While President Obama builds a government that does more and more to pry into the lives of ordinary citizens, he does more and more to keep his own government bullies free from scrutiny.
Last week, he went as far as any president since Watergate to make sure that government corruption could go unscrutinized and unchecked.
In a stunningly brazen act of defiance against the very notion that government should be answerable to the public, Obama’s Justice Department issued an order severely limiting the investigative powers of inspectors general — the very officers who are the first line of defense against government corruption and waste.
This is the latest, and the most dangerous, in a long line of Obama attacks against the independence and authority of IGs.
The administration’s war against IGs began in particularly nasty form just four months after Obama took office.First, let’s understand what IGs are and do. The Congressional Research Service last December defined IGs “as permanent, nonpartisan, and independent offices,” tasked by Congress, on behalf of the American people, with fighting “waste, fraud, and abuse … in more than 70 federal agencies.” As Justice Department IG Michael Horowitz told the Washington Times, the law gives IGs the authority to “access ‘all’ documents necessary to conduct effective oversight.”