smith demanded the new page be removed from the committee Web site, and called it a partisan attempt to persecute the Bush administration and misuse taxpayer dollars for a witch-hunt.
Conyers said the attacks by House Republicans over the page are creating a "sideshow and a distraction" from the real issue — the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last December, he said.
"Some have raised allegations about a Web page that was designed to give department whistleblowers a mechanism to securely communicate with the committee. The Web page was launched prematurely, but the content of it represented a good faith interpretation of House rules," Conyers said in a statement.
Two things strike me about Smith’s defense of Bush and clearly partisan attack of the committee. First, Bush’s most recent poll numbers have him at
26%, the second lowest in American history. If it would pay off in the long run, I would understand why a Texas Republican would defend the Texas President, but Cornyn proves that defending Bush is a losing proposition. Second, Lamar Smith’s track record shows he would rather use the Judiciary committee to protect Republican’s instead of doing its job.
"This committee, I'm sure we all would agree, should not engage in the partisan persecution of the administration's public officials," Smith said.
Is that why you bought your seat on the committee to protect Tom DeLay Mr. Smith?
And let’s be clear, the site is designed to allow people to contact the committee so they can further investigate Alberto Gonzales (another Texan and Bush loyalist) and his politicization of the Department of Justice.
"The committee is looking for concrete and specific actions taken or statements made by management-level officials of the department that have led career employees to be concerned that law enforcement actions will not be handled on a completely non-partisan, impartial manner but will be unduly influenced by partisan political or other inappropriate considerations," the letter reads.
It is clear that the Republican Party continues to hide behind partisan rhetoric in order to distort the truth. The people have spoken Mr. Smith they wanted new leadership. Let Chairman Conyers do his job and find out why Gonzales felt a need to fire nine qualified attorneys for no reason. |
