Bob Kerrey, who knows better, acted shamefully today in the 9-11 Commission hearing with Condi Rice. Donald Sensing understood perfectly.
I say Kerrey is a hypocrite because on the one hand he wrote in the WSJ about shunning partisanship, and the same day launched a completely unjustified partisan attack against the Bush administration on a topic having nothing whatever to do with the 9/11 Commission's charter.The 9/11 Commission's objective is to answer the following question: How--at the end of a summer of high terrorist threat--did 19 men with a few hundred thousand dollars manage to utterly defeat every single defensive mechanism we had in place that September morning and murder 3,000 innocents on American soil? ...Who said that? Bob Kerrey, that's who, in the WSJ piece. Yet he opened his time this morning with a speech having nothing - nothing - to do with the commission's objective, as explained by Kerrey himself. I say his speech was unjustified because it was irrelevant to his duty as a commissioner, not because Bush's management of the Iraq war is off limits to political discussion. It's just off limits to this commission. The commission has no authority under law (remember delegated powers and all that?) even to bring up the Iraq war.
Fox News just announced that in Rice's appearance this morning, the commissioners spoke 60 percent of the words, Rice 40 percent. Fox's legal analyst, Andrew Napolitano, said that Rice should have accounted for 90 percent of the text.
The foremost concern of the members of the 9/11 Commission is not September 2001, it is November 2004. Their own self image falls close behind. This commission is a travesty, an example of the worst American politics has to offer.
Cox and Forkum saw it all coming way back on March 31.
Scrappleface reports that the Democrats' trap didn't work quite as planned:
Democrats in Congress appealed to the FCC to investigate the live coverage of Dr. Rice's testimony, charging that it may violate election laws."It was a free commercial emphasizing the competence and leadership of the Bush administration," said one unnamed Democrat House member. "We demand equal time."
Watch the full hearing for yourself via C-SPAN (Real). Read a transcript of Condi's opening remarks or of the full three hours.
Posted by Alan at April 8, 2004 09:05 PM