So this morning I read this interesting article:

Republicans are stepping up their criticism of the Securities and Exchange Commission following reports that senior agency staffers spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were supposed to be policing the nation’s financial system.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said it was “disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation’s economy on the brink of collapse.”

He said in a statement Thursday that SEC officials “were preoccupied with other distractions” when they should have been overseeing the growing problems in the financial system.

Following reports? Well I do remember seeing something about those reports, but couldn’t remember when. Thankfully we have the power of the Google:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a drubbing [1] these days for its abject failure?despite detailed tips [1]?to catch Bernie Madoff in what appears to be the biggest Ponzi scheme in our nation’s history.

Now, thanks to little-noticed report [2] from the agency’s inspector general, we have a detailed glimpse into other bad behavior by some SEC employees.

The report [2], released the day after Thanksgiving, reveals that some employees at the agency were clearly preoccupied with matters other than their mission [3] of “protecting investors and maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets.” The semi-annual report to Congress, which covers the period from this past April to September, details among other things a handful of employees circumventing internal controls to download porn. Let’s pause for some detail:

Ah yes now I remember. The day after Thanksgiving that happened. But here’s the catcher. That was the day after Thanksgiving 2008.

So now we have a case of interesting timing. This issue went basically untouched for over a year and a half. After all, this occurred during the Bush Administration and went untouched until the SEC made big news again by filing the lawsuit against Goldman Sachs. And going back to the original article I linked, it appears that might have something to do with it:

“That kind of behavior is just intolerable and atrocious,” said Robinson, now with Levick Strategic Communications. He said he expects the head of the SEC, Mary Schapiro and her team, are “very focused on” the issue.

Schapiro has been parrying GOP complaints about the Goldman Sachs lawsuit, which agency officials hoped would mark a new era of tougher oversight of Wall Street. They followed high-profile embarrassments including the failure to catch Ponzi kings Bernard Madoff and R. Allen Stanford.

Republican lawmakers also accused the SEC of being influenced by politics. The SEC’s commissioners approved the Goldman charges on a rare 3-2 vote. The two who objected were Republicans

Republicans are doing everything they can to protect Goldman Sachs. Yes government employees shouldn’t be checking out porn while earning pay from our tax dollars, but the Republicans really weren’t interested in the 18 month period from when the report was initially released up to the time that the SEC filed the lawsuit against Goldman Sachs. Like I said – very interesting timing.

Update:

A little interesting fact that many may not know is that Darrell Issa is ranked the richest member of the House:

I don’t know if it means much or not, but it is a nice tidbit of information none the less.

Update 2:

Apparently a new memo has been released recently that basically recants what was said in the 2008 OIG report about employees watching porn. MSNBC and CNN have both reported on it. It does beg the question though why no attention was given to the original report in November of 2008?

Update 3:

Another interesting thing about Issa and his war against the SEC. This week Issa has been making claims that the SEC colluded with the Obama administration to bring charges against Goldman-Sachs. The Obama administration has denied this and Issa was forced to admit he has no proof. So it sounds like Issa has declared his own personal war against the SEC.