Obama's New War Against Government Watchdogs

The mullahs in Iran should be glad Obama doesn’t treat them like he does the inspectors general throughout the federal government.

The Obama administration’s war against inspectors general has been going on so long that even new Obama abuses against  government watchdogs get treated as old news. They should not be.

The muzzling of these watchdogs is a serious sign of a government that is so powerful that it is not answerable to no entity outside itself, and certainly not to the public it is supposed to serve.  Over at LifeZette, Quin Hillyer highlights why last week’s move to limit the investigative powers of perhaps the most important IG of all, the one at the Department of Justice, is a particularly egregious, and dangerous, violation.  Hillyer:

Yet last week the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, run by an Obama political appointee, ruled that henceforth IGs must request permission from agency heads before they can access grand jury, wiretap, and fair credit information. Without independent authority to review such documents (while of course observing all the usual safeguards against public disclosure of such information), IGs will be at the mercy of the very agencies against whose potential abuses the IGs are serving as watchdogs.

This is the equivalent of telling a police investigator that his lawfully executed warrant is a mere request to search a suspect’s home for evidence, rather than a court order with the force of law.

It gives an administration’s political appointees the power to thwart investigations into their own malfeasance.