Something we aren’t used to seeing; oversight of an administration, being conducted by the administration’s own party:

A congressional oversight committee opened an investigation yesterday into whether the Obama administration is circumventing a law that limits lavish pay for executives at firms benefiting from the $700 billion federal bailout.

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner asking for records on any special entities that the government believes it can use to funnel bailout money without requiring firms to abide by congressional restrictions.

“It would be unconscionable and irresponsible for the Treasury Department to permit excessive pay practices to continue at companies that have been rescued by the taxpayers,” Towns wrote in the letter. “I will strongly oppose any attempt to weaken or bypass these restrictions, or to violate the spirit, if not the intent, of these laws.”

To the Republicans, this would be called “treason”. How dare a party not hold true to “party loyalty”, and instead go on the side of democracy. And if someone in the administration is found to be guilty of trying to balk the regulations put into the stimulus, well they better be shown the door quickly, if not frog marched out.