Democrats on the House Oversight Committee complained loudly about the Republican majority’s refusal to allow minority witnesses at a hearing on the Administration’s birth control access rules. The panel, which is happening live right now, was announced by Chairman Darrell Issa with the participation of nine panelists, all of whom oppose the new rules, including a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The real bombshell of the past 24 hours in housing was the report of the FHFA Inspector General, the second in two weeks damning the conduct of the GSEs In this case, Fannie Mae was found to have known about foreclosure fraud, including serial fabrications of foreclosure documents and robo-signing, as far back as 2003.

Republicans are big fans of projection. When they’re neck-deep in conflicts of interest, they like to hide it by accusing Democrats of such conflicts. When they leak stuff, they accuse Democrats. When they mismanage stuff, they accuse Democrats.

And yesterday, Darrell Issa got caught doing just that.

When Darrell Issa took over the House Oversight Committee, Democrats were nervous that he would use it as a launching pad to pummel the White House with frivolous investigations. It hasn’t really worked out that way. And now, he’s covering investigations up.

Darrell Issa is trying to stop House Oversight Committee Democrats from calling minority witnesses for hearings, and if successful this could become a more widespread Congressional practice.

At issue is the process by which top DHS officials review–and are alerted to–sensitive FOIA releases. The policy in place up until July 2010 was put in place in 2006. That is, under Michael Chertoff.

Cummings previously requested these documents from Issa, but Issa plans to withhold them until a public release and analysis next Friday. So Cummings is going right to the source.

Tim Geithner won’t show up to House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa’s first hearing, on TARP and the foreclosure crisis, sending a top deputy instead. The deputy, Tim Massad, has no real experience with the Administration’s foreclosure mitigation programs. Maybe Geithner didn’t want to testify on foreclosures because he didn’t have anything to say beyond “Everything’s great!”

Cummings has the potential to be a worthy adversary to Darrell Issa. But the way in which the leadership went about this was pretty ham-fisted.

Last night, it appeared that Elijah Cummings would attempt to leapfrog seniority and obtain the ranking membership of the House Oversight Committee with the backing of outgoing ranking member Ed Towns. However, Towns reversed course last night, saying in a statement, “I support Carolyn Maloney to become Ranking Member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. She is next in line on the Committee, she has the seniority and competence to serve the Caucus well.”