Dems Score With Subpoenas

Democrats haven't managed to score with a single one of the bills drafted in their giddy first 100 hours, but playing hardball with hearings has proved more fruitful. In cranking up the congressional oversight machinery, write Richard Simon and Noam Levey, they've dominated headlines and applied pressure to the administration.

The new Congress has held over 100 hearings seeking the truth behind scandals ranging from Valerie Plame's outing to the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. With accountability the party's buzzword, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), claims that in the last three weeks, "more people were forced out of their jobs than the entire prior six years." (More Bush administration stories.)