Wampum

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, writing in the New York Times makes light of Senators trying to perform their Constitutionally mandated oversight function regarding the administration's intelligence activities. She describes the Senators as throwing "the Congressional equivalent of a temper tantrum." Stolberg makes some Senator's efforts to oversee the administration sound like a matter of inflated egos:

But until December, when the eavesdropping was revealed, all but the Republican chairman and the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee were left off the manifest. If there's one thing senators can't stand, it's being left out of the loop by the White House. And if there's another thing they can't stand, it's reading about how they have been left out of the loop in their morning newspaper.

Perhaps what they can not stand is to read about administration law-breaking in the paper.

Stolberg also practices psychiatry without a license by trying to analyze the Senators demanding the information necessary to fulfill their legal and constitutional responsibilities:

In a sense, the hearing tapped into a Congressional inferiority complex that has been particularly acute under Mr. Bush, who has taken a muscular approach to expanding the executive branch's authority. Lawmakers like to say Congress is a "co-equal branch" of government; nothing irks them more than when the White House punctures that balloon.

Perhaps Stolberg would like to cite some constitutional authority for the proposition that Congress is not a "co-equal branch of government."

Stolberg should have more respect for the oversight function, particularly since she writes for the New York Times. After all, it was a lack of oversight by the Times that led to it publishing fiction written by Judy Miller and Jason Blair.