“The Democrats are happily [filling and polluting] the swamp they promised to drain.”

What remains open to question is to what extent they'll have done this, eventually, and how surprising it is or isn't.

It is C. L. Smith not C. J.

they convened in the hearing room for a 2 pm scheduled hearing…while the Dems didn't show and were instead meeting privately, and then half hour later announced after the fact that they'd cancelled the hearing.

Yes that is the big issue. Why the democrats tell republicans after the scheduled time they cancelled a meeting, meeting in a private democrat conference instead, and why they cancelled the meeting in the first place about the sweetheart mortgage deals offered to some democrats by Countrywide Mortgage.

Too bad that “victims” is copyrighted by the other, loonier, less ethical side.

Oh, well, “Hope and Change” needs all the help it can get, at least until 2011, and hopefully until 2013.

Leo-Sorry for mucking up your thread, feel free to delete any of my comments to clean it up if needed, I will not take it even a little personally , .

Maybe the variance in the way the locks were positioned really did need to be rectified- but it still seems that the Dem who emailed the Huffpo about this sounds like he's seizing on that as a way to imply that the GOP set the whole thing up and snuck in the room to film and give the appearance of Dems ducking out, but if the facts are the way the GOP frame it then they showed up for the scheduled meeting (not using some kind of unauthorized access to use the room.)

To be honest though this sticking point does not seem to really bother anyone else so it may be best to ignore me on this one because for some reason I cant figure out how it is a non-issue but if everyone is disagreeing with me I will assume you are all probably right and my opinion wrong though I will stick with it, I may just be being a flat earther on this which I think happens to everyone at some point and me more than others.

There seems to be an attempt in that email sent to Huffpo to imply that the GOP were sneaking into the room at odd hours and making campaign videos- using recess time to falsely film a room devoid of Dems and claim that they weren't showing up for the hearings.

Yet the undisputed fact is that this video was made at a time when a hearing WAS scheduled, but then supposedly cancelled at the last moment by the Dem leadership. Since they came up with two different reasons for the cancellation, it's their story that seems rather fishy, not the GOP version.

I actually agree with Mikkel that this is all theater, on both sides…but I don't get what your remaining concern is about the locks because it sounds like you believe an unidentified Dem staffer email to a partisan blogger until that unsourced allegation is proven false.

When the facts as known support the view that the Dems aren't seriously pursuing the potential corruption between Countrywide and elected officials at this point, I don't know why the smoke and mirrors is what seems to concern you more.

You seem tobe missing the point. They did not change them because of the 'lock' issue: they did it for purely partisan reasons.

Hope and Change!

We are saying they're the same, and that's what should bother you.

Of course the refusal of both parties to investigate their members for reported corruption highlights the need for a permanent independent office that does it for them.

Even if the Huffpo piece is entirely accurate, at most the GOP had the ability to enter the room without others knowing they were in there. That doesn't mean that the Dems were unable to enter the room freely at any time they wanted to- just that perhaps they didn't have a 'secret' access from their office suites (frankly I have to wonder if there really was a difference, or if the Dems also have the lock facing that way on the door that leads to their offices.) It really is impossible to draw firm conclusions based on the limited, and partisan, reporting on the situation.

Towns’s staffers told Republicans they were not happy about the presence of the video camera in the hearing room when they were not present. Issa’s spokesman said the Democrats readily acknowledged to Republicans that they changed the locks in retaliation to the videotape of the Democrats’ absence from the business meeting even though committee rules allow meetings to be taped…Towns’s office said in a statement the locks were changed on Republicans “because they don't know how to behave.”

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