Those days are apparently gone, following the mid-term elections in November last year which gave the Democrats a majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Democrat controlled congress wants to regain its lost image. The 110th Congress is shaping up as the oversight congress indeed.

According to the Politico, which is published three days a week and covers the activities of the Congress, "aided by a new investigative team including a former mob prosecutor and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Democrats have launched more than three dozen probes of the administration, ranging from the White House to obscure agency heads."

That is nerve-wracking news for the White House and the Republicans. By now six administration officials, including the latest Deputy Attorney General of the Department of Justice, have resigned amidst the congressional probes.

A series of investigations has begun. That includes leaking of Valerie Plame's CIA link to the media, and the firing of attorneys of the Federal government.

During the reign of the Republican party controlled congress, lawmakers avoided oversight hearings and hard-hitting investigations.

The news of the firing of attorneys of the Federal government was flashed on the front pages of the national dailies in early January, and the Republicans thought that the political storm would die down in a couple of months.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a friend of the president from his days as governor of Texas, has been facing difficult times at the congressional hearings. The Democrats are determined to find out the role of presidential political aide Karl Rove, and the president himself, in the firing of the attorneys. The Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Leahy, requested intelligence agencies to find out the missing e-mails sent by Karl Rove to the Department of Justice.

On top of this scandal, the story of the National Security Agency 's electronic surveillance program, which was secretly introduced after the 9/11 episode, came out when the Senate Judiciary committee interviewed former deputy attorney general, James Comey, who painted a startling picture.

What James told the congressional hearings is that when the White House came to know that the program had no legal status, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales (present Attorney General) and chief of staff Andrew Card rushed to a Washington hospital where the former attorney general John Ashcroft was recovering from gallbladder surgery, to ask him to sign a letter proclaiming the spying program legal.

James said: "A wan Ashcroft lifted his head off the pillow and refused to sign. I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man." James Comey left the administration last year. Andrew Sullivan, in the Atlantic Online, commented that "what is really frightening is that even a far-right ideologue like Ashcroft could not stomach this administration's arrogant disregard for privacy and civil liberties."

President Bush appears to be upset the way the Democrat controlled congress has been conducting the investigation. President Bush described the probe as "grand political theater. This investigation is taking a long time. It's kind of being dragged out, I suspect, for political questions, political reasons." During the press conference on May 24, the president said: "I have got confidence in Al Gonzales doing the job."

By now six Republican law makers in the Senate have called on the attorney general to resign, and the Democratic controlled congress would likely have a show-down in the middle of June if he does not step down. They plan to hold a no-confidence vote against the attorney general.

As of now, 204 hearings have been held by committees in the House of Representatives. In the process, the job market has been expanded by recruiting staffers who are being trained by attorneys. Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, Representative John Dingell, said: "We have a huge backlog, and we will try to use what we can do to get to everything."

This is for the first time that President Bush and the Republican party are having a real difficult time as a result of the Congressional oversight program, which had been neglected in the past.

Mohammad Amjad Hossain is a former diplomat, writes from Virginia.