WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress passed legislation Saturday giving two committee chairman and their assistants access to income tax returns without regard to privacy protections, but not before red-faced Republicans said the measure was a mistake and would be swiftly repealed.

[…] "This is a serious situation," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska. "Neither of us were aware that this had been inserted in this bill," he said, referring to himself and House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-Florida.

Questioned sharply by fellow Republicans as well as Democrats, Stevens pleaded with the Senate to approve the overall spending bill despite the tax returns language.

But Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, said that wasn't good enough. "It becomes the law of the land on the signature of the president of the United States. That's wrong."

Conrad said the measure's presence in the spending bill was symptomatic of a broader problem -- Congress writing legislation hundreds of pages long and then giving lawmakers only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it.

Stevens, who repeatedly apologized for what he characterized as an error, took offense at Conrad's statement. "It's contrary to anything that I have seen happen in more than 30 years on this committee," he said.

[…] Some Democrats didn't accept the assertion that the provision was a mistake and demanded an investigation.

"We weren't born yesterday, we didn't come down with the first snow," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. "This isn't poorly thought out, this was very deliberately thought out and it was done in the dead of night."

There's more in the full article, but let's add some points to it. I had to look for about 20 minutes to find out that the incoming appropriations committee chairs are ultra-rightwing Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Rep. Ralph Regula (R-OH). Since the Senate says it didn't even know about this provision, and the GOP now admits it was inserted by a House member, people should be looking at Regula.

As The Hill reminds: "In Hastert’s book, Speaker, he notes that Regula was helpful in delivering Ohio lawmakers for DeLay’s race for whip in 1994."

Early speculation was that Tom DeLay could use this facility to look at the tax returns of his enemies, like Austin DA Ronnie Earle. Today, Josh Marshall has a new idea: Istook has tried more than once to add "tough restrictions on political advocacy by tax-exempt organizations that receive federal funds," essentially arguing that one organization can't really have both a tax-exempt division and a non-tax-exempt advocacy division. This law would allow the Appropriations committee chair to examine those tax returns and make them public to support this questionable claim.

But more importantly on the local scene: the man identified with slipping this bit of big-brotherism into the bill is Rep. Ernest Istook (R-OK5), who recently won re-election with 66% of the vote. Oklahoma's 5th district is, in essence, Oklahoma City. Yet the day after this hit the national scene, neither the OKC newspaper nor any of the OKC television stations has bothered to mention that Rep. Istook thinks he should be able to examine and publicize anyone's tax return with no legal consequences of any kind.

Some of you in blue states who wonder how people like Istook and Coburn get elected. That's how - when they do these odious things, they either don't get reported or they fade after one noon newscast. There is absolutely no journalistic pressure to hold any Republican accountable for anything in Oklahoma, and there hasn't been for at least fifteen years. The people who own the media just aren't interested in it, and they don't hire people who are.