The Worst Congress Ever

Democracy NOW interviews Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi about his story called "The Worst Congress Ever." Incredible interview about what Congress doesn't do and the grammar school tactics they play against each other. If this won't get you to the polls and vote for a change nothing will. Excerpt: AMY GOODMAN: What about Congress being a check and balance on the executive branch, on the President, how it has changed? MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, not anymore. This is probably the most disgusting thing about this congress, if you can imagine that there's a most disgusting thing. But the congress in the Clinton years, which is mostly the same Republican congress, they issued over a thousand subpoenas to the Clinton administration during Clinton's time in office. Since Bush has come into office, they haven't issued a single subpoena to the Bush White House. They have issued a few to the Bush administration, but not to the White House. And this is a time period where we've seen some extraordinary things happen that should have been investigated, you know, from the misuse of intelligence to get us into Iraq, to failure to act appropriately before 9/11, to Katrina, to all these things, to the Valerie Plame incident. These are all things that would have been investigated in the past, and they're not being investigated now. And what you have as a result of that is a body that's bureaucratically castrated. They just no longer have any will or any ability to stand up to the executive branch for any reason. And this is a dangerous situation for this country. You know, the Congress exists to act as a check on the power of the executive branch, and they're not doing it anymore. You can stream it at Democracy NOW