Hours of oversight hearings held by the GOP-controlled Congress:

• 140 Hours: Investigation of President Clinton’s use of the White House Christmas card list.

• 12 Hours: Investigation of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib.

• 0 Hours: Investigation of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s unexplained loss of nearly nine (9) billion dollars.

The government’s official news channel, Fox News, would like you to believe that this is business as usual. They want you to think that things have always been this way and that when either party is in control, this is what is done. This is false.

As the Boston Globe notes, party loyalty did not stop a Democratic-controlled Congress from conducting oversight and investigation of the Clinton Administration. The near cessation of all oversight by Congress is a new phenomenon, unprecedented in the post-WWII era. This is courtesy of the authoritarian Bush Administration, which believes in a radical “unitary theory” of the presidency, which holds that the president has supreme authority above all other branches of government and is not subject to traditional checks and balances. This is not good.