Charles Krauthammer on the Congressional hearings about the BP oil spill:

These hearings are always political theater. No one expects you'll get real information and you certainly won't get real information when you're company is under investigation criminally by the attorney general of the United States. Of course he is going to be cautious, non- disclosive, and lawyered up.
I must say I welcome these rituals. We haven't had a good Inca ritual slaughter since the Goldman Sachs hearings. I have talked about this before where they take a virgin to the top of a mountain, and everyone goes home happy except for, of course, the virgin. Here, because we have a scarcity of virgins, we send a CEO instead and they whack him around for a whole day and everybody goes home happy. The only difference is our procedure has let blood, but a lot more talking. I'm not sure which is preferable. Nobody expects anything out of these. Hayward, he didn't play into the expectation of the Democrats, he played it very neutral, and that's why nothing essentially was learned.