News cycle and IG-Gate

Trying to keep up with a multi-front investigation is difficult and, while chasing yesterday's IG story and then following up with Grassley's document release, I overlooked a few relevant items:

• Byron York had an important column about the AmeriCorps situation that explained a lot of the "why" behind the firing of Walpin. Basically, AmeriCorps wanted to make sure Sacramento got its share of "stimulus" money. Walpin was angry that the board went behind his back to reach a settlement with Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. When Walpin threatened to blow the whistle, they got the White House to ax him;
• Nancy Lewis of Youth Today had some important background on the Walpin firing;
• Hans Bader had a column connecting the Walpin firing to the "political correctness" factor in the stimulus plan;
• The Wall Street Journal had an editorial saying IGs "do nothing to curb federal spending" and mostly create "pseudo-scandals." This drew a response from Michael Smallberg of the Project On Government Oversight; and
• Alan Gray of Newsblaze had a column, "Will Joe Lieberman Wilt?" In other words, will Lieberman earn his "independent" stripes by holding hearings on IG-Gate, despite heavy pressure from Democrats to lay off.

I'm sure I've missed some important items, but this is a big story that's growing bigger, and it's getting very hard to compile a comprehensive daily round-up. Bob Belvedere may have the best compilation of IG-Gate information.

One of the breaks I've caught in the past week is that many top D.C. journalists are already on vacation and won't return until after July 4. Also, the Iran controversy, the White House press conference Tuesday, the cap-and-trade push, and the Mark Sanford confession Wednesday seem to have distracted lots of the Washington press corps. So I scored an exclusive Thursday night while everybody else missed it. Heh.

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