Subpoena Power Won't Be Used To Witchhunt :-(

I must admit I was feeling pretty bloodthirsty on the morning of November 8, 2006. I was thinking about all the investigations that would be taking place. I was thinking about the resignation of Rumsfeld and about all the others that might fall afterward. Then I read an article from the November 6 issue of The New Republic by Michael Crowley called "Subpoena Envy".

In the article Crowley claims House Democrats John Dingell (MI) and Henry Waxman, while respectively poised and giddy, are not going to target people or behave in a vengeful manner. They contrast this to the Newt Gingrich, Dan Burton and company who sought investigations during the Clinton years.

Dan Burton "issued more than 1,000 subpoenas to 141 different Clintonites." He asked whether Christmas cards were used for political purposes and "in one case, Burton's investigators managed to subpoena the wrong man. In his low point in 1998 "Burton released misleadingly edited transcripts of secretly recorded phone conversations conducted in prison by former Clinton associate Webb Hubbell."

In 1997 Republican Representative Gerald Solomon of New York notified the FBI that Democratic National Committee fund-raiser John Huang may have sold U.S secrets to the Chinese, prompting an FBI investigation and wide press coverage. Two years later, FBI files released to Congress showed that Solomon's charge had been based on a cocktail-party conversation with a Senate staffer who claimed to have heard the scoop from an unnamed employee of the Commerce Department , where Huang had worked. Solomon couldn't remember his name --- only that he was "a male in his thirties or early forties, approximately five feet ten inches tall with brownish hair." (That narrowed things down to roughly half the federal government's employees) - Subpoena Envy, Michael Crowley

Yes, this is what Nancy Pelosi wants to avoid. She doesn't want to be a "Left-Wing Gingrich". I kinda understand. I still want to remind everyone the jugular vein of the Republican Party is wide open. *whistle's innocently*