The Payoff

Harry Reid's unconventional maneuver this afternoon seems to have gotten at least part of what he was after. Bill Frist agreed to a bipartisan committee of six senators to investigate why the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Pat Roberts, hadn't yet issued the second part of a report on the lead-up to war promised over a year ago. The six senators are due to report back in two weeks.

For his part, Roberts says all the falderal is completely unnecessary. He's planning to have Intelligence Committee hearings throughout next week and promised that it wouldn't be long before he had that report out. In fact, as reported in Newsday:

"We've been ready since May," said Roberts, who blamed Democrats for bottling up the report by failing to wade through reams of documents necessary to complete the probe. "That's hard work and they flat don't want to do it," he added.

I'm not clear on why he needs hearings all next week if the report was ready in May, but at least he's established that the delay is all the Democrats' fault. Yeah, that's the ticket.