The laughably weak case against Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers.

Stalinism may be dead in Albania, but it's alive and well inside the National Park Service. Chatterbox has been acquainting himself with the charges against Park Police Chief Teresa Chambers, who is in the process of being fired for admitting under questioning from the Washington Post's David Fahrenthold that the park police are stretched a little thin these days. According to the National Park Service, whatever difficulties the park police may or may not have assuming new responsibilities since 9/11 without a commensurate funding increase are none of the public's damned business. And if anyone is going to discuss this subject publicly, it sure as hell isn't going to be the official who presides over park police.

The two principal charges against Chambers, according to the National Park Service's deputy director, Don Murphy, are that she violated federal rules that prohibit

1) Commenting publicly about ongoing budget discussions;

and

2) Lobbying.

Chambers' written reply to the charges reveals that the Park Service has further accused her of

1) Making public remarks about security on federal parkland in and around Washington, D.C.;

and

2) Various purported minor acts of insubordination too petty to go into here.

Now let's take a look at what the rules cited by the Park Service actually say.

The supposed prohibition on blabbing about budget discussions, as cited by the Park Service, can be found in its departmental manual and in the White House budget office's "Circular No. A-11." The departmental manual citation is Part 112, Chapter 7, which reads:

POB [Office of Budget] has primary staff responsibility for directing and coordinating the development, presentation, execution, and control of the Department's Budget. This includes formulation within the Department and the Office of Management and Budget and presentation to the Congress, press, interest groups, and the public, and budget execution and control. Among other things, POB is the liaison on all matters dealing with budget formulation and presentation with the Office of Management and Budget, the House and Senate Appropriations Committee, and other Federal agencies.

As Chambers points out in her reply, this passage (which Chatterbox can't find, incidentally, in the Interior departmental manual posted online, though there is similar language here) merely describes the duties of the Interior Department's budget office. It says absolutely nothing about whether Interior Department officials outside of Interior's budget office may discuss budget issues with Congress, the press, interest groups, or the public. If anything, by stipulating that the budget office has "primary responsibility" for budget matters, it invites the affirmative conclusion that other Interior officials exercise secondary and tertiary responsibility.

(Incidentally, the Park Service didn't attach the blabbing charge exclusively to Chambers' interview with the Post. It also attached it to an innocuous conversation Chambers had with one Deborah Weatherly, a staff aide to the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, in which Chambers sought clarification on how the subcommittee wanted her to deal with a minor administrative matter.)