If Republicans take the House back this fall, there's one thing you can count on: their constant use of subpoena power. Meaning, they'll formally investigate Obama's every turn. They can't wait. In fact, they're already drafting a long, long list.

Rep. Darrell Issa can barely contain his excitement over the prospect of chairing the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and investigating every Democrat, over everything. In fact, he can't contain it, which is why his office starting sending lists of possible investigations to reporters today.

Here's a brief summary from Slate's Dave Weigel:

There are two lists: One of oversight totally neglected by Democrats, one of hearings requested by Republicans that never happened. The first list: federal agency performance management, federal emergency management, federal IT systems, federal financial management, the Presidential Records Act, ACORN, Countrywide, food safety, stimulus spending, the SEC, TARP, and "the independence of inspectors general." The second list: Food Safety, Homeland Security, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Health care reform oversight, stimulus spending, the Minerals Management Service, and Climategate (which Issa's staff calls "Politicization of Science").

If you look back through your glossary of half-day Republican-generated scandals over the past two years, you can probably match up many of them with the code words here. Take "the SEC," for example. That means "whether Obama forced the SEC to sue Goldman Sachs for political reasons."

There's nothing wrong with Darrell Issa doing this, by the way. Democrats tried (mostly unsuccessfully) the same tactic when they took back the House in 2007. And there are many things, especially regarding transparency, that Issa probably should investigate. It would just be nice if they could finally get over, say, the whole ACORN fetish? And the "Politicization of Science"? That'll be a fun one, boy howdy will it ever.

[Image via Getty]