Why not an independent commission. Are we afraid of the truth?

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Wednesday scuttled an attempt by Sen.
Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina.
The New York Democrat's bid to establish the panel — which would have also made recommendations on how to improve the government's disaster response apparatus — failed to win the two-thirds majority needed to overcome procedural hurdles. Clinton got only 44 votes, all from Democrats and independent Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Fifty-four Republicans all voted no.

yahoo/ AP

This vote, along totally partisan lines, makes no sense to me. There will be some sort of independent commission, removed from tampering by those who made the mistakes, whether Bush likes it or not. Public opinion of Bush is already at an all-time low, and it's clear that the people of this country will not stand for a superficial partisan investigation when one of its large cities is destroyed, and there is a strong suspicion of negligence, both in the funding of the protective levees and in bungling of the emergency response.