In the wake of the scathing report accusing Lurita Doan of violating the Hatch Act, the embattled Administrator of the General Services Administration will appear at a House hearing today:

Democrats on a House committee will question the head of the General Services Administration (GSA) today about accusations that she improperly engaged in partisan politics, but committee Republicans are expected to turn the session into a bare-knuckled free-for-all.    

GSA Administrator Lurita Doan was accused in a report given this week to the White House by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) of engaging in partisan politics during a Jan. 26 PowerPoint presentation to 30 GSA political appointees on the 2006 midterm elections and prospects for the 2008 elections.   

U.S. Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch, who heads OSC, told President Bush in the report that Mrs. Doan engaged in "the most pernicious of political activity" banned by the 1939 Hatch Act and recommended that she "be disciplined to the fullest extent."    

Ironically, Bloch, who has been criticized by CREW, among others, for his partisanship, will face an attack from GOP members of the House committee:

Republicans, angry about the report and its conclusions, are expected to turn the tables on Mr. Bloch during the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, seeking instead to talk about what they have described as his "flawed conclusion and analysis."    

"Mr. Bloch's report concerning Mrs. Doan begins and ends with extreme exaggeration," said a high-ranking Republican congressional source. "The fact that he can't imagine a more egregious violation of the Hatch Act boggles the mind; that Mrs. Doan engaged in pernicious political activity boggles the mind.