Your records are ours, sayth the House

For the next couple of weeks, two committee chairs and their assistants can access you tax records:

Congress debated legislation Saturday giving two committee chairman and their assistants access to income tax returns without regard to privacy protections, but not before red-faced Republicans said it was all a mistake and would be swiftly repealed.

"This is a serious situation,'' said Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. He said he was unaware of the provision, inserted into a 3,300-page spending bill covering most federal agencies and programs.

Questioned sharply by fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Stevens pleaded with the Senate to approve the overall spending bill.

The Senate passed a resolution saying the tax returns provision "shall have no effect.'' Stevens said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., had agreed to have the House pass it when that chamber reconvenes Dec. 6.

They of challenged ethics are in charge, and this happens?

How would something like this happen, anyway? Just sitting round the office drafting fake privacy intrusion bills as a party game, getting hammered on pina coladas and listening to Jimmy Buffet, then on the way to the floor you grab it by mistake and sneak it in the middle of an apporpiations bill? And what if no one had caught it?

2 more years. That's going to be all I can take