It Must Be True What They Say About Absolute Power

From the Washington Post:

Angry about a leaked Democratic memo, the Republican leadership of the Senate yesterday took the unusual step of canceling all business of the committee investigating prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called on the author of the memo — which laid out a possible Democratic strategy to extend the investigation to include the White House and executive branch — to “identify himself or herself . . . disavow this partisan attack in its entirety” and deliver “a personal apology” to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Only if those steps are taken, Frist said, “will it be possible for the committee to resume its work in an effective and bipartisan manner — a manner deserving of the confidence of other members of the Senate and the executive branch.”

Get it? Democrats write a memo outlining concerns that Republicans will stonewall the investigation and describing possible responses. The Republican response? Halt the investigations. I guess the memo was a pure flight of fancy.

AB

UPDATE: CalPundit parses the text of the memo and concludes, “There’s nothing wrong with this, and it wouldn’t have happened if Republicans had been willing to conduct a fair and thorough investigation in the first place. So let’s save the mock outrage, OK?” Note: Sincere outrage over Republicans’ mock outrage is fine.

UPDATE 2: Marshall has the right analogy on this one:

Two guys walk into a ring for a fight. One knows he’s about to get creamed. But he can’t bear the shame and humiliation of walking away from a fight. So at the very last moment he whips out some phony claim that the other guy’s cheating.