Tommy Denton

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After six years of congressional sycophancy and rubber-stamping of virtually every whim, caprice and malefaction of the Bush administration, demands for "accountability" from the new congressional leadership have become a welcome regularity.

The old guard now consigned to minority status after the 2006 elections, as well as the increasingly held-accountable administration, has been complaining of "partisan witch hunts" by members of the new Democratic leadership.

When it comes to politics, accountability seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

Few have taken up the levers of oversight with the same vigorous determination as U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the tireless chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Waxman has raised more Republican hackles in Washington than Ronald Reagan raised in Moscow with his exhortation to "trust but verify."

Legislative oversight effectively atrophied during the last six years, so some complaints are to be expected from those who feel the cramping effect of long-inactive congressional muscles now burning from the exercise of renewed public purpose.

The new breath of fervor to expose and revitalize the dark, dank corners of government bureaucracies has most recently extended even into the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency charged with enforcing federal laws to protect civil servants -- and the public interest -- from pernicious political influences in the conduct of the people's business.

Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch announced last week the formation of a task force to investigate allegations that White House political operatives may have improperly wielded political hammers to achieve overtly partisan political objectives through federal agencies or tried to coerce federal employees into taking actions that would serve partisan political ends.

The investigation, Bloch indicated, would include an examination of the firing of at least one of the several U.S. attorneys discharged in a controversial house-cleaning, with shrill political overtones, that led to withering congressional criticism of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

At least one other aspect of Bloch's probe was to include charges that a White House aide to political director Karl Rove made a presentation in January to several high officials of the General Services Administration and effectively laid out an action plan for the agency to support Republican ambitions in dozens of congressional races nationwide.

Such interventions, if true, would most likely constitute a violation of the Hatch Act, a 68-year-old law enacted to prevent use of federal resources on behalf of a political party or purpose.

Unfortunately, events have conspired to challenge the credibility of Bloch to conduct such an investigation. He and his office also have been under a series of investigations in the last two or three years for failure to enforce appropriate worker protections and also to clear severe backlogs in federal whistleblower complaints that the office is supposed to help resolve on behalf of federal employees.

According to The Washington Post, Bloch's office has been involved in a "string of controversies beginning with the start of his five-year term, in January 2004. Early on, he was accused of failing to enforce a long-standing policy against bias in the federal workplace based on sexual orientation. Since then, Bloch has also been accused of retaliating against employees who disagreed with his policies, and of tossing out legitimate complaints and whistleblower cases to claim progress in reducing the office backlog. The Office of Personnel Management inspector general is investigating the allegations."

Those of a skeptical cast of mind may wonder whether the Bloch task force was really a tactical diversion deployed by the White House to prevent House Democrats from poking their meddlesome noses into yet another administration indiscretion.

By the time the mechanics of evidence-gathering, "analysis" and circulation of an internal draft report would have coursed through the administrative process, several months could transpire and other events inside the Beltway could unfold to provide cover for the political operatives skittering into the political woods ahead of the hounds of "accountability."

That tends to be the outcome, in Washington or any other seat of government, when the foxes summon their own to guard the hen house.

New stewards of official accountability have begun to inspect not only the hens but also the foxes. It's been a neglected part of American statecraft for much too long.

Denton's column appears in the Sunday and Tuesday editions of The Roanoke Times.