The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has had its work cut out for it lately. After a long period of no oversight, the Democrats have taken to investigating everyone who has been involved in shady dealings, making sure people know they can no longer get away with unethical or illegal dealings.

The latest target of investigations is Lurita A. Doan of the General Services Administration (GSA). The GSA is the administration that gets supplies and manages federal buildings, an important position in the eyes of the taxpayer since they manage a lot of property.

Doan is responsible for overseeing 56 billion dollars in government contracts every year. She has come under fire before by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Since becoming an administrator in 2006, Doan has managed to undermine the efforts of the inspector general, even calling him a terrorist at one point.

Apparently, having oversight and making sure people are doing their jobs is terror in Doan's eyes. I can only imagine how terrified Doan is now that she has been put under oath and asked about her involvement in some illegal dealings concerning her office.

A PowerPoint presentation was discovered that was shown to GSA employees during office hours on GSA property. The presentation itself was prepared by the White House Office of Political Affairs. The slides show vulnerable Republican and Democratic Senate seats for the 2008 election; some give a little history and others explain why Republicans lost seats in 2006.

None of this information has anything to do with the dealings of the GSA. Congressman Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) was determined to point this out to Doan and get information out of her. She claimed that she didn't even remember the presentation and acted as though she had never seen the slides before in her life. Take note that it was her office that provided the House Committee with the slides.

Braley asked her, "Can you tell us what, if anything, these slides have to do with the GSA's core purpose of procuring supplies and managing federal buildings?"

Doan was a bit taken aback and continued to dodge the questions. Braley then started to throw quotes her colleagues had given him that they heard Doan say after the presentation.

"How can we use different GSA projects, building opening and the like, to further aid other Republicans?" Doan also said. "How can we use GSA to help our candidates in the next election?"

I'm no congressman, but even I'm sure the job of federal employees who manage buildings isn't to help Republicans win elections.

What are Rove and the other people in his office at the White House doing? Do they really think that with a Democratic Congress, they can get away with misusing government offices to further their own party? The Democrats don't plan on taking a blind eye to the Republicans misusing the government to hurt them.

Doan apparently is getting a little scared herself and taking notice. On the live feed of the hearing, when the camera was down but the audio was still up, Doan was heard asking that her water glass be taken away because she didn't want them to have her fingerprints. Doan noted that she was totally paranoid.

The paranoid ones should be Rove and anyone in his office. While Doan received the presentation and asked what could be done, no evidence has surfaced yet of anything done to help the 2008 election for Republicans. Rove and his men are the ones that created the presentation and made the request to the GSA, knowing that it's not the duty of their office and that it violates the Hatch Act, a federal act designed to make sure government employees do not use their position to help a particular political party. This ensures that government employees simply do their job for the American people, not a party.

It seems now that Democrats control the house, some new ethics or illegal scandal is being investigated every week. This leads me to wonder how many scandals didn't get investigated when the Democrats weren't in control.

Rove needs to stop misusing government offices. Creating more scandal won't help his party get elected in 2008. In case they've already forgotten, that's how they lost in 2006.

Reach reporter Hunter Kincaid at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.