So the suggestion was if a building is on fire you don't spend time

[Winterblues]

trying to determine what caused the fire you just put the fire out, but what if the cause (someone lighting it) was still lighting fires? Hard to put the fires out when they are being rekindled as fast as they are being extinguished. What is going to be done about the fire starters?

[Hydra]

1. "There is no arsonist. Nothing to see here folks, move on..." n/t

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. They are getting golden parachutes paid for by the US Treasury

And a promise that they will get more money, no matter how many fires they set.

[ddeclue]

3. What if it is an electrical fire and you try to put out with water?

ZAPP!!

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

4. That's a willful misinterpretation

[Winterblues]

7. What is a willful misinterpretation?

That was the example I heard given for why they could not dally and had to vote immediately. What was your intepretation?

[Forkboy]

8. Obama himself used the analogy.

There will be time to punish those who set this fire, but now is not the time to argue about how it got set, or did the neighbor sleep in his bed, or leave the stove on. Right now we want to put out that fire, and now's the time for us to come together and do that.

http://www.salon.com/news/primary_sources/2008/10/01/obama_senate_speech/

[anigbrowl]

5. You let the cops search for them while the fire department concentrates on the fire

In case you missed it, the FBI are already looking into the goings-on at some Wall Street Firms, and you can bet the SEC and the justice department are going to doing a lot of the same for the next year or two. But if you look back at past financial scandals, auditing and prosecuting them is a slow process. Criminal financial trials tend to be among the longest and most complex; just finding a jury can take a while.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Even if arrested, congress would happily bail them out.

[gravity]

9. You are looking for an arsonists, when it is really just faulty wiring

The fired was caused by poor building codes which will be solved by better regulations and protections so it won't happen again.

[Warpy]

10. Half the guys in the fire department are related to the arsonist

so you put the fire out and wait for the next batch of trainees to come into the department so you can catch the little weasel over the objections of his family.