Res ipsa loquitur — but still worth a few words nonetheless. It’s impossible to defend the National Park Service by demanding bipartisanship while in the same breath berating the Tea Party for pointing out that the NPS spent money to shut down an unstaffed, open-air, 24/7 memorial that runs primarily on private funds.  That didn’t keep Senator Claire McCaskill from trying, though, as she rushed to the World War II memorial to attempt to undo the debacle created by the White House:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN99-lxarnI&feature=youtu.be

Joe Schoffstall added this brief description on Capitol City Project’s YouTube entry:

When asked about why the National Park Service didn’t try to stop Honor Flight veterans from entering the World War II Memorial Senator Claire McCaskill said “people who are in Park Service have a lot more sense than the Tea Party”. She then decried politicization of the shut out of veterans saying “this isn’t about politics, this is about honoring these men that served in World War II”. However, when the Capitol City Project’s Joe Schoffstall asked her to expand on her comments about the Tea Party the senator said “no” and her aide cut the interview off.

NBC’s Kasie Hunt tried to make the argument for McCaskill:

All of you making WWII memorial closure about politics: cut it out and watch this. Not a pol's face anywhere in it. http://t.co/gu1oS3WWQQ

— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) October 2, 2013

Ace offered a pointed question in response:

wait, who's making putting up barricades around a cost-free, unstaffed, open 24/7, open-air memorial political in your telling? @kasie

— Ursus, Director of Weather and Banana Programming (@AceofSpadesHQ) October 2, 2013

Perhaps Hunt should be asking the White House what in a spending cutoff required seven security guards and a forklift to barricade a park that has no staffing or admissions process, and which remains open whether NPS is on duty or not.  That appears to be where the politics started, and McCaskill’s now playing the “squirrel” card … incompetently, at that.

Update: And speaking of politics ….

Federal officials have closed a number of popular tourist attractions in Washington, citing the government shutdown, but they’ve left lesser-known locations un-barricaded, as evidenced by an interactive map compiled by House Republicans.

“It appears as though only the highly visible monuments and areas are being closed to the public — further proof that the Obama Administration is only playing politics and purposely choosing to make this shut down as painful as possible,” House Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash., said. …

On the other hand, Hastings’ team noted that the Constitution Gardens, the Upper Senate Park, and the Japanese-Americans Memorial, among others, remain open.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty tweeted a photo of “the District of Columbia War Memorial: apparently not important enough to shut down.”

What was that about politicization again, Sen. McCaskill?

Update: I wrote “public fund” where I meant to write “private funds.” I’ve fixed the error.