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Bet:: Henry Waxman had an orgasm over this contrivance .... Stay tuned for more Scamulus Bill revelations.
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 You’ve
heard a lot about the astonishing spending in the $787 billion economic
stimulus bill, signed into law this week by President Barack Obama. But
you probably haven’t heard about a provision in the bill.
The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate
over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the
Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s
known by the few insiders who are aware of it. 
In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the
RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or
refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.” If the inspector
general doesn’t want to follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he’ll have
to write a report explaining his decision to the board, as well as to
the head of his agency (from whom he is supposedly independent) and to
Congress.
When Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a longtime champion of
inspectors general, read the words “conduct or refrain from
conducting,” alarm bells went off. The language means that the board —
whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep
inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some
particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the
inspector general to go after a tempting political target
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(DC EXAMINER) with direction from PAPPY
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