elizabeth warren vs ken starr

the journalistic bloodhounds at politico have a real smoker for us: elizabeth warren's committe investigating the TARP bailout spent $10 million and now the GOP is demanding a thorough public accounting of how the money was spent:

Warren's TARP panel under scrutiny - Scott Wong and John Bresnahan - POLITICO.com: "Elizabeth Warren became a hero of the left for her unrelenting pursuit of accountability and transparency with big banks and Wall Street firms that took billions of dollars in federal bailout money in 2008.

But when it comes to how her own bailout watchdog committee spent more than $10 million in taxpayer money, Warren has been a lot less forthcoming."

but the politico hacks seem to have no historical perspective. by feb. 1999, kenneth starr and his predecessor, robert fiske, had spent over $46 million investigating bill and hillary clinton:

The figures show that Starr's office, through the end of November 1998, had spent $40,835,000. That includes $27,749,000 in direct expenses from independent counsel appropriations and $13,086,000 in unreimbursed expenses incurred by other government agencies.

Those figures do not include costs incurred by Starr's predecessor, Robert Fiske, whose office spent about $6 million before Starr was appointed to lead the investigation.

so what's the problem here? is this $10 million going to leave such a gaping hole in the budget deficit now that the president isn't in politico's preferred political party? the whole TARP fiasco needed, if anything, even more rigorous investigation. hell, 9-11 did, too. now, however, we're going to nickel-and-dime any investigation that comes along.

at least until rick perry gets to the oval office and vows to get to the bottom of what happened during the obama administration (hint: nothing of any substance).