Yesterday, the Politico ran this story about how Sen. Kent Conrad was not amused by Rep. Daryl Issa’s inquiry into his role in the “Friends of Angelo” mortgage scandal:

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) lashed out at Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) after the Republican congressman pushed the powerful Democratic senator to divulge details about low-interest loans he received from Countrywide Financial.
In letters provided to POLITICO, Conrad has accused Issa of attempting to impugn his name in a GOP inquiry into the Countrywide mortgage scandal. Conrad said that the Senate Ethics Committee is the “appropriate forum to resolve this matter,” not Issa’s Republican staff on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

I’d like to know what is the appropriate forum for investigating Conrad, because the Senate Ethics Committee is a joke that hasn’t done anything meaningful since the scandal broke. And further, almost all of the attention to the “Friends of Angelo” scandal has focused on Chris Dodd, despite Conrad’s clear involvement. Somebody needs to look into what Conrad did.

That said, while I’m glad Daryl Issa is pressuring Conrad a bit, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has been a vipers nest for decades now and any inquiry that emanates from there is sure to be characterized as a partisan attack whether it’s a legitimate concern or not.

Most recently, we have Henry Waxman to blame for continuing to poison the well. As it happens, I discuss Waxman’s recent chairmanship of the Government Reform Committee in my review of his book on NRO today:

Waxman also uses this chapter as an opportunity for some glib score-settling against the GOP. He spends pages railing against the Republican Congress for giving Dan Burton, head of the Oversight Committee — of which Waxman was the ranking member — unilateral subpoena power to investigate Clinton scandals. Of course, Waxman fails to mention the zealously partisan defense of the Clinton administration by Democratic members of that committee. His accusation in the book that Burton’s tenure on the Oversight Committee resulted in “star chambers” is dishonest hyperbole; but he’s right that giving that kind of subpoena power to a committee chairman is a mistake.
For proof, we need look no farther than Waxman’s tenure as chair of the Oversight Committee. He routinely abused his subpoena power, nearly setting up a separation-of-powers conflict by subpoenaing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice finally relented, and appeared before the committee for what turned out to be a completely unnecessary and hostile inquiry, obviously done to score partisan points in front of TV cameras. In the book, Waxman freely admits that demagoguing and shaming people in the media is an effective tactic he frequently employs. Prior to dragooning Secretary Rice, Waxman — while still in the minority — tried to get the Government Accountability Office to file a lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney. The idea that Henry Waxman has standing to accuse Republicans of investigative overreach is laughable. (For more on Waxman’s problematic tenure as chair of the Oversight Committee, see my article in NRODT from last year.)