Because I got tired of high-sounding nonsense on the Senate floor, I decided to wander on over to the Rayburn Building for some low-sounding nonsense -- to wit, to see what Darrell Issa and his merry oversight elves were up to these days. Issa has determined that he will run the House Committee On Government Reform And Oversight as the legislative equivalent of a nuisance suit, so it seemed that it might be entertaining at least to see how long it would take before Issa put a bird on his head.

Today's hearing (allegedly) was about the Obama Administration's adherence to federal transparency laws, and the star witness was Lisa Jackson, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Issa's trying to gin up a scandalover how Jackson handled her e-mails while at the EPA.

Republicans and conservative activists have attacked Jackson's use of a secondary EPA address under the name "Richard Windsor."

But the EPA and agency defenders note that EPA administrators under GOP and Democratic presidents have used secondary accounts, and that the correspondence can be obtained in records requests. EPA documents released to the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute also show that Jackson in late 2009 asked an official with Siemens Corp. to use Jackson's home email address when trying to contact her directly, according to several news accounts.

And, of course, Issa is "troubled" by all of this.

"The Committee has continued to uncover troubling evidence that administration officials have engaged in an intentional and systemic practice of violating federal transparency laws to communicate with lobbyists and other private interests using non-official or alias email accounts," said Issa. "This practice runs afoul of the President's promise to run the most transparent Administration in history and creates an undeniable impression that officials are engaging in inappropriate behavior."

Yes, it does, especially since your previous hobby-horse -- the IRS dumbassery -- has expired, and you finally have grown tired of beating on it.

So up to the hill came Ms. Jackson, who now works for Apple, and, lo and behold, the Chairman wasted no time in securing the herring gull to his dome. There was some contact between Jackson and a woman named Allison Taylor, who works for Siemens.

"She is a friend and somebody I've known for some time," said Jackson.

"You work for the president?" said Issa, being a dick.

"When I worked at the Environmental Protection Agency, I worked for the president, yes," said Jackson.

And we were off.

"OK," said Issa, "and the president has a prohibition on basically your coordination with lobbyists. She's a lobbyist, isn't she?"

"I believe she is a registered lobbyist, yes...I believe she worked in the sustainability, or in government affairs. The way I knew her was in a personal manner."

(Watch carefully. Here comes the bird.)

"So you only knew her in a personal manner?"

"That's not fair. I can't separate knowing someone in this city."

"I apologize," said Issa, "but that was what the Abramoff scandal was about, is that people said we were friends when in fact he was a lobbyist."

And there it is, a perfect three-point landing. Somehow, Lisa Jackson's having communicated with someone through a private e-mail account is the rhetorical equivalent of one of the biggest -- and one of the most primarily Republican -- influence-peddling scandals in the history of the Republic. At the end of the hearing, ranking minority member Elijah Cummings, who has spent a year watching Issa put a bird on his head, was shaking his head sadly and talking about wastes of time, and Lisa Jackson was out in the hallway, explaining that, she "had done everything I was told to do by the archivists to comply with the laws." This looks like it might be the next scandal that Issa manufactures out of typical government sloppiness. But, Jesus Mary, Jack Abramoff?

And that is how the business of the country got done on Tuesday, or some of it, anyway. This is a very strange town.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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