Tax Time.

I'm back from unseasonably and unreasonably chilly Palo Alto, Calif., where I learned some things about Web publishing that I hope will ultimately improve your overall experience of GovExec.com. (If they don't, I'll have some explaining to do to my bosses about why I spent the company's money traveling 3,000 miles to a seminar.)

Anyway, this morning's fascinating news (if you consider stuff like Tom Ridge's replacement and steroids in baseball to be not all that fascinating) is the Post piece in which a mid-level House aide finally takes the fall for inserting the controversial provision into the omnibus spending bill giving appropriations committee staffers access to IRS offices--and tax records. This is intriguing on a whole bunch of levels:

• Members of Congress are so disconnected from the process of overseeing agencies that staffers apparently don't even think to include them--and are actually surprised when people suggest that inserting provisions like this without telling your boss is not a particularly good idea.
• Pity poor Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla. When he was initially fingered as the bad guy, he was left with two really ugly choices: a. Say he didn't know anything about it, and appear to be out of touch; or b. Take responsibility, and look like he was dying to snoop through Uncle Joe's 1040. Istook's sticking with (a) at this point, and valiantly trying to argue that he's the guy who was really wronged.
• While allowing appropriations committee staffers access to tax records is apparently a threat to the privacy of the average American worthy of great moral outrage, snooping by Ways and Means Committee aides is evidently not a problem.
• This all started because the IRS wouldn't allow routine oversight visits by appropriations committee staffers to field sites, because they couldn't guarantee that some aide wouldn't just happen to see Donald Trump's return. That seems like an overly strict interpretation of the law--and gives the appearance, at least, of providing an all-too-convenient excuse to simply avoid oversight.
• In reality, though, that scenario actually seems unlikely, because when Hill staffers demanded a solution, the IRS helpfully drafted the "come on over and take a peek" language itself! While several people on the Hill should have realized that the provisions would cause a problem, it would have been very helpful had the agency not offered them up in the first place.