courtesy of Henry Waxman, ranking minority member of the House Oversight Committee:

Compare the following: Republicans in the House took more than 140 hours of testimony to investigate whether the Clinton White House misused its holiday card database but less than five hours of testimony regarding how the Bush administration treated Iraqi detainees.

(Emphasis added) If that’s even close to being accurate, that really puts things into perspective. The article is a good read (click link above), but the thrust is summarized neatly here:

When President Clinton was in office, Congress exercised its oversight powers with no sense of proportionality. But oversight of the Bush administration has been even worse: With few exceptions, Congress has abdicated oversight responsibility altogether.

Gee, you think? Politics is always going to be partisan, but when the watchdogs themselves become so blatently partisan that they simply lay down and sleep, then who will be the watchdogs?