Mark Kleiman:

The more I think about it, the more outrageous President Bush's refusal to talk to the entire 9-11 Commission, or to talk for more than a single hour, seems to me.

Given the President's documented capacity to pack enormous numbers of words into tiny amounts of meaning, he will probably have exhausted sixty minutes by the time he finishes answering the question, "Where did you go and what did you do immediately after hearing the news of the second WTC crash, and for the rest of that day?" which will leave him no time to answer the next question: "Who authorized the evacuation of all bin Laden family members and other prominent Saudi citizens from the United States before the FBI had a chance to interview any of them?"

Still, I understand that this is a partisan reaction, from an inveterate Bush-hater. In my more reasonable moments, I believe in finding win-win solutions to contested issues.

So here's a modest proposal: Since the President obviously has many hours to spend at fund-raising events, let's combine the hearing with a fund-raiser. Sell seats at, say, $1000 per hour per seat, with the proceeds going to the Bush-Cheney campaign, and let the hearing go on for as long as there are at least 100 paying guests in the audience.

Nice work, and let's note now that Kerry himself needs to amp up the rhetoric on this issue, pointing out the vast gulf between Funnypants's rhetoric (9/11 changed everything) and his actions (one hour, max).