Raid on Office of Special Counsel: it's about the upcoming elections

Crowded out of news coverage by the election and the tragedy in Burma is the curious case of Scott Bloch, who heads the Bush administration's Office of Special Counsel. Anybody who doubts the penchant for vindictiveness exercised by Club Bush -- or the long reach of departed Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove -- should view the case of Bloch as a cautionary tale.

Bloch started off as what appeared to be a team player, using his office to terrorize gay people who worked in government -- especially those career attorneys who worked in his office. But when Bloch's antics began to chalk up bad publicity, he was asked to resign, and refused. Then he set about finding his pound of flesh -- in none other than Turd Blossom (as Rove is affectionately called by the president). As your blogstress wrote last year at The American Prospect Online:

Bloch's inquiry lifted the lid on what many of us, dismissed as too partisan to be heeded, had already known: that under Rove's tutelage, every federal agency that could be politicized had been. Bloch uncovered a PowerPoint presentation delivered by Rove aide J. Scott Jennings to employees of the General Services Administration that "listed Democrats the White House has targeted for defeat in 2008," according to a letter sent on July 17 to White House Political Affairs Director Sara Taylor by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Now Bloch is reaping all he has sown, resulting in an F.B.I. raid on his office on Tuesday. According to the Washington Post:

Agents fanned out yesterday morning in the agency's building on M Street, where they sequestered Office of Special Counsel chief Scott J. Bloch for questioning, served grand-jury subpoenas on 17 employees and shut down access to computer networks in a search lasting more than five hours.

The matter being investigated? Bloch's politicization of his office.