-By Warner Todd Huston
You might recall the gyrations that Democrats made about Bush’s “most secretive presidency”? One item upon which the Democrats focused their ire was the system by which the Bush administration saved White House email communications in order to satisfy the Presidential Records Act. Bush was definitely amiss in properly saving them for posterity (and legality) and it cost the government millions to go back to retrieve unstored emails.
As we all know, Congressional Democrats made a big show of their concern over those lost emails and constantly sent public letters to the White House to force compliance with the records act. It was a piece with their “worst president in history” campaign so lovingly crafted and diligently carried out.
Now, however, it appears that public letters to the president asking about compliance with the Presidential Records Act are a tad less important to Congressional Democrats. Even though the White House has not answered any requests from Congress on how compliance will be carried out, Democrats are less keen to push the issue.
So, it fell to Republicans to make the inquiry. Pursuant to this, on February 19, Representative Darrell Isa (R, CA) crafted an open, public letter to Obama’s White House asking how Obama intended to comply with the PRA. The letter asked four key questions of Obama’s intent. Isa sent several requests to sign onto the letter to Democrats that serve with him on the House government oversight panel in whose purview the Presidential Records Act falls.
He has been greeted with silence.
Interestingly enough a letter from those same Democrats that refused to sign onto Isa’s letter arrived quietly at the White House on February 27. The curious thing is, though, that New York Democrat Representative Edolphus Towns’ letter was kind of similar to Darrell Isa’s letter.
In fact, it was the exact same four questions with Isa’s name cut out of it and Town’s name pasted in its place. No Republican members of the panel were mentioned in the letter nor were they even told the letter was going secretly to the White House.
Mirroring his president, Rep. Towns claimed it was all merely an accident, an oversight, a curious and meaningless misunderstanding. Why, gosh fellas, no one meant to short shrift the Republicans and exclude them from anything. That’s crazy talk!
This is one more example of how Obama’s Democrat Party has no interest at all in any “bi-partisanship” in Washington. Here we have an issue that both Democrats and Republicans can agree is important to pursue and, despite the intense past interest of Democrats now waned, both party’s could have crafted a letter together to inform the White House that this issue is still important.
Yet, not only did Democrats refuse to include Republicans on the same panel in their letter to Obama, but then these Democrats stole the Republican’s letter and rebranded it as their own without so much as changing a single word.
Where Democrats could have found an issue to show a bi-partisan effort, they stole Republican’s effort and then excluded them on the final product.
This is the lie that is Obama’s “post-partisan” Washington.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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