“People ought to stay out of our business”:

That’s what the 9/11 Commission chair Thomas Kean seems to be saying in response to calls for Jamie Gorelick to resign. (I say “seems” because there’s always the possibility that he was quoted out of context.) From the Washington Post:

Gorelick told CNN yesterday that she will not resign. “The wall was a creature of statute. It’s existed since the mid-1980s,” she said.

Several of Gorelick’s colleagues on the commission rushed to her defense, characterizing her as qualified and nonpartisan, and complaining privately that she was ambushed by Ashcroft.

“We don’t want to get in a fight with the attorney general, and I hope he doesn’t want to get in a fight with us,” said commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. But “people ought to stay out of our business.” . . .

Hmm — I’d have thought that, in a democracy, the makeup of investigative panels like this was very much the people’s business, and not just the panel members’. “There’s no reason for Gorelick to resign because . . .” would be a perfectly appropriate response. “People ought to stay out of our business” is not. But it looks like more than one politician seems to be forgetting that.

     Thanks to Best of the Web for the pointer.