Ironies of the Day

Two of them, from this AP report:
1. Now, Ray Nagin orders a genuinely mandatory evacuation of New Orleans. Great timing there. Yet, even now, we see who continues to drag their feet:

The new evacuation order has been drafted and will be issued shortly, Mr. Nagin said, even though Louisiana state officials question his authority to issue such a command. “I don’t care, I’m doing it,” he said. “We have to get people out.”

2. Guess who said this, in calling for “an independent commission to investigate the federal response to the disaster, saying neither Congress nor the administration should do it”:

“I don’t think the government can investigate itself.”

Yes, that’s right: Hillary Clinton. Oh, the irony.
I’m heartened to see that the Senate and House are launching their own investigations; back in the days when John Dingell and Henry Waxman were committee chairmen, Congress didn’t punt all of its investigative powers to secretive prosecutors and unelected commissions. It’s about time Republicans acted like they were elected by the people to be in charge.
Inevitably, there will also be an “independent” or “bipartisan” federal commission to study the question, and I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, too, although if it follows the 9/11 Commission model it will consist of Kathleen Blanco, James Lee Witt, a left-wing lawyer and a handful of retired liberal Republicans. As we have seen in the past, though, such commissions tend to redirect public attention away from the facts (see Claudia Rosett on the UN Oil-for-Food inquiry, due to issue a report today) and to be treated in their bottom-line conclusions as gospel by a lazy media, even when their investigative work has been shoddy or biased. Let’s make sure that the facts get a little play, too.