Move along. Nothing to see. The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, with the help of the Justice Department, issued a report noting that no laws were broken when the Medicare actuary was prevented from giving Congress his estimate of the cost of the new Medicare drug benefit.

In response, HHS spokesman Bill Pierce said: “We hope that with the release of this report we can put behind us the political squabbling and move on to the important work of implementing the new law.”

Did he even read the report? It said that on five occasions Medicare administrator Thomas Scully prevented actuary Richard Foster from delivering the requested estimate to Congress. The report confirms that Scully threatened to fire Foster if he divulged the information. Scully denied that when the story first broke.

The White House’s 10-year estimate was $395 billion during congressional debates. It now concedes that the hidden number — $534 billion — is more accurate. As pundit Michael Kinsley once wrote, the real scandal isn’t what’s illegal; it’s what’s legal.

These Democrats flunk democracy. Partisan politics stooped to a new low just before Independence Day when nine Democratic members of Congress asked the United Nations to intercede as an observer in the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

Spearheaded by U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, the group signed a letter directed to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that, according to WorldNetDaily.com, stated in part: “We are deeply concerned that the right of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections is again in jeopardy.”

Our freedoms would be in jeopardy if Johnson & Co. gained any semblance of congressional power and allowed a U.S. election to be judged by the likes of Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and other democratically impaired countries. Fortunately, the United Nations didn’t want to participate.

Besides Johnson, the signers were: Julia Carson of Indiana; Jerrold Nadler, Edolphus Towns, Joseph Crowley and Carolyn B. Maloney, all of New York; Raul Grijalva of Arizona; Corrine Brown of Florida; Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland; Danny D. Davis of Illinois; and Michael M. Honda of California.