SOP: Congressional Research Service

Roll Call is a Capitol hill Newsmag. Thursday's 2.8.06 edition included a story about conflict within the Congressional Research Service.

From the article:

CRS Senior Specialist Under Fire for Criticizing Agency

Thursday, Feb. 9
By John McArdle, Roll Call Staff

One of the top analysts at the Congressional Research Service said that Director Daniel Mulhollan has ordered him to apologize by close of business Friday for writing a memorandum that criticized Congress' nonpartisan research agency for an "incoherent" policy that advocates neutrality and suppresses the analytical skills of its researchers.
But CRS Senior Specialist Lou Fisher has indicated that an apology will not be forthcoming, and agency officials have not explicity outlined any punishment. Instead, the expert on separation of powers, who has written more than a dozen books on the subject and regularly testifies before Congress, has reached out to lawmakers to highlight what he believes to be growing problems at CRS.
In the past weeks, Fisher has sent letters to some 30 Members and a dozen Congressional committees expressing his concerns with the agency's direction.
"CRS is now in a dumb down mode telling analysts that they must be 'neutral' in what they say and write and must not take 'positions,'" he wrote a letter to one Senator.
"For my first 32 years at CRS I was encouraged to 'speak out' in defense of legislative prerogatives, separation of powers, checks and balances, and constitutional government," Fisher wrote. "For reasons I don't fully understand, the treatment within CRS is now punishment."
Fisher goes on to argue that CRS is in danger of violating its original charter under the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, in which Congress formed the agency "to help keep the legislative institution strong and capable of functioning as a coequal branch."
CRS spokeswoman Janine D'Addario confirmed today that Fisher has been asked to apologize to his supervisor for the "intemprent and contemptuous remarks" in his January memorandum, "which he has publicized far and wide."

The effort to muzzle the analysis is whaat I meant in the post below, by asking whether Congress has the personal motives to check the executive branch.