Treasonous Incompetence at the DOE

Leaving aside for a moment the question of why 1,500 employees of the nuclear weapons unit of the Department of Energy or their superiors were not notified until nine months after their identities were compromised due to theft, why must David Stout of the Times insist that rage at the incompetence of DOE administrators be confined to Democrats, when the first quotation of his own article contradicts him?

The Energy Department data leak, coming on the heels of a much larger data breach in the Department of Veterans Affairs, is sure to raise new alarms about government cybersecurity and may provide Democrats more grist to question the very competence of the Bush administration... Representative Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee, told Linton F. Brooks, the administrator of the nuclear-security unit, that he should resign. "And I mean like 5 o'clock this afternoon, if it's possible," Mr. Barton said. "I don't see how you could meet with the secretary every day the last seven or eight months and not inform him."

The Post's version of the story omits Barton's wonderful smackdown of Brooks.