Gonzales stops oversight into his own role in rubber-stamping White House NSA policy

More than ever, especially after the poor planning for hurricane Katrina and the strategic blunder of a war in Iraq, we are learning a lot about how a bunch of allied, power-hungry micro-managers are a whole lot more damaging to this country than having a level-headed, efficiently funded bureaucracy with checks to prevent an abuse power.

Today, we were reminded once again why having a small group of people with a large amount of power runs the risk of allowing potential abuses within the system.  A report in the National Journal explains how Alberto Gonzales squashed an effort by his own Justice Department to investigate his weak, rubber-stamp oversight into Bush's warrantless domestic spy program:

An internal Justice Department inquiry into whether department officials -- including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft-- acted properly in approving and overseeing the Bush administration'sdomestic eavesdropping program was stymied because investigators weredenied security clearances to do their work. The investigators,however, were only seeking information and documents relating to theNational Security Agency's surveillance program that were already inthe Justice Department's possession, two senior government officialssaid in interviews.

It is pretty obvious why President Bush keeps nominating his special counsels, such as Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzales, for all these high posts.  They are 'yes sir' people with lasting loyalties to the President.  A patronage system like that only invites the possibility of having our Executive Branch being run by a group of allied individuals that make rubber stamping White House policy a higher priority than enforcing the law.

There is nothing wrong with the Executive Branch having their own ideological view about how to fight the war on terrorism.  But to prevent both internal and external oversight into the manner by which the Executive Branch routinely carries out that ideology goes against the very principles that our government was founded upon.