Good News, Bad News

The good news is, Congress is going to investigate the "sluggish" government response to Hurricane Katrina's disastrous landfall. The bad news is, Congress is going to investigate the "sluggish" government response to Hurricane Katrina's disastrous landfall.

The American Spectator prowler thinks this will shine the spotlight where it belongs, on Louisiana Democrats who are already "running for cover":

Senat[e Majority Leader] Bill Frist rode to the rescue in more ways than one last week, with his call for a comprehensive congressional investigation into the failings of planning and execution of preparing for Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing relief effort.

Frist's efforts weren't intended as a slam at President Bush, who has taken a pummeling in the media from Democrats in Congress, their operatives, and cooperative journalists who were willing to set facts aside for the opportunity to create a political fire storm around the Republican president.

Instead, Frist's call for an investigation sent many Democrats running for cover. "If you look at the history of appropriations and funding of federal dollars, no delegation served their state and major cities better than Louisiana," says a Senate staffer. "In the end, if the Democrats want to place blame, they know the behavior of their party members, for a generation really the only party in power in New Orleans and Louisiana, is damning, and they don't want to draw any more attention to the issue than the media wants to."

Perhaps that's why Joe Lieberman, of all Donks, exercised the unspoken Democrat perogative, regardless of the parties' respective numbers, to take over the Senate Homeland Security Committee from gavel-keeper Susan Collins (RINO-ME) and turn Fristy's "comprehensive congressional investigation," as Hugh Hewitt sees it, into the hurricane version of the public 9/11 hearings:

If the Committee conducts a fair investigation, it will be a very useful exercise for America. Judging from Senator Lieberman's comments at the press conference today, in which he bluntly concluded that "governmental failures in preparing for and repsonding to Hurricane Katrina allowed much more human sufering and property destruction to occur than should have, that is the sad and stunning fact," this is not going to be an inquest, but a penalty phase....

Lieberman and his colleagues on the Committee - Carl Levin, Daniel Akaka, Tom Carper, Mark Dayton, Frank Lautenberg, and Mark Pryor - aren't going to be in a hurry to expose the New Orleans mayor and their Democratic colleague Governor Blanco.

The Republicans on this Committee: Senator Collins, Ted Stevens, John Warner, Pete Domenici, Robert Bennett, Lincoln Chafee, George Voiovich, Norm Coleman and Tom Coburn. Not exactly the nine GOP senators I'd send out for in this situation, but it will Collins' job to make sure these nine don't get rolled by the Dems....

Good frakking luck.

The President is going to get flayed by the Democrats in this bunch, with only Stevens, Bennett, Coleman and Coburn as reliable and tough investigators certain to stand up to MSM slings and arrows. It is Collins' job to make sure that the hearings focus the country's attention on chain-of-command and the mayor's and the governor's roles before they began accusing the feds of being the cause of all their problems.

Or, in other words, the President is going to get flayed by the Democrats. Stevens, Bennett, Coleman, and Coburn will be locked up in a broom closet in the hallway outside the committee hearing room, and the remaining 'Pubbies will be bringing the Dems their coffee and doughnuts. Senator Lieberman will be cast in the role of Sam Ervine (which is rather like if Ben Stein had been cast as the new Boss Hogg in the Dukes of Hazzard movie in place of Burt Reynolds - who was also grievously miscast in the role, as it obviously should have gone to Danny DeVito. But I digress....), and after he's done Donks on the other side of the Capitol will immediately begin (or, rather, resume) agitating for Bush's impeachment, and when majority Republicans (who are a majority in the House in more than name only) laugh them out of the chamber, the DCCC will have its rallying cry for 2006: "Give us back the House and we'll put Bushitler, the Butcher of New Orleans, on trial for his crimes against high-pigment humanity!"

I'll readily admit that it's a bit more difficult to see Lieberman in the role of rabid partisan hack than just about any other member of his caucus, but maybe he'll carry out the task without plumbing the depths of assholery pioneered by such masters of the art as Teddy Kennedy, Chucky Schumer, and Ali Dickbar Al-Durbini. In fact, they're probably counting on it, in an "If even Joe Lieberman is saying that Bush has a secret 'Final Solution for the Negro problem' that was just waiting for this hurricane, there must be something to it" kind of way. And besides, he'll have Senator Levin behind him, prepared to stick a hand up his coat and turn him into a Jewish Charlie McCarthy if it proves necessary.

I'd love to be able to believe with confidence that Fristy's "comprehensive congressional investigation" will prove to be a case, for the Dems, of "be careful what you wish for, you may get it." But if the last eleven years have proven anything, it is that Republicans are incapable of using congressional oversight to their own partisan ends. And the Democrats are masters of the art on both sides of the gavel.

The Senate Majority [haha] Leader [haha] would have been better advised to stonewall hearings instead, since despite all the burgeoning conspiracist urban legends, there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the federal response to Katrina that two functioning brains and infusions of integrity and leadership to Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin couldn't have fixed. But as is the want of every Republican once in elective office, Frist couldn't combat his congenital compulsion to be "fair" and "reasonable" by "reaching out" to the opposition in order to "get things done."

And now an entirely artificial political hurricane will park itself over D.C., spinning away for far longer and doing potentially more far-reaching damage to the entire country than Katrina could have ever dreamed.

Or maybe Senator Collins will actually crack her whip and keep the HLS Committee's probe focused like a laser-beam on "chain-of-command and the mayor's and the governor's roles...."

But that's not the way to bet.