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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pompsander who wrote (761637)	4/26/2007 5:37:14 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Politicking on government time An editorial / By Dale McFeatters Thursday, April 26, 2007 scrippsnews.com In the bad old days of machine politics, government workers were often coerced into contributing to political campaigns of the party in power and working for its candidates. In response to such charges surrounding New Deal relief programs, Congress passed the Hatch Act. The Act is intended to insulate federal civil servants from political pressure by broadly barring them from partisan political activity and prohibiting the use of federal offices and supplies for political purposes. Federal investigators are probing whether the Bush administration crossed that line when the head of the General Services Administration _ an agency often described as the government's landlord _ asked, following a briefing on the midterm elections by a White House political operative, how the GSA could be used to help "our candidates." Now, the White House has disclosed that there were as many as 20 such briefings at 15 federal agencies. White House officials insist the briefings were appropriate, but it doesn't look terribly good that they're only disclosing them now that Democrats with subpoenas are breathing down their necks. All administrations chafe at the Hatch Act and try to push the legal envelope. This White House argues that its briefings were purely informational and open only to the agency's political appointees. But as the Abramoff lobbying scandal and the firing of the U.S. attorneys have demonstrated, this administration doesn't have altogether clean hands when it comes to politics. Even if the briefings were within the letter of the Hatch Act, just because they're legal doesn't make them right.