House committee subpoenas Obama technology czar to testify on Obamacare

On Friday the House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to Todd Park, Obama's top technology czar, requiring Park to appear before the committee next week and testify on the glitch-ridden rollout of ObamaCare.

The committee had asked Park to testify several times but Park never appeared.

Committee chair Darrell Issa rejected the administration's offer to have Park brief them next month.  Issa said Park's unwillingness to testify "continues an unfortunate pattern of the current administration when it comes to matters of transparency and congressional oversight."

Obama administration countered by demanding that Issa explain why Park needed to testify next week instead of next month, demanding that Issa choose “cooperation over confrontation.”

Rick Weiss, a spokesman for the Office of Science and Technology Policy, released a prepared statement saying the subpoena was "an unfortunate and unnecessary step since we made clear several times that Todd Park is willing to testify.  We had hoped the Committee would work with us to find an alternative date to give Todd time to focus on the immediate task at hand: getting the website fixed."

The statement concludes, “We are reviewing the subpoena and will respond as appropriate.”  That sounds to me like a challenge:  I would expect a rational president would have ordered his employee to comply with the damn subpoena.

But of course Obama seems rational only to the extent that he aggressively looks out for himself and his image, and everything else be damned.

Let's review:  A congressional committee asks yet another government bureaucrat who could blow up the Obama administration's bullshit cover stories to testify--presumably under oath.  Obama instructs  the guy's supervisors to have him decline--delay, stonewall, ignore, whatever.  Just don't testify.

After weeks of this, finally congress--to everyone's surprise--subpoenas the dodging bureaucrat.  At which point Obozo's spokeswhores--in this case Rick Weiss--issue statements like "Gee, this was all so unnecessary, cuz, like, we made it perfectly clear--in fact, several times--that Todd was perfectly willing to testify."

"The only problem was that the stupid fucking Rethuglicans insisted that he testify before 2016, but Todd was gonna be working 24/7 between now and then focusing on the immediate task at hand: getting the crucial, oh-so-wonderful, vital, crucial website fixed.  So, you know, if it isn't fixed on time it's definitely the fault of the Rethuglicans in the House.  What in the world makes them think they have the right to oversee *anything* we choose to do??"

I may have mis-copied those last two grafs.  Cuz I don't have the layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors that the NY Times is always bragging about.

Oh, and lest you think there's no media bias:  The LA Times ran a brief story on this confrontation.  Instead of the headline "House subpoenas Obamacare official" it was headlined "White House calls subpoena unnecessary."

Clever.  Changes the whole thrust of the story.