The meme that has developed in the echo chambers of the Weekly Standard and National Review, to the effect that Congress is exceeding its authority by legislating timetables in the supplemental, is simply mind-boggling. There is no constitutional justification for it whatsoever.

More bizarrely, these pundits even exceed the position staked out by President Bush, who actually acknowledges congressional authority in this area! He said at his April 3 press confrence on this subject:

Q When Congress has linked war funding with a timetable you have argued micromanagement. When they've linked it to unrelated spending, you've argued pork barrel. But now there's talk from Harry Reid and others that if you veto this bill, they may come back and just simply cut off funding. Wouldn't that be a legitimate exercise of a congressional authority, which is the power of the purse?

THE PRESIDENT: The Congress is exercising its legitimate authority as it sees fit right now. I just disagree with their decisions. I think setting an artificial timetable for withdrawal is a significant mistake. It is a -- it sends mixed signals and bad signals to the region, and to the Iraqi citizens.

Madness.

I often agree with Glenn's criticisms of the Bush administration, but as a journalism critic he is often all wet. The post above about the O'Donnell/Leahy interview is one of those times. I say this even though I am much more sympathetic to Leahy's case here than to that of the White House,

What O'Donnell did was to quote the White House position to Leahy and challenge him to respond. She did not endorses it as her own, and that is clear from the context. This is a common journalistic technique when covering political antagonists -- "Mr. X, your opponent, says such-and-such about this matter. What do you say back?" And, after watching to the YouTube video several times, I completely disagree with Glenn's characterization that she was asking the questions "angrily."

It is just as much O'Donnell's job to get into Leahy's face and ask aggressive questions as it is to get into Tony Snow's face and do so.

O'Donnell's appearance on the Chris Matthews Show was a very different matter. There she was wearing her "pundit" hat, not acting as a reporter. I think many journalists have a real problem when they try to switch roles like that. This was not an example of how to do it right.

In the case of the panel discussion with Matthews, my own critical view was more nuanced than yours. (And your own view may be just as valid as mine.) I thought these participants were guilty of what many Washington political reporters often do: They interpret everything through a political lens, and analyze everything solely in terms of which faction is "winning" the political struggle, without regard to the underlying substance.

I did not think Matthews and O'Donnell were adopting the White House position on U.S. attorneys as correct. But they were mocking the Democrats' chances of success in forcing Rove to testify and making political hay, and thus "winning" the political struggle. The pundits did this while ignoring the question of whether there are facts in need of investigating.

Like another commenter above, I also wonder whether the original ABC report was accurate.

I also wonder how anyone can assume that the database funded by the National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting Act of 2005, to which Glenn links, even includes antidepressants. Did anyone say it does?

I am no expert, and I could be wrong, but I don't think antidepressants are among the drugs listed on the schedules of "controlled substances" covered by that act.

I don't pretend know much about this other than my own cursory research and what I have read above. The additional information you quoted from the commenter with experience in a pharmacy does reinforce my suspicion that antidepressant presecriptions are not included in a federal database.

So I continue to wonder about the complete accuracy of the ABC report and its sources. It may be that they did not comprehend what antidepressants are. Perhaps the database was just searched globally by Cho's name, and found nothing at all.

I also confess that I was ignorant of the fact that this database had ever been created. It happened below my radar. I am not entirely sure what I think of the policy issue of whether it is a good idea. Some of the drugs on those schedules seem pretty harmless, but some others can surely be abused.

As for your reading of the disclosure provision of the act, the only way I can see that it could be accessed here would be if there was a bona fide hypothesis that Cho might have misused some scheduled drug (not including antidepressants, which don't seem to be covered).

It may be a stretch, but if law-enforcement authorities did suspect some sort of "misuse," they arguably could say "that the requested information is related to an individual investigation or proceeding involving the unlawful diversion or misuse of a schedule II, III, or IV substance, and such information will further the purpose of the investigation or assist in the proceeding." The statute does not seem to define a threshold requirement for supporting any such suspicion.

But it is far from clear to me that such a database search would be legal, either.

It is disconcerting to think that some law-enforcement official who has some unspecified curiosity about you or me could just search the database to find out about our history of filling such prescriptions.

What is truly remarkable is that the signing-statements story did not require exclusive sources or access. All Charlie Savage really did was methodically examine the public record -- it was all in plain sight -- and conduct on-the-record interviews about the legal implications.

So, while Charlie Savage deserves the prize and the praise, the fact that such reporting is uniquely praiseworthy is also a statement about how low the rest of the pack sets the bar.