This is a good idea, I'm sure of it

The President has officially named his National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which is empowered... to look at the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and offshore drilling. It's in the title. Of course this raises one important question: will the commission complete its work before the oil stops flowing into the Gulf? I vote no.

In naming the chairs for the commission, there's one interesting fact about the Republican co-chair. It seems he may be a man constructed entirely of oil.

President Obama today promised a full investigation into the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Obama said the administration will consider whether what has happened amounts to a crime and won't allow new offshore drilling until we know what went wrong.

As Obama spoke, he was flanked by the two co-chairs of the bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The Republican co-chair, William K. Reilly, has spent a career in the industry he'll now probe. A former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Reilly currently serves on the board of directors of: ConocoPhillips; DuPont, which provides technologies for oil and gas extraction; and Energy Future Holdings, a Texas-based electric utility company.

Hey, I know we have to have a Republican co-chair to preserve the bipartisan circle jerk ethos that permeates Washington, but you really couldn't find a guy with a few less ties to oil companies? Sure, you have to select from the ranks of the GOP and finding a Republican free of ties to an oil company would probably need a bipartisan investigative commission of its own, but really, couldn't find a guy with only one extremely personally lucrative tie to a oil and oil related companies? You could only get a guy with three?

Whew, I was worried for a second. I thought a commission might go and put too much blame onto BP, Transocean , and Halliburton. Thanfully the American people will have a guy on there with a deep, personal financial interest in offshore drilling and oil, speaking for the oil companies. Bullet dodged, folks, bullet dodged.