Remember the Bill of Rights? Buh-bye.

Roberts’ record speaks trouble
Monday, September 19, 2005
By NAT HENTOFF Newspaper Enterprise Association

Having read hundreds of pages of John Roberts’ record in his years at the Justice Department and in private practice, I do not question that this amiable, quick-witted nominee to the Supreme Court has extensive experience in the law. But the prospect of Roberts as chief justice of the High Court for the next few decades is very troubling, especially since our worldwide war on terrorism keeps testing the firmness of our constitutional separation of powers.

For the last two years, Roberts, as a judge on the influential District of Columbia Court of Appeals, has spoken for himself — not for the Justice Department or his private clients.

Significantly, in a key decision on the president’s view of his powers as commander in chief, Judge Roberts joined with two of his colleagues in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld; the ruling gave this and succeeding presidents the unreviewable power to bypass civilian courts — and previous due-process protections of our military courts — in the treatment of prisoners suspected of involvement in terrorism.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan has been a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for three years, some of the time in solitary confinement. He is now being put before a military commission (a process invented by the Bush administration), which prevents Hamdan from being in the room during crucial parts of the hearing (which could put him away for life). In addition, his attorney cannot see secret evidence against Hamdan. Moreover, the presiding officer can admit previous evidence extracted by torture. Most crucially, the final appeal is only to President Bush or his designee.

As Emily Bazelon — a legal issues writer for Slate and contributing editor to Yale’s Legal Affairs magazine — emphasizes: “Roberts signed on to a blank-check grant of power to the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists without basic due-process protections.”

Yet in Rasul et al v. Bush, the Supreme Court, in a 6-to-3 vote (with Sandra Day O’Connor in the majority) ruled on June 28, 2004, that noncitizens detained in Guantanamo Bay are entitled to due process before a neutral official body. However, in addition to the Bush military commissions denying the basic elements of due process, Hamdan’s appeal brief to the Supreme Court by Georgetown University law professor Neil Katyal makes this telling point:

New York Times reporter Neil Lewis disclosed on Aug. 1, 2005, that some of the military prosecutors involved in Hamdan’s proceedings were so concerned at its lack of fairness (the very definition of “due process”) that they charged “the chief prosecutor had told his subordinates that the members of the military commission that would try the first four defendants (including Hamdan) would be ’handpicked’ to ensure that all would be convicted.”

In deciding this case, Judge Roberts also accepted “without reservation” the government’s argument that strips U.S. detainees of the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners, which this country had ratified.

If that doesn't scare the bejabbers out of you, I don't know what will.

Eyes Open, At Last

Amid Warnings, Richer Nations Seek Protection From Bird Flu

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: September 19, 2005

International Herald Tribune

ROME, Sept. 18 - As World Health Organization officials repeat warnings about the potential for a deadly bird flu pandemic, wealthier countries are redoubling efforts to buy an experimental vaccine and antiviral drugs in the hopes of protecting their citizens from infection.

At the United Nations on Wednesday, President Bush proposed an "international partnership" to combat the disease, and the United States announced last week that it had placed orders for $100 million worth of a promising but technically unlicensed vaccine that is under development by the French drug maker Sanofi-Aventis.

"We cannot afford to face the pandemic unprepared," Lee Jong Wook, the director of the World Health Organization, said Thursday at the United Nations.

The health agency and the European Union have been urging countries for months to prepare for the possibility of a human pandemic caused by the bird flu virus, even as they have acknowledged that there is no current risk. The virus, A(H5N1), which has killed millions of birds, only rarely infects humans and does not normally spread from person to person - a basic requirement for human epidemics.

But scientists are worried that it could someday acquire that ability through one of several biological processes. In the wake of the unprecedented damage caused by Hurricane Katrina, calls for better disaster planning against disease seem to have taken on new urgency.

Roche Pharmaceuticals was struggling to fill huge recent orders from 30 countries for antiviral drugs, placed as part of disaster planning, said Martina Rupp, a spokeswoman for the company. Those countries include Australia, France, England, Singapore and South Korea.

"We have learned in the past weeks that bad things can happen very fast," said Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, as he explained the need for the new partnership to fight bird flu.

Specialists say planning for the possibility of a worldwide pandemic is difficult because the vaccines are novel and the drugs have not been used in this capacity before.

But as countries spend tens of millions of dollars to prepare for bird flu, they are investing in uncertain and untested strategies, WHO officials acknowledge.

The basic problem is that the A(H5N1) virus has not changed in a way that would allow for widespread human infection. What is more, health officials said they would not know precisely how to combat the virus until after it mutated, when they would be able to study its composition and how deadly it was.

"We know we're overdue for an influenza pandemic strain, and we know it will occur, but we don't know when or even exactly what virus will cause it," said Dick Thompson, a WHO spokesman. "It is possible that the virus won't be H5N1 at all or that this virus will change in a way so that the vaccine under development doesn't work against it."

He said the health agency would not comment on whether it was rational for countries to spend so much on medicine orders. But, he added, "We think it is wise because it encourages the companies to do the research and development on this very difficult problem."

The bird flu virus has two characteristics that make it capable of igniting a pandemic. It is a new virus, so humans have no defenses against it. It produces severe disease, killing about half of those infected, almost all through contact with sick birds.

"H5N1 has pandemic potential but it is not a pandemic virus," Mr. Thompson said, because it does not spread easily among humans.

But flu viruses are prone to mutation and exchanging genetic material when they infect an animal together. So one big fear is that an ordinary human flu virus and the bird flu virus could mix genes, creating a new type of lethal human bird flu virus.

This isn't a bad round-up article. Finally, the American media are beginning to pay attention.

Slow Down, New Orleans

Officials rethinking Uptown return plan
Reopening may be too soon for parts of area, some worry

Some Uptown residents already have returned

By Michelle Krupa
and Bruce Hamilton
Staff writers

New Orleans officials said Algiers residents will be allowed to return home today, but said they will reassess a preliminary plan for reopening parts of Uptown later this week.

Mayor Ray Nagin and Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen, federal head of New Orleans' hurricane recovery effort, are meeting this afternoon with other state and local officials.

Col. Terry Ebbert, the city's director of homeland security, said a decision about whether to allow residents in the 70115 and 70118 ZIP codes to return Wednesday and Friday will depend on conclusions reached at that meeting.

"We will reassess how we have done in reopening so far and the status of our water, sewerage, electricity and hospitals" across parts of the city left relatively unscathed by Hurricane Katrina, Ebbert said, adding that the projected direction of Tropical Storm Rita, presently in the Atlantic Ocean, also would be a factor in determining whether to reopen Uptown.

Allen on Saturday questioned Nagin's proposed timeline, calling it "extremely ambitious" and "extremely problematic." Tap water remains unfit for drinking and bathing in most parts of the city, and Rita posed another potential threat, he said.

In an interview Saturday with the Associate Press, Allen called on the mayor to be "mindful of the risks" and said he would share his concerns when they meet.

City officials continued to recommend that residents visit the city during daytime hours only and not stay overnight, Ebbert said. An 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew remains in effect, he said.

When everything you are going to touch is covered with toxic sludge and there isn't one hospital in the city which can deliver a tetenus shot, I think maybe you ought to go slow.

Back up, Mayor Nagin. There's no water, and no bottled water in the city.

Body and Soul

'Whatever It Costs'

By Sebastian Mallaby

Monday, September 19, 2005; Page A17

It's hard to say what's worse: The incompetence of the administration's initial hurricane response or the cowardice of its follow-up. Faced with a small hit to his ratings, the president who once boasted of ignoring polls is rushing to spend billions of other people's dollars on saving his political skin. His philosophy is, "It's going to cost whatever it costs." That phrase should be the title of some future history of the Bush era.

The worst part is, President Bush doesn't even think his splurge will be effective. If he really believed that government could overcome racial inequality by targeting subsidies at minority businesses, he should have rolled out a national program long ago. But he doesn't believe anything of the kind. His promises of racial healing are entirely cynical.

What Bush really believes is that government is ineffective. Or at least that's what he says he believes: Late last week he declared that his (self-) reconstruction program should be financed by cuts in other government spending rather than by tax increases, so as to "maintain economic growth and vitality." In other words, government spending is bad because it's inefficient and wasteful. Leaving money in private hands is intrinsically superior. If Bush believes that, why does he think that government should build whole shantytowns of provisional housing? Why doesn't he believe in the private rental market of the South, which is offering 1.1 million units of vacant property?

Early on after the catastrophe, Small Government Bush suspended a law that props up construction wages paid by federal contractors, with the result that workers in the disaster zone will have less disposable income but government will save money.

One week later, after the panic had set in, Reconstruction Bush was yammering about $5,000 worker recovery accounts, which would come on top of the free government homes and sundry other benefits that the administration is also promising.

If Bush used this moment as he used the aftermath of Sept. 11, some of this spending could be forgiven. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon exposed the nation's complacency about terrorism; Bush stepped forward and changed that. In a similar way, Hurricane Katrina exposed the complacency of our business-as-usual attitude toward domestic government. Bush has barely noticed.

The complacency begins with the appalling state of federal staffing. It's not just that the hapless former boss of the Federal Emergency Management Agency knew more about horses than floods. It's that the government agencies that must now manage relief are missing senior officials, either because their confirmations have been held up in the Senate or because the administration has yet to appoint anyone. As The Post reported last week, seven of the top positions at the Department of Housing and Urban Development stand vacant. Perhaps it's no surprise that the administration has cooked up its crazy shantytown proposal.

This staffing crisis is well known; two months before the 2001 attacks, about half of the national security positions stood empty. But Katrina creates an opportunity to tackle the problem. The federal government needs to be returned to an earlier era, when more executive-branch positions went to career civil servants who didn't need to be confirmed and didn't owe their jobs to college roommates. Bush hasn't even raised this issue.

Note to Sebastian: you assume that the Bushies care. I call bullshit, there isn't a sign anywhere that they do care. The Bushies only do PR. This will be another bullshit effort left to private hands because W can't be bothered, and, by the way, there is another hurricane building in the Gulf.

Who made the mistaken call that these guys are "the Grownups?" Jesus H. Christ, we couldn't be in worse hands.

Babs thinks mass housing in the Superdome is an improvement over having your own apartment? I guess the elites are really out of touch. Those of us who don't have a compound in Kennebunkport can't possibly understand the elites.

Monica-Gate

FEMA's Woes Were Merely the Beginning
# The trouble at federal agencies extends beyond emergency response. Aid is abundant, but prompt and accurate delivery is a problem.

By Nicole Gaouette, Alan Miller and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The federal government's efforts to help victims of Hurricane Katrina have been hobbled by inadequate planning and coordination, troubled computer systems and confusion over who will pay the costs.

Interviews with federal officials indicate that recovery difficulties have gone beyond the Federal Emergency Management Agency and span key agencies in Washington, where top officials are trying to respond to a huge reconstruction problem for which they had no policies or plans. Large contracts are pouring out of agencies, but the task ahead involves issues Washington hasn't thought seriously about since the 1960s.

Among the danger signals, cited by FEMA and other government officials in interviews:

• Months ago, the Small Business Administration created a data processing system that was meant to revolutionize its delivery of disaster loans. But the system has stumbled badly because there haven't been enough new computers or staff trained to use them, and the central computers have been strained by the workload.

• Officials at the Department of Education are only now beginning to address questions over who will pay what costs for educating tens of thousands of schoolchildren displaced by Katrina. Meanwhile, school districts inundated with evacuees have had to open shuttered schools and order portable classrooms.

• Federal officials responsible for programs designed to help the poor are tangled in questions about rules that vary from state to state. Families that received welfare in Louisiana, for instance, may not be entitled to payments in Texas, where they have been resettled. And almost everywhere, funds for programs such as Head Start were stretched thin before Katrina hit.

• FEMA has continued to stumble, leaving tractor-trailers packed with ice and water intended for evacuees sitting out of position for days or sending them to places that had no need. And the agency's rushed efforts to deliver evacuee housing points up a lack of foresight and planning that could have long-term ramifications.

"This is an extraordinary time in our history," said Mississippi State Supt. of Education Hank M. Bounds. "It will take an extraordinary effort from our leadership. I hope they will grasp the magnitude of the issue."

Frustration is evident in a message by a middle-level FEMA official, who sent a plaintive cry for help up the chain of command, along with this warning:

"We have now told the state of Texas (and thus all the states) that it may directly pay for evacuees in hotels. For how long? For how much? Does this include food?" his Sept. 7 memo asked. "What I heard was Texas being given carte blanche to run this new program as it sees fit solely on its statement 'We have controls.' Do we know what these controls are?

"We are going down the path here of no federal accountability for huge sums of money," the official warned.

Excuse me? Katrina was not a unique storm (and God knows we had better get used to more of the same.)

The problem here seems to be the Bush administration and its tendency to loot everything it can get its hands on. FEMA wasn't an opportunity for looting under Clinton.

Exposing the Frayed Seams

New Orleans' Health System Faces Crisis

By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- This city's health care facilities have been shattered to an extent unmatched in U.S. history, and its hospital system faces grave challenges as residents begin returning, the vice president of the national hospital accreditation organization said Sunday.

The official, Joe Cappiello, said several hospitals were probably damaged beyond repair by Hurricane Katrina, while some may try to rush back into business before conditions are safe. Others, while rebuilding, may lose doctors and nurses to communities elsewhere.

He also recounted harrowing details of how doctors and nurses felt compelled - against the fundamentals of their training - to make triage-style choices during the flood. They were forced to aid some patients at the expense of others with less chance of survival.

"Essentially the health care infrastructure of New Orleans is gone - it no longer exists," said Cappiello, who just completed a three-day mission to the city along with a colleague from the Illinois-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

Although the city has more than a dozen hospitals, none have resumed normal operations. Officials at Children's Hospital, which Mayor Ray Nagin had hoped would be ready when residents are allowed to return to the Uptown neighborhood this week, said they may need 10 more days to prepare.

Nagin's plan is to start repopulating the city neighborhood by neighborhood, starting Monday with the Algiers section, across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. Over the next week and a half, the Garden District and the French Quarter, the city's historic heart, are due to open to residents and businesses.

All are areas that didn't flood, but Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the federal government's hurricane response, has urged Nagin not to rush people back in. He didn't want to set a timeline on Sunday, but he said the information he was getting from administrators at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency suggested it still wasn't safe enough.

Cappiello expressed concern that some hospitals, desperate to get back into business for competitive as well as public-service reasons, might move too quickly, before all mold and contaminants from the flooding are removed.

"I hope there's someone looking at all the health care assets and making sound decisions as the mayor faces overwhelming political pressure to let people back in," Cappiello said. "The federal government needs to go in there and make sure the hospitals are a safe environment before they're reopened."

Many local doctors and nurses are without paychecks, he said: "There's a nationwide shortage of nurses. People will try to recruit them and many may never come back."

He cited Charity Hospital, where floodwaters continue to be pumped out, as one that seemed beyond repair.

The hospitals seemed to have been well-prepared for Katrina's howling winds, but not for the disastrous flooding that followed, Cappiello said. That foiled plans to evacuate critically ill patients and knocked out backup generators that would keep air conditioning and lifesaving equipment on.

At Memorial Medical Center, doctors and staff worked valiantly during the worst of the flood to evacuate more than 200 patients by boat and helicopter, but 45 patients - most of them critically ill - died at the hospital.

"We're going to hear of a thousand more acts of heroism," Cappiello said. "But the bottom line is that having a response plan that relies on heroism is not tenable."

At a couple of hospitals, he said, officials ordered a lockdown of pharmaceutical supplies, wanting to protect them from looters when their hospitals emptied. They later learned that staff were unable to gain access to the drugs to aid ailing patients after flooding thwarted evacuation plans.

"Doctors and nurses who stayed behind were scrambling to find drugs for their critically ill patients," he said. "They had to make choices that we ordinarily don't make in America, to help those with the greatest chance of survival. ... That's not the way we practice medicine."

Cappiello also said he had heard unconfirmed reports that some doctors may have euthanized some critically ill patients who could not be evacuated, rather than leaving them to die from the flooding or from neglect.

The lack of preparation meant that our health system has been turned on its head. This IS a third world country.

CNN Sucks

This is amazing to me. Not one of CNN's on air anchors is competent. None can extemporise, none can conduct an interview; every one of them steps all over the guests answers to their questions. This sure as hell isn't journalism.

If I'd been this poor in my first radio interview, I would never have gotten a job (at the tiny, university-affilated public station where I got my start.) We had standards, ran weekly air checks on ourselves and all of that professional-type stuff. It's clear that these bubble-heads wouldn't know an air check if it bit them in the ass.

The Base

Hey, Chairman Dean, Don't Write Me Off

By K.E. Semmel

Sunday, September 18, 2005; Page B03

So, as a working stiff, let me be so bold as to give advice to the Democratic Party: Get back to your roots. The administration's slow response in bringing aid to residents of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is emblematic of its failure to address the concerns of the nation's working poor. So step in, and distinguish yourself from policies that clearly do little to help those in need. Find and court true working-class Americans, and explain to them in plain terms that you are willing to focus on and change the current sad economic facts -- something the Republican Party has consistently failed to do.

It's very easy for politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, to choose to ignore the working poor when these politicos have never known (or have forgotten) what it's like to sometimes need a hand. The trick, for the Democrats, is to think ahead: make this a political issue, bring this group of Americans and their votes back to the party; plan for the future by actively promoting a domestic agenda that includes job security, good wages, health care and a reasonable assurance that Social Security will not get axed -- issues that working people like my family care about. Go out directly to the people and talk with them, not at them: If you want to build a grass-roots movement, you need to sow the seeds where the people are, not fling your hopes where you think they might be. In due time, working people will start to wonder where their jobs and their money are really going.

If the Democrats can score points with the group of Americans who stand to gain the least from our current administration's policies, and make them fully aware that they stand to gain the least, they could reestablish a base and bring real assistance to a regrettably large swath of Americans.

Readers of the Nation and Mother Jones are not, as we all know very well, Mr. and Mrs. Minimum-Wage, or Ms. Two-Jobs-Just-to-Make-Ends-Meet. Subscribers to these magazines represent a tiny segment of the population -- the Nation, the larger of the two, has a circulation of about 180,000. To me, it seems as though they'd make for a very narrow and wobbly base on which to build your political future -- especially since it's possible the party could never be liberal enough for them.

With all due respect, Chairman Dean, with the kind of selective recruitment strategy I think I'm seeing here, the Democratic Party straddles a dangerous line. It can neither fully satisfy left-leaning Americans nor please those to whom the party should owe its allegiance right now, those who live one job loss, one tragedy away from poverty. If this is the recruitment strategy the Democrats are taking into the 21st century, I see no reason to believe that the party will be getting out of its funk any time soon.

Unintelligent Discussion

Darwin Goes to Church
My Congregation's Evolutionary Debate

By Henry G. Brinton

Sunday, September 18, 2005; Page B01

Most adult Sunday school classes don't raise eyebrows, but my church is planning to hold one that's sure to. It's called "Evolution for Christians," and it will be taught this winter by David Bush, a member of the church I lead, Fairfax Presbyterian. David is an articulate government retiree who has been interested in this topic for nearly two decades, teaches a class on theories of the origins of life every five years or so, and once again has really done his homework. His view is that science and religion answer two different sets of questions about creation, with science answering the "how" questions, and religion answering the "why" ones. "With a little bit of wisdom and tolerance on each side," he tells me, "I think they can complement rather than contradict each other."

His is the kind of approach I have confidently embraced ever since I studied biology and religion in college. But the debate between evolution and intelligent design has become increasingly shrill -- especially since President Bush told a group of reporters over the summer that "Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought." Last week it hit Comedy Central's "Daily Show," with a series of spots titled, "Evolution Schmevolution!" And, within my own church, two highly educated members -- university professors, in fact -- have taken wildly different positions on the issue: One considers evolution to be "mind-boggling and completely illogical," while the other says, "I don't see intelligent design fitting into a science class in any way."

And the stakes are high: Members have left my church over the evolution issue because they object to some church leaders' acceptance of a theory that is not Bible-based teaching; a local professor has been barred from teaching a cell biology class at George Mason University because of controversy over her beliefs; and religious leaders across the country are now seeing this as a defining issue in the culture wars.

Like many Christians, David Bush believes that the biblical account of creation is an ancient piece of poetry that was never meant to be a literal, scientific description of what happened as life appeared on the earth. Instead, it's a faith-based explanation of why life exists, and how humans are to care for it. Science, on the other hand, has never answered the question of wh y life exists, even through endless proofs based on observation and replication by multiple sources. Science can tell us how things work, but it can never answer questions such as why the Big Bang occurred, or why the first bacterium appeared.

I agree that science and religion answer very different kinds of questions, so I worry about the doors of science classrooms being opened to intelligent design -- the assertion that biological systems are so complex that they must have been constructed by some sort of guiding hand. I'm also a strong believer in the intelligence and guidance of God. Nonetheless, I would be very upset if the biology teachers at Robinson Secondary School, where my children are students, departed from the mechanics of mitosis and began to bring their Mormon or Methodist or Muslim beliefs into discussions of why God chose to create cells.

It's fine to learn about different schools of thought, as long as we recognize just that -- they're different. Some are religious, and some are scientific. What bothers my church member Jerry Parrott, a professor of psychology at Georgetown University, is that "intelligent design theorists don't scientifically establish divine creation at all -- they merely try to represent scientific problems as evidence of scientific inadequacy." They assume, for instance, that since the human eye is marvelously complex, and since scientists cannot map a complete evolutionary path for it, then it must be a product of an intelligent designer. But the eye actually shows many signs of having evolved, including a number of defects that no intelligent designer would ever include -- light receptors in the back of the eye, for example, behind blood vessels that obstruct the view. "Accusing a God of [designing] such a thing seems rather insulting, actually," says Jerry.

When I preach on the biblical story of creation, I tend to keep my focus narrow. Instead of trying to reconcile scientific and religious ideas about the earth's creation in a 15-minute sermon, I use the time to preach on what Genesis says about divine creativity, or human sinfulness or the importance of Sabbath rest, although I know there are members of my church who want a more literal approach to the creation story.

I also know there are members of the religious community who object more openly than I do to any kind of teaching of intelligent design theories. My divinity school classmate Gene McAfee, pastor of a United Church of Christ congregation in suburban Cleveland, insists that those who believe in creationism and intelligent design are primarily people with a conservative theological agenda, and he is convinced that "the story of creation is a blueprint for these folks for how women and men are supposed to live with each other and with creation -- heterosexually and dominatingly." As much as Gene would like to be seen as open-minded, he says that he won't be "bullied" into calling religion "science," "no matter how many people keep repeating that fiction."

I've found a path that reflects my own beliefs and education and that most of my parishioners can accept, but I'm aware that the ongoing clash between science and faith needs to be addressed directly. Religious classes such as "Evolution for Christians" are a good place to start the discussion, but debates also need to be taken to school board meetings by church members who recognize the importance of keeping religion out of public school classrooms. People who want their schools to teach science with integrity have to be willing to draw lines, and to insist that their school boards maintain distinctions. Intelligent design will be worthy of mention in a science classroom only when scientists find empirical evidence to support it. Until then, it will have to be limited to classes taught in churches or religious schools.

Caroline Crocker, who teaches biology at Northern Virginia Community College and is a member of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, challenges my views. She suggests that scientific evidence for intelligent design may be found using techniques we now have for detecting meaningful patterns that suggest intelligence. These methods are used in forensics to find murderers, and in SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. When they are applied to complex molecular systems, it looks as though intelligence has been involved in their design, she argues, because these systems are both purposeful and complex. "We can say that it appears intelligence was involved," she tells me, "but, of course, to say what that intelligence was crosses the line into theology."

Look, I'm a theologian with a scientific background. I know theology when I see it and "intelligent design" is indeed a faith-based position, not a scientific one. It says something about the political power of a religious minority in this country that we are even having this discussion today. The rest of the industrial west is looking at us and wondering if we have lost our minds.

Agin' Him

Too Much of a Mystery
Published: September 18, 2005

John Roberts failed to live up to the worst fears of his critics in his confirmation hearings last week. But in many important areas where senators wanted to be reassured that he would be a careful guardian of Americans' rights, he refused to give any solid indication of his legal approach. That makes it difficult to decide whether he should be confirmed. Weighing the pluses and minuses and the many, many unanswered questions, and considering some of the alternatives, a responsible senator might still conclude that he warrants approval. But the unknowns about Mr. Roberts's views remain troubling, especially since he is being nominated not merely to the Supreme Court, but to be chief justice. That position is too important to entrust to an enigma, which is what Mr. Roberts remains.

Few lawyers in America can compete with Mr. Roberts in professional accomplishments. After getting college and law degrees at Harvard, he clerked for Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court, and then became a top lawyer in the Reagan administration, deputy solicitor general in the first Bush administration, and partner in a prestigious law firm. He has served two years on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

If the test were legal skill alone, Mr. Roberts would certainly pass. But the Senate and the American people have a right to know whether he would use his abilities to defend core rights and liberties, or to narrow them. There may be a debate on Capitol Hill on this point, but popular opinion is clear. In a New York Times/CBS News poll, 46 percent said it was "very important" for senators to know Mr. Roberts's "position on issues such as abortion and affirmative action." Another 31 percent said it was "somewhat important." Only 13 percent said it was not important at all.

It has been difficult for senators to extricate his views. During his brief term as a judge, he has written few notable opinions. The White House has refused to release the memorandums he wrote in the solicitor general's office, which could have been revealing. Memos from earlier in his career raise red flags on issues like civil rights, women's rights and the right to privacy - which he dismissed, at one point, as the "so-called 'right to privacy.' " When confronted with this record, he often gave the impression of having moderated his views, but stopped well short. More recently, as a judge, in a case involving the Endangered Species Act, he threw doubt on Congress's power to protect the environment in important ways. In another case, he upheld the arrest of a 12-year-old girl in the Washington subway for eating a single French fry.
....
If he is confirmed, we think there is a chance Mr. Roberts could be a superb chief justice. But it is a risk. We might be reluctant to roll the dice even for a nomination for associate justice, but for a nomination for a chief justice - particularly one who could serve 30 or more years - the stakes are simply too high. Senators should vote against Mr. Roberts not because they know he does not have the qualities to be an excellent chief justice, but because he has not met the very heavy burden of proving that he does.

Clueless

This is more than a shade facile, but basically correct.

Leaders Who Won't Choose
In Washington, it's business as usual in the face of a national catastrophe.

By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

Whatever his other accomplishments, Bush will go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible chief executive in American history. Since 2001, government spending has gone up from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, a 33 percent rise in four years! Defense and Homeland Security are not the only culprits. Domestic spending is actually up 36 percent in the same period. These figures come from the libertarian Cato Institute's excellent report "The Grand Old Spending Party," which explains that "throughout the past 40 years, most presidents have cut or restrained lower-priority spending to make room for higher-priority spending. What is driving George W. Bush's budget bloat is a reversal of that trend." To govern is to choose. And Bush has decided not to choose. He wants guns and butter and tax cuts.

People wonder whether we can afford Iraq and Katrina. The answer is, easily. What we can't afford simultaneously is $1.4 trillion in tax cuts and more than $1 trillion in new entitlement spending over the next 10 years. To take one example, if Congress did not make permanent just one of its tax cuts, the repeal of estate taxes, it would generate $290 billion over the next decade. That itself pays for most of Katrina and Iraq.

Robert Hormats of Goldman Sachs has pointed out that previous presidents acted differently. During World War II, Franklin Roosevelt cut nonwar spending by more than 20 percent, in addition to raising taxes to finance the war effort. During the Korean War, President Truman cut non-defense spending 28 percent and raised taxes to pay the bills. In both cases these presidents were often slashing cherished New Deal programs that they had created. The only period—other than the current one—when the United States avoided hard choices was Vietnam: spending increased on all fronts. The results eventually were deficits, high interest rates and low growth—stagflation.

Expecting a different result this time is the working definition of neurosis.

Set Up for Disaster

New Orleans mayor defends return plan
9/18/2005, 8:39 a.m. CT
By DOUG SIMPSON
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Mayor Ray Nagin defended his plan to return up to 180,000 people to the city within a week and a half despite concerns about the short supply of drinking water and heavily polluted floodwaters. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the federal disaster relief effort, said Saturday that Nagin's idea is both "extremely ambitious and "extremely problematic."

But Nagin said his plan was developed in cooperation with the federal government and balances safety concerns and the needs of citizens to begin rebuilding.

"We must offer the people of New Orleans every chance for a sense of closure and the opportunity for a new beginning," he said.

Nagin said the Algiers, Garden District and French Quarter sections would reopen over the next week and a half, bringing back more than one-third of the city's half-million inhabitants. City officials later backed off setting a specific date for reopening the famous French Quarter — the city's main tourist draw.

Allen said a prime public health concern is the tap water, which in most of the city remains unfit for drinking and bathing. He said he was concerned about the difficulties of communicating the risk of using the water to people who return and might run out of bottled water.

Another concern is the risk of another storm hitting the region, threatening an already delicate levee system and possibly requiring residents to be evacuated again, he said.

Allen, who planned to meet with Nagin on Monday, said federal officials support the mayor's vision for repopulating the city, but he is concerned about the mayor's timeline.

"Our intention is to work with the mayor ... in a very frank, open and unvarnished manner," he said.

Business owners were allowed back in to some sections of the city to begin the long process of cleaning up and rebuilding, part of Nagin's plan to begin reviving the city by resuming a limited amount of commerce.

But confronted with damage that could take months to repair, many said hopes for a quick recovery may be little more than a political dream.

"I don't know why they said people could come back and open their businesses," said Margaret Richmond, owner of an antiques shop on the edge of the city's upscale Garden District that was looted. "You can't reopen this. And even if you could, there are no customers here."

This is going to be a disaster leading to more illness and death. There are no functioning hospitals in the city.

Why?

This is a mess of our own making

Tim Collins told his troops this was a war of liberation, not conquest. Now he says that he was naive to believe it

Sunday September 18, 2005
The Observer

When I led my men of the 1st Battalion the Royal Irish Regiment across the border into Iraq we believed we were going to do some good. Goodwill and optimism abounded; it was to be a liberation, I had told my men, not a conquest.

In Iraq I sought to surround myself with advisers - Iraqis - who could help me understand what needed to be done. One of the first things they taught me was that the Baath party had been a fact of life for 35 years. Like the Nazi party, they said, it needed to be decapitated, harnessed and dismantled, each function replaced with the new regime. Many of these advisers were Baathists, yet were eager to co-operate, fired with the enthusiasm of the liberation. How must it look to them now?

What I had not realised was that there was no real plan at the higher levels to replace anything, indeed a simplistic and unimaginative overreliance in some senior quarters on the power of destruction and crude military might. We were to beat the Iraqis. That simple. Everything would come together after that.

The Iraqi army was defeated - it walked away from most fights - but was then dismissed without pay to join the ranks of the looters smashing the little infrastructure left, and to rail against their treatment. The Baath party was left undisturbed. The careful records it kept were destroyed with precision munitions by the coalition; the evidence erased, they were left with a free rein to agitate and organise the insurrection. A vacuum was created in which the coalition floundered, the Iraqis suffered and terrorists thrived.

One cannot help but wonder what it was all about. If it was part of the war on terror then history might notice that the invasion has arguably acted as the best recruiting sergeant for al-Qaeda ever: a sort of large-scale equivalent of the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry in 1972, which in its day filled the ranks of the IRA. If it was an attempt to influence the price of oil, then the motorists who queued last week would hardly be convinced. If freedom and a chance to live a dignified, stable life free from terror was the motive, then I can think of more than 170 families in Iraq last week who would have settled for what they had under Saddam. UK military casualties reached 95 last week. I nightly pray the total never reaches 100.

The consequences of this adventure may run even deeper. Hurricane Katrina has caused a reappraisal of the motives and aims of this war in the US. The storm came perhaps in the nick of time as hawks in Washington were glancing towards Iran and its newly found self-confidence in global affairs. Meanwhile, China and India are growing and sucking up every drop of oil, every scrap of concrete or steel even as the old-world powers of the UK and US pour blood and treasure into overseas campaigns which seem to have no ending and no goal.

It is time for our leaders to explain what is going on. It was as a battalion commander trying to explain to his men why they would embark on a war that I came to public notice. The irony is that I made certain assumptions that my goodwill and altruistic motivations went to the top. Clearly I was naive. This time it is the role of the leaders of nations to explain where we are going and why. I, for one, demand to know.

· Colonel Tim Collins gave a celebrated speech to his troops about their mission to liberate, not conquer, in Iraq. He has since left the army.

Water

Wading into an E. coli stew

ROSIE DIMANNO

The Star brought back five water samples from New Orleans — scooped up at city hall, the Iberville projects and points along Canal St. — for testing at a Toronto lab.

The results found E. coli levels between 5,600 and 42,000 per 100 ml of water and staph levels ranging from 9,800 to 32,000 per 100 ml of water.

These findings are consistent with results released by the EPA, which reports that E. coli levels remain "much higher" than its own recommended levels "for direct contact."

To put the results in more significant context, it should be noted that Toronto's board of health posts no-swimming advisories for the city's public beaches when E. coli levels reach 100 per 100 ml because of the health risk.

To repeat, in New Orleans — as determined by the Toronto lab analysis — those levels are far above 40,000.

Even using the EPA's own guidelines, the floodwaters in New Orleans contain E. coli and other coliform bacteria up to 109 times its safe swimming limit.

Most vulnerable are children because their immune systems are still developing. This would suggest dangers far more pronounced than the EPA has been indicating.

Yet the agency maintains that the amounts of chemicals and bacteria found in the water would pose a substantial risk to children only if they were to drink a litre of floodwater every day.

There is no keen sense of urgency in the reports the EPA is posting almost daily on its website. In fact, its assessments seemed designed to assure rather than alarm, although the agency admits it hasn't tested for — and has no immediate intention to test for —the most lethal pathogens, such as vibrio cholera, Shigella, E. coli 0157 or Salmonella, because "it would not be useful at this time."

Explaining this decision, the EPA argues that these pathogens would be difficult to grow in the laboratory, "especially in highly contaminated water surfaces"; that one pathogen "will not predict" the risk from other pathogens; that finding pathogens in standing water will not affect how "imminent risk" is presented to the public or "how decisions are made"; and that wastewater from a large population "is expected to contain enteric pathogens, therefore, identifying the presence of fecally contaminated water will give a broader risk perspective than detecting specific pathogens."

The impenetrable language is as murky as the water in a city where nothing clean is yet coming out of the taps. What it boils down to — and boiling does not remove chemical pollutants from water, by the way — is, I think, that the potential findings of tests for the really bad pathogens might present a skewed picture of the real dangers and cause unnecessary panic.

In sum, the water must not be ingested — and who would, save for the sorry animals? Nor should it be used for bathing because that could bring on abdominal cramps, fever, vomiting and diarrhea. Contact with an open wound or abrasion can cause fever, redness and swelling.

"See a doctor right away if possible," the advisory suggests.

Oh, that's useful.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also on the ground, and has for the past three weeks been administering tetanus shots. (The EPA contends that mass inoculation is not required, although its own staffers are injected for tetanus and the like before hitting the ground.)

Infectious disease experts warn of health outcomes that routinely arise from any hurricane: hepatitis A, diarrhea and intestinal problems caused by drinking polluted water or eating spoiled food, and infections from open cuts.

The morass of New Orleans and environs also presents an ideal breeding ground for dysentery and such mosquito-borne diseases as West Nile fever, which is why military aircraft were spraying the city for mosquitoes last week — another laggard response to the catastrophe.

Further, humans need to worry about bites from rats and venomous snakes indigenous to the area, such as water moccasins and cottonmouths, which might easily be swimming in the wards adjacent to more rural areas.

What's known is that five people have died from post-Katrina contact with bacteria-infested seawater — specifically Vibrio vulnificus, which can be lethal to those already suffering from immune deficiencies, including AIDS patients and those on dialysis. Oddly, none of those casualties were in Louisiana. Four deaths occurred in Mississippi and one individual died after being evacuated to Texas.

Another major concern, as the water drains, is the contamination that can arise from mould.

There are still gas leaks that crews haven't been able to cap because the sources are underwater. Officials are warning of gas explosions and carbon monoxide poisoning from improper use of generators.

Decaying hazardous chemicals can also be tossed into the malevolent mix of emerging dangers.

There are at least five oil spills in the New Orleans area and 121 sites with known chemical contamination. At minimum, three of the city's poisonous "Superfund sites" — meaning they made the list of the nation's worst toxic sites — were flooded, including a landfill where residents dumped garbage for decades. That one remains underwater and inaccessible.

Hazardous waste railcars — like the freight train that derailed and forced an evacuation of Mississauga in 1979 — still lie submerged.

Sediment samples — contaminants from the polluted water settling into the soil — have been difficult to analyze because they're so laden with petroleum products.

"We are still in the early days of going around and visually inspecting," EPA administrator Stephen Johnson told reporters a few days ago. "We will then begin to do a more detailed analysis."

The water — and the muck it's leaving behind — contains lead from paint and batteries; officials aren't even certain of the oozing sources. High levels of hexavalent chromium, which is used in industrial plating, and arsenic, used in treating wood, have also been found, the EPA reports.

Five thousand of what those in the business call "orphan containers" — barrels of medical waste, gas cylinders, petroleum byproducts intended for safe elimination — have been recovered so far, Johnson said on Wednesday.

Human waste, animal waste, factory waste: all of it stirred into a noxious cocktail.

Two decades ago, New Orleans — a city awash in booze and most famous for its Hurricane rum concoction — took first place in the annual Drinking Water Test Challenge held by the American Water Works Association.

Now, you can't even wash away the dirt with it.

And the mayor wants people to return? To what?

Pretty Boy, Pretty Talk

John Roberts a nice guy with a blind spot

By SHERYL MCCARTHY, Newsday

Published: Sunday, Sep. 18, 2005

John Roberts sure is likable. In his confirmation hearings he comes across as smart, pleasant and thoughtful – whether he’s discussing the complexities of a legal case or his own vision of a justice.

Handsome and with large, piercing eyes, he exudes sincerity. And anyone who can stay awake and appear interested through three hours of senators’ speeches wins points from me.

He also has a knack for saying the right thing, as when he told the Senate judiciary committee that a judge should show humility and modesty in interpreting the law and dealing with his colleagues.

But the hearings brought out a darker side of Roberts, what Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., called the “mean-spirited view” that infused some of his writings, and what Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., saw as a contradiction between the appealing things he’s saying now and positions he’s taken in the past.

“You speak about modesty and humility,” Feinstein said, “and yet none of these comments are modest or humble.”

Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., quizzed Roberts about a case he was involved in as a young lawyer in the attorney general’s office under Ronald Reagan.

It was brought by black residents of Mobile, Ala., who for more than 70 years had been trying unsuccessfully to elect a black city council member. Because voters elected council members citywide, rather than by district, the city’s white majority was able to defeat any black candidate, even those from all-black neighborhoods.

After the Supreme Court ruled that the Voting Rights Act required minorities to prove that the system intended to discriminate, a very difficult thing to do, Congress tried to change the act so that plaintiffs would only have to prove that the system had a discriminatory impact.

Roberts joined the administration’s efforts to block the amendment.

Asked this week if he thought the huge political gains blacks have made because of the Voting Rights Act would have occurred if his view had prevailed, and if he still holds that view, Roberts waffled.

He agreed that the law has helped blacks, but he said some of the gains might have occurred anyway. Besides, he was only 26 years old at the time, and his job was to promote the views of the president.

Asked if Sept. 11, 2001, changed his view of individual liberties, Roberts said the Bill of Rights “doesn’t change in time of war.”

But asked to explain why he decided, along with his Court of Appeals colleagues, to deny an American citizen who was being held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay the right to challenge his detention in court, Roberts refused to discuss the case – because it’s still pending, he said.

And when asked if he believes there’s a constitutional right to privacy, he said yes, ticking off a list of private activities that are protected by the Constitution.

What I saw was a guy who doesn't "get it," a man with a privileged upbringing who is disconnected from those of us who don't share it, who doesn't understand the rest of us have a hard time finding justice. I was, frankly, appalled. I don't expect a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth to understand my life.

Playing the Ropes

Stolberg and Kirkpatrick could have used a better editor. This piece is a mess, but (though you'll have to wander through it more than a little) sums up the state of play.

Next Debate: Must Future Court Nominees Match Qualifications of Roberts?

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: September 18, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 - Judge John G. Roberts Jr. has not done any favors for the next Supreme Court nominee.

As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for its vote on Thursday on Judge Roberts's nomination to be the nation's 17th chief justice, Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: he will be a tough act to follow.

With President Bush trying to fill a second Supreme Court vacancy, both sides are already insisting that the next nominee must meet Judge Roberts's standard, each to further its own political goals.

After months of arguing that Judge Roberts should not disclose his views on specific legal matters, Republicans say he revealed enough to push the benchmark for the next nominee firmly to the right.

During last week's confirmation hearings, Republicans like Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma - both staunch opponents of abortion - sent signals to the White House that they would like the next nominee to have conservative credentials at least as strong as those of Judge Roberts.

"What John Roberts's demeanor and testimony showed is that to be a judicial conservative is to be mainstream," said Leonard Leo, a conservative lawyer retained by the White House to coordinate support for Mr. Bush's judicial nominees.

Democrats, for their part, are insisting that the next nominee match Judge Roberts's intellect and impeccable résumé - a standard that gives them room to oppose whomever President Bush names to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Liberal Democrats like Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware went out of their way last week to praise Judge Roberts's brilliance.

"Roberts set an awfully high bar in terms of intellect and ability to answer questions, which is going to be awfully hard for the next nominee to match," Mr. Schumer said. "Roberts gained a lot of good will because of his intellect."

Conservative allies of the White House say they do not expect President Bush to name someone to fill the seat held by Justice O'Connor until after the full Senate votes on Judge Roberts later this month. But the president has already begun the process of deliberation, and has invited the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate, as well as the Republican chairman and senior Democrat of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to the White House on Wednesday for a breakfast meeting to discuss the next nominee.

Bush is going to have a hard time finding another nominee who can bob and weave as well.

Open Hearts

Here is the WaPo's comprehensive list of list of charities for the Gulf. I've got issues with the ARC and the Sal, even though they are advertisers, but there are lots of other choices. I like the American Friends Service Committee (they got a check from me) and the Mennonites, but there are non-faith-based charities, too, if they suit you better.

In the end, it doesn't matter who you give to, only that you do. Pick a charity, make a donation.

Follow the Money

KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
FEMA's Woes Were Merely the Beginning
# The trouble at federal agencies extends beyond emergency response. Aid is abundant, but prompt and accurate delivery is a problem.

By Nicole Gaouette, Alan Miller and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The federal government's efforts to help victims of Hurricane Katrina have been hobbled by inadequate planning and coordination, troubled computer systems and confusion over who will pay the costs.

Interviews with federal officials indicate that recovery difficulties have gone beyond the Federal Emergency Management Agency and span key agencies in Washington, where top officials are trying to respond to a huge reconstruction problem for which they had no policies or plans. Large contracts are pouring out of agencies, but the task ahead involves issues Washington hasn't thought seriously about since the 1960s.

Among the danger signals, cited by FEMA and other government officials in interviews:

• Months ago, the Small Business Administration created a data processing system that was meant to revolutionize its delivery of disaster loans. But the system has stumbled badly because there haven't been enough new computers or staff trained to use them, and the central computers have been strained by the workload.

• Officials at the Department of Education are only now beginning to address questions over who will pay what costs for educating tens of thousands of schoolchildren displaced by Katrina. Meanwhile, school districts inundated with evacuees have had to open shuttered schools and order portable classrooms.

• Federal officials responsible for programs designed to help the poor are tangled in questions about rules that vary from state to state. Families that received welfare in Louisiana, for instance, may not be entitled to payments in Texas, where they have been resettled. And almost everywhere, funds for programs such as Head Start were stretched thin before Katrina hit.

• FEMA has continued to stumble, leaving tractor-trailers packed with ice and water intended for evacuees sitting out of position for days or sending them to places that had no need. And the agency's rushed efforts to deliver evacuee housing points up a lack of foresight and planning that could have long-term ramifications.

"This is an extraordinary time in our history," said Mississippi State Supt. of Education Hank M. Bounds. "It will take an extraordinary effort from our leadership. I hope they will grasp the magnitude of the issue."

Frustration is evident in a message by a middle-level FEMA official, who sent a plaintive cry for help up the chain of command, along with this warning:

"We have now told the state of Texas (and thus all the states) that it may directly pay for evacuees in hotels. For how long? For how much? Does this include food?" his Sept. 7 memo asked. "What I heard was Texas being given carte blanche to run this new program as it sees fit solely on its statement 'We have controls.' Do we know what these controls are?

"We are going down the path here of no federal accountability for huge sums of money," the official warned.

Halliburton, Blackwater, et al, already have their no bid contracts. What, you didn't know that mercs are in the streets of an American city? You haven't been paying attention.

President of All the People

Message: I Care About the Black Folks

By FRANK RICH
Published: September 18, 2005

ONCE Toto parts the curtain, the Wizard of Oz can never be the wizard again. He is forever Professor Marvel, blowhard and snake-oil salesman. Hurricane Katrina, which is likely to endure in the American psyche as long as L. Frank Baum's mythic tornado, has similarly unmasked George W. Bush.

The worst storm in our history proved perfect for exposing this president because in one big blast it illuminated all his failings: the rampant cronyism, the empty sloganeering of "compassionate conservatism," the lack of concern for the "underprivileged" his mother condescended to at the Astrodome, the reckless lack of planning for all government operations except tax cuts, the use of spin and photo-ops to camouflage failure and to substitute for action.

In the chaos unleashed by Katrina, these plot strands coalesced into a single tragic epic played out in real time on television. The narrative is just too powerful to be undone now by the administration's desperate recycling of its greatest hits: a return Sunshine Boys tour by the surrogate empathizers Clinton and Bush I, another round of prayers at the Washington National Cathedral, another ludicrously overhyped prime-time address flecked with speechwriters' "poetry" and framed by a picturesque backdrop. Reruns never eclipse a riveting new show.

Nor can the president's acceptance of "responsibility" for the disaster dislodge what came before. Mr. Bush didn't cough up his modified-limited mea culpa until he'd seen his whole administration flash before his eyes. His admission that some of the buck may stop with him (about a dime's worth, in Truman dollars) came two weeks after the levees burst and five years after he promised to usher in a new post-Clinton "culture of responsibility." It came only after the plan to heap all the blame on the indeed blameworthy local Democrats failed to lift Mr. Bush's own record-low poll numbers. It came only after America's highest-rated TV news anchor, Brian Williams, started talking about Katrina the way Walter Cronkite once did about Vietnam.

Taking responsibility, as opposed to paying lip service to doing so, is not in this administration's gene pool. It was particularly shameful that Laura Bush was sent among the storm's dispossessed to try to scapegoat the news media for her husband's ineptitude. When she complained of seeing "a lot of the same footage over and over that isn't necessarily representative of what really happened," the first lady sounded just like Donald Rumsfeld shirking responsibility for the looting of Baghdad. The defense secretary, too, griped about seeing the same picture "over and over" on television (a looter with a vase) to hide the reality that the Pentagon had no plan to secure Iraq, a catastrophic failure being paid for in Iraqi and American blood to this day.

This White House doesn't hate all pictures, of course. It loves those by Karl Rove's Imagineers, from the spectacularly lighted Statue of Liberty backdrop of Mr. Bush's first 9/11 anniversary speech to his "Top Gun" stunt to Thursday's laughably stagy stride across the lawn to his lectern in Jackson Square. (Message: I am a leader, not that vacationing slacker who first surveyed the hurricane damage from my presidential jet.)

The most odious image-mongering, however, has been Mr. Bush's repeated deployment of African-Americans as dress extras to advertise his "compassion." In 2000, the Republican convention filled the stage with break dancers and gospel singers, trying to dispel the memory of Mr. Bush's craven appearance at Bob Jones University when it forbade interracial dating. (The few blacks in the convention hall itself were positioned near celebrities so they'd show up in TV shots.) In 2004, the Bush-Cheney campaign Web site had a page titled "Compassion" devoted mainly to photos of the president with black people, Colin Powell included.

It's all about the image with Bushco, not about the doing. This is just PR, while the homeless in the Gulf sit and cook in the sun. The gubmint is still missing in action.

Who Is A Reporter?

ROBERTS NOMINATION
Sunday, September 18, 2005
REGINA LAWRENCE

The battle between the blogs and the mainstream media -- or the MSM, as bloggers like to call them -- has scorched newsrooms across the country. Bloggers rail at the perceived bias and ineptitude of the MSM, while traditional journalists scorn a new medium that, frankly, many don't understand.

I suspect this battle has left most citizens cold. What can you really learn from a media pie fight?

I'm not a blogger or a journalist. I teach political science at Portland State University. I'm not a techno-nerd, and though I crack open a newspaper more often than most of my students, I try to approach the media from the perspective of what average citizens need: Is it useful? And, is it efficient?

So, what can I learn about an important current event -- say the John Roberts Supreme Court confirmation hearings -- from the "new media"?

I tried an experiment. I would attempt to get all -- or at least most -- of my information about the Senate hearings from the blogosphere. I read the posts and followed the links on some of the most popular political blogs, including Daily Kos (a highly trafficked liberal site), Michelle Malkin (ditto for the right), and Instapundit (maintained by law professor Glenn Reynolds).

Sure, I found some useful stuff out there, but I was tripped up by problems that can make blogs difficult to learn much basic -- let alone new --information from.

First, many are really just starting places for getting mainstream news. In theory blogs are interactive postings from people sharing their views on issues. In reality many mostly contain links to stories by the MSM the blogs so like to criticize.

Second, getting your news this way can be time-consuming. After one hour of clicking through endless links, I learned about as much basic information about the Roberts' hearings as I could from reading a good morning newspaper for 20 minutes.

Some blogs don't bring much to the party. The live blogging on SCOTUSblog, which Instapundit links to, consisted of hurriedly typed entries that tried to capture the proceedings minute-by-minute. Not exactly compelling reading. You don't get the occasional drama of the exchanges between Roberts and his questioners, or the substance of what was said.

Why read someone else's scribbled notes when I can get more details from TV, radio, the morning newspaper or an online version?

Of course, information is not the blogs' claim to fame. Blogs excel at perspective, not "just the facts, ma'am" reporting.

As Chris Mooney, a mainstream journalist and blogger, observed, "Bloggers tend to specialize in putting a deft touch on pre-existing information rather than in generating completely new findings; there's no such thing as a blogging investigative report or feature story."

He's right. A lot of what I found was conjecture, partisan talking points and bits of heated commentary on details of Roberts' testimony by people whose credentials are uncertain -- at best.

On the upside, some blogs linked to informed commentary that brought the hearings into clearer focus. For example, TPMCafe's Supreme Court Watch (supremecourtwatch.tpmcafe.com) featured analysis and debate by legal experts.

Some gems I found there included an essay by Robert Gordon of Yale University, who bracingly argued that unlike nominees of an earlier era, Roberts "has always worn a public mask [and] has never taken the risk of articulating a position for which he himself might be held to account."

And, some links were just plain fun, like the analysis on anklebitingpundits.com showing how many words each senator spoke next to Roberts' verbiage count -- proof, the site proclaimed, that senators "love the sound of their own voice."

Ms. Lawrence, you could have learned that if you'd picked up the phone and called me. Or watched the hearings yourself, like I did. But that would have been acting like a reporter, and you don't seem to be quite that. In fact, I'm not quite sure what it is that you are.

Patriot Games

Plan to cut number of UK troops in Iraq is scrapped
By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 18/09/2005)

Secret plans by the Government to reduce troop numbers in Iraq have been shelved - and there is now no office date for the withdrawal of British soldiers, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

The decision comes as ministers prepare to announce an unexpected redeployment of up to 6,000 members of the 7th Armoured Brigade - the renowned Desert Rats - in the conflict zone next month. This follows growing concerns that Iraq is heading into full-scale civil war.

Under the original withdrawal plans of John Reid, the Defence Secretary, up to 8,500 troops should have returned to Britain by next month with the rest coming home by the middle of next year.

But the confirmation of a new large-scale troop redeployment, and the news that there is no end-date for British withdrawal, have sparked fears among serving soldiers and senior military figures that Iraq may be developing into Britain's own "Vietnam".

Last night, senior officers accused the Government of having a "head-in-the-sand mentality" over Britain's defence requirements and its involvement in Iraq, where more than 200 civilians were killed in terrorists attack last week alone. They said the Army - which is also sending 3,000 extra troops to Afghanistan next April - was under-manned, "strapped for cash" and being "dangerously overstretched".

So far, operations in Iraq are estimated to have cost Britain £5 billion and, since the American-led invasion in 2003, 95 British troops have been killed there.

The redeployment of the Desert Rats, who fought in the 2003 battle for Basra, in southern Iraq, contradicts a plan drawn up two months ago by Mr Reid, Options for UK Force Posture in Iraq, which proposed the start of a troop pull-out next month.

The government document added that the planned reductions would save £500 million a year.

Last night, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the head of the armed services from 2001 to 2003, said he was concerned that Britain's Forces were being constantly asked to do more with less.

"If we want to remain a global force for good around the world, it seems strange that the Armed Forces are not being properly funded … the MoD is strapped for cash" he said.

One serving brigadier, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the danger of Britain becoming bogged down in its own "Vietnam war" was getting stronger every day. "The return of the 7th Armoured Brigade to Iraq is a significant benchmark," he said.

The Seventh Armoured is Britain's strongest. The UK is entering the quagmire with this. Blair is an idiot. Imagine the games that are being played between DC and London with this piece of idiocy.

Southern Fried

I learned to make this from a Lousianian who was a neighbor when I was a child and just collecting my cooking chops. I did start early.

Southern Fried Chicken

Marinate your chicken parts in buttermilk for at least an hour, overnight is preferred.

Drop them still dripping into a bag which contains white flour, a healthy grind of salt and a batch of fresh ground pepper. Coat the pieces well. Dry them on paper towels.

In a well greased skillet (use peanut oil, this has to be above 350 degees) brown the pieces, turning frequently with tongs. You don't want the skin to stick to the pan.

The pieces will cook to a dark brown and the meat will fall off the bone if you let them rest on paper towels for five minutes.

Your homies will go "Yum" and wonder how you managed to deliver such grease free chicken.

Smile and enjoy the praise.

Simple Things

So, have you learned how to cook them yet? "Pommes Frites" are the new ... black. They are hideous for Scarsdale/Southbeach diet fans, and they are about the most You can allow yourself these a couple of time a year. There is literally nothing worse for your diet than fried potatoes. But these are so good they should be in your recipe file:

Famous Writer

I'm not a big football fan, so it is going to be a Prairie Home Companion and Traditions kind of Saturday night. (Those of you who listen to WETA in the DC Metro will know what I mean.)

I've had it with the news, it's all gotten too dark for me for the rest of the night. If I post further this evening (probably will, when the fit comes over the writer, there's not much to be done other than write it out) it's going to be recipes and food posts. I don't need to be in a blacker mood, so let me give you some good things to feed your families and friends. Here's the first:

If you are in the DC Metro area (I know I have a lot of readers around here) take your family to Billy Martin's Tavern in Georgetown. Yes, you'll be able to feed your family well and still leave a healthy tip. This is one of the best burgers in DC and the only Welsh Rabbit I've been able to find anywhere in the metro. I started hanging at this place (parking is an absolute nightmare, use Metro to the new Georgetown bus service, which is excellent) since shortly after I moved to DC 20 years ago. This is the Georgetown of another era (so are the prices) with excellent service for a modest menu, skillfully and consistently prepared. Older children and teens will deal with the menu and the ambience best. They have a very traditional and delicious brunch menu every day (10 to 4), and parking is a little easier on Sunday after church. This is not a first date restaurant unless already know the person really well.

Martin's "Hot Brown" Turkey Sandwich (with mashed potatoes and gravy) is internationally famous. I learned about Martin's from reading George Pelicanos' mystery novels long before I moved to DC. The DC Mystery Writers' Guild (yes, there is such a thing, there is an alarming concentration of mystery writers here, writing those Washington Mysteries I love so much) meets over dinner at Martin's. I've been told that some of them are known to take a drink, and Martin's has a very nice selection of beers and ales, if you are into that sort of thing. Your faithful correspondent is Chardonnay only.

Use this thread to post on your favorite establishments in your areas. Let's be a mini Zagat on Saturday night. I know that you live all over the world. Let's assemble the Bump Travel Guide to Eating Well on a modest travel budget.

I think I'm watching the Food Network tonight, and that may kick up a recipe or two.

Damn, Prairie Home is good tonight.

The Personal Connection: I went to school with Rich Dworsky, he was in the University of Minnesota Orchestra with me (yes, he has legit roots) and, as I've noted earlier, I followed Garrison around Minnesota radio for a decade, the next announcer hired to fill his slot when he'd moved on.

As some of you have noted from personal experience in email, yes, he is an asshole. He's one of the biggest egos I ever met. He's also one of the biggest talents I've ever met. I don't want to marry him, but I do want to listen to his radio program and read his words.

Downhill Slide

This is how permanent martial law begins. And if you think this isn't in PNAC's plans, you haven't been paying attention.

Military May Play Bigger Relief Role
Sep 17 2:59 PM US/Eastern

By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer

WASHINGTON

President Bush's push to give the military a bigger role in responding to major disasters like Hurricane Katrina could lead to a loosening of legal limits on the use of federal troops on U.S. soil.

Pentagon officials are reviewing that possibility, and some in Congress agree it needs to be considered.

Bush did not define the wider role he envisions for the military. But in his speech to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday, he alluded to the unmatched ability of federal troops to provide supplies, equipment, communications, transportation and other assets the military lumps under the label of "logistics."

The president called the military "the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."

At question, however, is how far to push the military role, which by law may not include actions that can be defined as law enforcement _ stopping traffic, searching people, seizing property or making arrests. That prohibition is spelled out in the Posse Comitatus Act of enacted after the Civil War mainly to prevent federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states.

Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said, "I believe the time has come that we reflect on the Posse Comitatus Act." He advocated giving the president and the secretary of defense "correct standby authorities" to manage disasters.

Presidents have long been reluctant to deploy U.S. troops domestically, leery of the image of federal troops patrolling in their own country or of embarrassing state and local officials.

The active-duty elements that Bush did send to Louisiana and Mississippi included some Army and Marine Corps helicopters and their crews, plus Navy ships. The main federal ground forces, led by troops of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., arrived late Saturday, five days after Katrina struck.

They helped with evacuations and performed search-and-rescue missions in flooded portions of New Orleans but did not join in law enforcement operations.

The federal troops were led by Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. The governors commanded their National Guard soldiers, sent from dozens of states.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is reviewing a wide range of possible changes in the way the military could be used in domestic emergencies, spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said Friday. He said these included possible changes in the relationship between federal and state military authorities.

Under the existing relationship, a state's governor is chiefly responsible for disaster preparedness and response.

Governors can request assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. If federal armed forces are brought in to help, they do so in support of FEMA, through the U.S. Northern Command, which was established in 2002 as part of a military reorganization after the 9/11 attacks.

Di Rita said Rumsfeld has not made recommendations to Bush, but among the issues he is examining is the viability of the Posse Comitatus Act. Di Rita called it one of the "very archaic laws" from a different era in U.S. history that limits the Pentagon's flexibility in responding to 21st century domestic crises.

Another such law, Di Rita said, is the Civil War-era Insurrection Act, which Bush could have invoked to waive the law enforcement restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act. That would have enabled him to use either National Guard soldiers or active-duty troops _ or both _ to quell the looting and other lawlessness that broke out in New Orleans.

The Insurrection Act lets the president call troops into federal action inside the United States whenever "unlawful obstructions, combinations or assemblages _ or rebellion against the authority of the United States _ make it impracticable to enforce the laws" in any state.

The political problem in Katrina was that Bush would have had to impose federal command over the wishes of two governors _ Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi _ who made it clear they wanted to retain state control.

The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked was in 1992 when it was requested by California Gov. Pete Wilson after the outbreak of race riots in Los Angeles. President George H.W. Bush dispatched about 4,000 soldiers and Marines.

But President HW didn't think he was ordained by God to be the permanent Emperor of the United States.

History will record if this was our Beerhall Putsch.

Outside NOLA

‘So Desperate’
While New Orleans has grabbed much of the post-Hurricane Katrina spotlight, many rural and poor Gulf Coast communities are still waiting for help.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Susannah Meadows
Newsweek
Updated: 12:33 p.m. ET Sept. 17, 2005

Sept. 17, 2005 - For weeks, Andie Gibbs had been trying to get food into Ovett, Miss., a rural community knocked down by Katrina. Gibbs, a lesbian activist, had gotten some assistance from gay organizations around the country, but the food was quickly gone. She hounded her local Red Cross chapter, calling daily to see if any shipments had arrived, but the answer always came back: not yet.

She stalked the food banks as well, but to no avail. Finally last week she spotted a Red Cross truck in town. But when she saw it wasn’t going to stop, she jumped into her car and chased the aid down, screaming at the driver to stop and unload. Some of the townspeople gathered around and started clapping. “I literally hijacked the Red Cross truck,” she says. “People are poor, they didn’t have anything before the storm. I was so desperate for my community.”

Gibbs’ car chase aside, the scene outside of New Orleans doesn’t make for the most dramatic TV footage. But in the poorer cities and towns of Louisiana and Mississippi, where the power is still out and jobs were washed away, people are struggling to find enough to eat. The Red Cross’s necessary focus on doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people has left those in more obscure towns feeling forgotten-and hungry.

The Red Cross’s extraordinary response to Katrina has reached hundreds of thousands of people, including providing financial assistance to 236,000 victims and serving 9.2 million hot meals, as of Friday. But aid to some of the less obvious areas of need has been so lacking that Boston-based Oxfam America, citing massive institutional failure, has gone into Mississippi and Louisiana to administer aid directly inside the United States for the first time in its history.

“In some of the more rural areas, our presence is not as strong as we would like it,” says Armond T. Mascelli, vice president of response operations for the Red Cross in Washington. “We’re trying [to branch out into other areas]. It’s an issue of knowing where they are, and being able to get the resources there.”

But in some areas where the Red Cross is present, local officials complain that the organization is inaccessible to the most dire neighborhoods. In Biloxi, Miss., city councilman Bill Stallworth says he’s been asking the Red Cross for weeks to serve food in the hardest hit section of town, so those people—70% of whom lost their cars—can walk to get a meal. Instead, he says, the relief group opened a feeding station eight miles up the interstate in an area where residents have power and cars. “I can’t figure out who’s in charge and who’s making these idiotic moves,” Stallworth says. “You would think the people in charge of disaster relief would focus their effort on the hardest hit part.”

Sarah Walker, who runs Vision of Hope, a Biloxi social services agency, is frustrated by the lack of attention as well. “We’re three weeks out now, and people still don’t have anything,” she says.

I'm hearing this all over the place, the Red Cross is tripping over its own bureaucracy. We're now three weeks out and FEMA hasn't arrived yet. In a just world, Bush/Cheney would be in the impeachment dock right now.

Shifting the Blame

It's Salon, so you'll have to watch the ad if you follow the link. The article is short, so I've given it all to you here. Amy articulates exactly what was going through my head as I listened to Bush's homily at the National Prayer Service.

Blame God, not me
After weeks of blaming others for the disastrous response to Katrina, Bush used the pulpit at the National Prayer Service to blame the biggest scapegoat of all: God.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Amy Sullivan

Sept. 17, 2005 | WASHINGTON -- There must be such a thing as divine mercy because the God who sends plagues of locusts and zaps people into pillars of salt would have surely struck down George W. Bush at the pulpit Friday morning. The administration's multipronged strategy to repair the damage wrought to cherished areas of the president's reputation was on full display at the National Prayer Service, which Bush called to remember victims of the hurricane. Bused-in evacuees from New Orleans? Check. Promotion of faith-based organizations? Check. Shifting blame to others? Check. This time, however, after weeks of laying blame at the doorsteps of Louisiana state officials and the mayor of New Orleans and even some of the victims themselves, Bush chose a bigger target: He blamed God.

As in much of what we've heard from Bush over the past few weeks, there was a whiff of the surreal. He bemoaned the "arbitrary harm" caused by the hurricane, the unanswerable question of why God allows bad things to happen, and noted that "the greatest hardship fell upon citizens already facing lives of struggle" -- as if that were merely a coincidence. The service was filled with references to the fury of natural disaster and the shock of unexpected devastation.
Click here

But Americans weren't shocked by the death and despair caused by Hurricane Katrina -- we've seen enough scenes of winds whipping tattered coastlines to know what can result, and we've even witnessed massive flooding, although never concentrated in one major city like this. What did shock Americans was the death and despair caused by human inaction. When T.D. Jakes, Bush's handpicked preacher for the event, reflected on the story of the Good Samaritan, the story could have been illustrated in many minds with images of New Orleans residents left to suffer by the side of the road as rescue passed them by.

We can ask why God allows disasters like hurricanes to happen (although God might fairly answer in return: "It says very clearly in the Bible that you should 'build your house upon a rock, not upon the sand'"). It is, after all, one of the oldest theological questions, one that has tested faith and tormented believers for centuries. The more pertinent question in this case, however, is not why God allowed bad things to happen but why the government did.

The chance to avoid, for a few hours, such inquiries may have been the real purpose of the prayer service. It's not the first time a president has called the country together for religious purposes. The Washington National Cathedral -- which was established by a charter of Congress in 1893, although it receives no public money -- is officially the nation's church and serves as host for these events. In 1981, a service of celebration was held when American hostages returned from Iran; after the space shuttle Columbia exploded in 2003, a national memorial took place there; and most recently, the state funeral of Ronald Reagan was held at the cathedral. (Woodrow Wilson is actually buried in a crypt within the building.)

The service that we should compare with this one, however, is the National Day of Prayer that was held on Sept. 14, 2001, just three days after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. At the time, we were a country in shock, unified in grief and anger. Something terrible had happened, and while rescue efforts were taking place on the ground, what the rest of us needed most was comfort. The sight of the entire government, Republican and Democrat, gathered under one roof in solidarity provided simple reassurance. We prayed for strength and for healing. And for the many Americans who rely on religious faith, the president's eloquent words brought some measure of peace: "As we have been assured, neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, can separate us from God's love. May he bless the souls of the departed. May he comfort our own."

This time, however, it's far from clear what the purpose of the service was. The hurricane is now nearly three weeks past. The country is not united in grief so much as in frustration at the failure of the government's response. Even those involved with the religious side of planning the service were unsure about its mission. "The idea that it's somehow a balm on the nerves of a shattered nation is not the case," one such official told me.

This isn't to say that Americans aren't struggling to comes to terms with the loss of life and livelihood, but they don't necessarily need a preacher in chief to help them cope. Some of the most moving images the weekend after the hurricane struck came from services held in the ruins of former church buildings, and from a Mass held on the beach amid debris. Residents of the Gulf Coast are taking care of their faith; what they could use from the administration is not another hymn but single-minded attention to repair and recovery efforts.

Instead what they -- and we -- got was a suggestion that perhaps faith-based organizations are best suited to deal with evacuee needs (the Samaritan, Jakes said, was helped by "resources, not by revenue"); we heard praise from Bush of rescuers that sounded less like an acknowledgment of their heroism than a hope it would rub off. And we were reminded that at the root of all the suffering is a divine "mystery" that we may never grasp.

Sneaked into the service, though, was one rebuke to the president, delivered by Bishop John Chane of Washington's Episcopal Diocese, the official host of the event and a man who has not hesitated to criticize Bush in the past. Before he led the opening prayer, Chane reminded the audience, "Our Lord Jesus reminds us that faith without works is nothing."

John Bryant Chane rocks, by the way. He gave an interview to the WaPo in the month after his consecration and was asked about gays in the clergy. He replied, "Look, we've been debating this for thirty years. It's past time for this to be over and for us to move on."

Ethnic Cleansing

Hat tip Ian Welsh at BOPNews:

Yesterday's Democracy Now!

I was just watching CNN and they were interviewing a guy they're called the pied piper of hurricane Katrina, a guy from Ohio, who has come to the Houston Astrodome to recruit 100 people who are -- who had left New Orleans to try to bring them to settle in Ohio. I mean, what they're really trying to do is to settle the poor and the African-American populations of New Orleans elsewhere. And to make New Orleans a nice, white city, for white, rich businessmen. There's no other way to put it. That's exactly what we're seeing right now. They want to take areas for instance like the ninth ward and turn them into big -- you know, Wal-Mart type neighborhoods. In fact, we heard mayor Nagin talk yesterday about how one of the first things they want to do is set up a gigantic Wal-Mart so people returning can have a place to shop in New Orleans. This hurricane is the greatest thing to happen to Wal-Mart since the superstore. And this is a very serious racist series of actions that we're seeing here right now. This is has everything to do with class and everything to do with race, and it's very, very frightening. And yes, we attended a conference where grassroots activists are talking about a plan for rebuilding New Orleans, but it's on right now, and they're not a part of it. The people that are a part of it are old-time Louisiana white Republican families working in conjunction with their friend, mayor Ray Nagin, and there's no other way to put it. They love Ray Nagin. He's pro-business. He's their guy.

Look at the comments of James Rice, a local businessman, who is one of the leaders of the private Audubon Place, the gated community. The only privately owned in the city of New Orleans. He told The Wall Street Journal, “Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way, demographically, geographically and politically. I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we have been living is not going to happen again or we’re out.” James Rice has brought in Israeli para-militaries to guard his facility. It's Israeli company that brags about having former members of the Shin Beit, the GSS, the Israeli Defense Forces. He has brought them in. I was talking to them in front of his property. Some of them participated in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and these are guys now who are patrolling outside on St. Charles avenue in front of Audubon Place and will potentially come into conflict with residents of New Orleans. What on earth are Israeli paramilitaries doing on the streets of New Orleans? These are the questions that people need to ask right now, defending a man like James Rice who was called for the poor to not be allowed back into New Orleans.

Pattern of Failure

'Sun-Sentinel': Katrina Only Latest of FEMA Foul-Ups
Aya Kawano

By Mark Fitzgerald

Published: September 16, 2005 5:15 PM ET

CHICAGO A two-day investigative series that the South Florida Sun-Sentinel will publish starting this Sunday says that the wretched performance of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during Hurricane Katrina is the rule rather than the exception for the agency.

The series comes down hard on FEMA from the first graf: "The federal government's mishandling of Hurricane Katrina is just the latest in a series of missteps by a national disaster response system that for years has been fraught with waste and
fraud."

FEMA's bungling during Katrina came as no surprise to the Sun-Sentinel, says Editor and Sr. Vice President Earl Mauker.

"We actually called for [Michael Brown's] resignation a year ago," he said, referring to the FEMA head who resigned earlier this week.

The Tribune Co.-owned Fort Lauderdale paper has been on FEMA's case since last year when its computer-assisted investigation turned up massive fraud and waste in the wake of Hurricane Frances. FEMA, the paper found, had paid millions of dollars in claims in Miami-Dade County -- even though the hurricane made landfall 100 miles away.

"It was absolutely incredible. In Miami, the hurricane never hit, it never came on shore, and we found FEMA paid out $31 million for a storm that never came ashore," Mauker said.

The Sun-Sentinel followed up that revelation with continuing reporting of FEMA waste. The paper says the agency paid for funerals for people whose deaths had nothing to do with the hurricane. It reports that FEMA inspectors receive little training -- and that a shocking number of them have criminal records.
....
Sun-Sentinel investigative journalists actually started out looking to track how homeland security funds were being spent for ports and other sensitive areas. "We started looking on the computer, and saw all this federal money going to all these places, and wanted to know why," Mauker said.

"Michael Brown was nothing but defensive" as the newspaper was doing its reporting, Mauker said. "We had to file all kinds of lawsuits."

Reporters overlaid maps of the various storms and disasters with maps of where FEMA money was spent. The newspaper tracked some one million claims, Mauker said.

The series will be available online atwww.sun-sentinel.com beginning Sunday, Sept. 18.

Waste, fraud and abuse in a major federal agency--whoever heard of such a thing?

Posted by Melanie at 02:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Brain Dead

Who on earth thought this was a good idea?

A Rude Return to 'Big Easy'
City Warns Residents Of Possible Hazards

By Ceci Connolly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 16 -- Business owners and residents returning to New Orleans this weekend face an array of potentially dangerous conditions, including polluted drinking water, broken traffic signals, a shortage of hospital beds, an antiquated 911 emergency call system, contaminated soil and virtually no food, according to health, public safety and environmental officials.

Officials acknowledged the deteriorated state of their city in a briefing Friday, and warned that people entering in the next few days would come at their own risk. Nevertheless, they maintained it was important to demonstrate that New Orleans intends to return to its previous vibrant condition.

"Beginning Saturday, we will be on the path of bringing New Orleans back," said Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for the city. "We feel it's vitally important for this city to stay alive, for commerce to start moving in the right direction."

But state and federal officials, as well as other disaster recovery specialists, voiced concerns that the return of several thousand people immediately, and many more within a week, raised the specter of a second crisis. Public services are scant, and officials will begin to open areas on Monday that were once home to about 180,000 people.

"We're all very nervous about an overwhelming influx of people coming in and the potential health threats that exist," Mike McDaniel, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, said in a briefing Friday. Others detailed concerns about unsafe levels of E. coli bacteria, oil and gas in the sediment left behind as the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina are pumped from the city.

Just three hospitals in the region are operating, and the disaster wiped out Charity Hospital, the only one in the area licensed to handle the most severe cases, known as "Level 1" traumas.

"When you place all those people back in the city without a health care infrastructure, it is a risky proposition," said Peter Deblieux, an emergency physician and the last person to leave Charity after a four-day siege. "We're going to have a second disaster in this city."

As soon as people return to a city with no traffic lights and attempt to make repairs to property, there will be a wave of car accidents, broken bones, severed limbs, heart attacks and dehydration, he warned.

For now, telephone calls to the city's emergency 911 system are routed manually by workers with radios. The city's automated system, which handled more than 2,000 calls a day, was destroyed by the storm.

And if just three inches of rain falls on the Crescent City, flooding will again occur in "so many of the areas we've now emptied and are dry," Ebbert said. Despite Mayor C. Ray Nagin's announcement Thursday, Ebbert would not commit to opening the historic French Quarter by Sept. 26.

There's no freakin' ice. What are people thinking?

Microcosm

The FEMA ice follies
How come ice can’t efficiently reach those in need?

By Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit
NBC News
Updated: 7:37 p.m. ET Sept. 16, 2005

Lisa Myers
Senior investigative correspondent

WASHINGTON - Initially, after Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, was slow in getting ice and water to victims. NBC News decided to look at the ice situation now, as a microcosm of the relief effort, and found that FEMA ordered plenty of ice — but getting it to those who need it has been chaotic.

Outside New Orleans, Lori Rosete waited an hour to get ice to preserve food and chill her mother’s insulin.

“We just need this to keep coming,” said Rosete, “and do what we have to do, you know? Ration until we can't ration no more.”

Friday, NBC News located hundreds of trucks full of ice sitting around the country: in Maryland, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. Some had been on trips to nowhere for the past two weeks.

Elizabeth Palmer is a truck driver in Carthage, Mo.

“We really don’t understand,” said Palmer, “why FEMA is sending to all these different locations and just putting us in cold storage.”

Dan Wessels’ Cool Express ice company has worked with FEMA for years. He says he's never seen anything like it — only one-third of his trucks have actually unloaded the ice that FEMA ordered.

“The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing,” said Wessels. “The right hand is telling us to go to the left hand. We get to the left hand, they tell us to go back."

For example, one truck of ice left Oshkosh, Wis., on Sept. 6, and went to Louisiana. Then it was sent by FEMA to Georgia but was rerouted before it arrived to South Carolina, then to Cumberland, Md., where it has been sitting for three days at an added cost to taxpayers so far of $9,000.

Multiplied by hundreds of trucks, this sort of dispatching could mean millions of dollars are being wasted.

"From a trucking aspect, I'm happy. Keep it coming," said Wessels. "From a taxpayer aspect, it's sick."

A FEMA official says, in the rush to respond to Katrina, the agency ordered too much ice. Rather than let it melt, they sent it to other parts of the country to be ready for the next hurricane.

But Wessels says FEMA just ordered more ice and re-routed some of his trucks again — to Idaho.

This is George W. Bush's personal fuck up.

Iraq--The Model

Poor Planning and Corruption Hobble Reconstruction of Iraq

By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: September 18, 2005

NAJAF, Iraq - In April, Najaf's main maternity hospital received rare good news: an $8 million refurbishment program financed by the United States would begin immediately. But five months and millions of dollars later, the hospital administrators say they have little but frustration to show for it.

"They keep saying there's renovation but, frankly, we don't see it," said Liqaa al-Yassin, director of the hospital, her exasperated face framed by a black hijab, or scarf. "Each day I sign in 80 workers, and sometimes I see them, sometimes I don't."

She walks a visitor through the hospital's hot, dim halls, the peeling linoleum on the floors stained by the thousands of lighted cigarettes crushed underfoot. Anxious women, draped in black head-to-foot chadors, or veils, sit in the sultry rooms fanning their sick children.

"My child has heart problems, she can't take this heat," pleaded one mother as Dr. Yassin walked past.

The United States has poured more than $200 million into reconstruction projects in this city, part of the $10 billion it has spent to rebuild Iraq. Najaf is widely cited by the military as one of the success stories in that effort, but American officers involved in the rebuilding say that reconstruction projects here, as elsewhere in the country, are hobbled by poor planning, corrupt contractors and a lack of continuity among the rotating coalition officers charged with overseeing the spending.

"This country is filled with projects that were never completed or were completed and have never been used," said a frustrated civil affairs officer who asked not to be identified because he had not been cleared to speak about the reconstruction.

Najaf would seem to be one of Iraq's most promising places to rebuild. As a Shiite holy place, it has few Sunnis and, as a result, none of the insurgent attacks and sabotage that plague other parts of the country. Just a year after fighting between American forces and Shiite militias left much of the city in smoking ruins, a new police force is patrolling the streets and security in the city has been handed over to Iraqis.

There are some successes. The Army Corps of Engineers has finished refurbishing several police and fire stations, one of which has shiny new fire engines donated by Japan. It is spending tens of thousands of dollars to refurbish crumbling schools and has replaced aging clay water pipes in the suburb of Kufa with more durable plastic ones. It is even spending half a million dollars to renovate the city's soccer stadium, putting in new lights and laying fresh sod.

But in a series of interviews, American military officers and Iraqi officials involved in the reconstruction described a pattern of failures and frustrations that Army officers who have worked in other parts of Iraq say are routine. Residents complain that the many of the city's critical needs remain unfulfilled and the Army concedes that many projects it has financed are far behind schedule. Officers with the American military say that corruption and poor oversight are largely to blame.

Coming soon to a Gulf of Mexico county or parish.

On the Tube

I just got this by email.

H5N1 - Killer Flu
Premieres Tuesday, September 20 at 9 P.M.
(check the TV schedule for local listings)

The next global human flu epidemic may begin with a sick duck in Vietnam's Mekong River Delta, now the epicenter of a deadly bird flu outbreak. The World Health Organization estimates that the H5N1 virus -- which already has jumped species from birds to humans -- could kill tens of millions of people worldwide. WIDE ANGLE travels to Vietnam to investigate the threat of a global pandemic, portraying Vietnam's response to outbreaks in its cities, provinces and villages, where doctors, epidemiologists and veterinarians are battling the virus. As the government tries to contain the disease and educate its people, there is growing evidence that the virus is evolving and already may have begun to spread via human-to-human contact for the first time, dramatically increasing the risk of a worldwide catastrophe.

Check your local listings. Local PBS channels tend to keep their own schedules.

Another Fuck UP

Via Steve Gilliard:

FEMA takes many workers off 'cane duty

By JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON - FEMA bureaucrats yesterday infuriated exhausted Hurricane Katrina responders and lawmakers with yet another blunder.

Federal Emergency Management Agency leaders ordered officials in the agency's Preparedness Division to stop all Katrina relief efforts and begin a long-planned move from agency headquarters to new offices in Virginia by Monday.

"They're no longer focused on the gigantic Katrina job and are putting their files into boxes instead," said one outraged FEMA insider. "This is simply incredible considering that the entire staff has been an integral part of the response effort."

Taking staff off hurricane duty is "disruptive when we need every single soul here to work on Katrina," the source said.

FEMA spokeswoman Nicol Andrews confirmed that workers from the agency's radiological emergency preparedness and chemical stockpile emergency preparedness programs were moving to Arlington, Va., in a reorganization, where they will be absorbed by a new division within the Homeland Security Department.

She said fewer than 100 of FEMA's 2,600 full-time employees are leaving the Washington headquarters to make room for an expanding Katrina response and recovery operation.

"Right now is the wrong time to disrupt any part of FEMA's operation," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan), who chairs the Democrats' homeland security task force. "I'd like to know who's going to take responsibility for this move."

Federal agencies have broad control over the spaces they contract with. What moron decided this move should take place during hurricane season?

Exercise in Futility

The Case For a 'No' Vote on Roberts

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A21

"Where are you?"

That was the question Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) almost plaintively posed to Judge John Roberts as the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearings neared their conclusion. It is the right question.

Durbin wanted to know where Roberts's deepest commitments, his "core values," lay. Were there some causes to which Roberts would simply not offer his "legal skills" -- amply demonstrated in his life, and again this week -- as a matter of principle?

Roberts suggested there really were no such limits, or, at least, he wouldn't tell us what they were. "I've been on both sides of this affirmative action issue," he said cheerfully. Yes, but you can't be on both sides as chief justice. He fought the idea that his view of the lawyer's role "sounds like you're a hired gun," but that is exactly how it sounds. A chief justice is hired on behalf of all of us.

In his testimony, Roberts was brilliant, affable, engaging and amusing. He was also evasive, calculating and, well, slick.

"Would you say there's a general right to privacy?" Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) asked Roberts. "I don't know what 'general' means," Roberts replied. Fair enough, though I wish Schumer had also asked Roberts what the meaning of "is" is.

How senators vote on Roberts -- and in particular how Democrats and moderate Republicans vote -- depends on where they believe the burden of proof lies. The accepted Washington view is that deference should be paid to a manifestly qualified presidential nominee.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that some of Roberts's potential opponents seemed to be saying that "the only way you can have a good heart is adopt my value system." That, Graham insisted, does "a great disservice to the judiciary."

But the doubts about Roberts have nothing to do with his good heart. The issue is the power about to be put in his hands and into the hands of President Bush's next appointee -- power both will enjoy for life. The Senate and the public have a right to far more assurance about how Roberts would use that power than they have been given in these hearings. The Senate is under no obligation to give the president or Roberts the benefit of the doubt.

If senators simply vote "yes" on Roberts, they will be conceding to the executive branch huge power to control what information the public gets and doesn't get about nominees to life positions. The administration has stubbornly refused to release a share of Roberts's writings as deputy solicitor general. This is a dare to the Senate, and the administration is assuming it will wimp out. A "yes" on Roberts would be a craven abdication of power to the executive branch.

In keeping with Roberts's painstaking evasions, he wouldn't even express a view Thursday as to whether his deputy solicitor general writings should be released. That was the administration's decision to make, he said. "This was not your decision," Schumer replied. "But you carry its burden." Or at least he should.

Roberts might have helped overcome doubts if he had been more open about the memos he wrote during the Reagan administration, saying which he now agrees with and which he doesn't. On the whole, he slipped those questions by saying he was a "staff lawyer" working for his client. He did say, however, that he now believes that federal judges should have life tenure, an excellent reminder of the stakes here.

Schumer got so frustrated that he was reduced at the end of the hearing Thursday to asking Roberts what question he would ask himself that might be revealing. Roberts, with great affability, said he thought the committee had been "very effective" in the questions it had already asked.

By the end, the baseball metaphors of the early hearing had given way to gambling analogies. Schumer one-upped Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who had declared that senators were "rolling the dice with you, Judge." Schumer said Thursday: "This isn't just rolling the dice. It's betting the whole house."

That's right, and it's why as many senators as possible should vote no on Roberts -- by way of saying no to this charade. A majority of "no's," very unlikely to be sure, need not mean the end of his nomination. It would constitute a just demand for Roberts (and whoever Bush names next) to answer more questions in a more forthcoming way and for the administration to provide information that the public, and not just the Senate, deserves.

How many senators will have the guts to make that statement?

The Republicans fawned, the Democrats fumed, and I, as a citizen, learned nothing from Judge Roberts, other than the fact that he got an A in "language arts." If this is "democracy in action" we are in sorry shape.

Warm Fucking Fuzzies

Since Bush still doesn't have a clue, Donna, how are we supposed to stand with you and rebuild?

I Will Rebuild With You, Mr. President

By Donna Brazile

Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A21

Bush called on every American to stand up and support the rebuilding of the region. He told us that New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast would rise from the ruins stronger than before. He enunciated something that we all need to remember: This is America. We are not immune to tragedy here, but we are strong because of our industriousness, our ingenuity and, most important, because of our compassion for one another. We are a nation of rebuilders and a nation of givers. We do not give up in the face of tragedy, we stand up, and we reach out to help those who cannot stand up on their own.

The president called on every American to reach out to my neighbors in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast. The great people of this country have already opened their hearts in the immediate aftermath of the storm, and their tremendous generosity has done more than just provide extra comfort -- it has saved lives. Now the crisis of survival is over. But the task of rebuilding remains, and the president made it clear that every single one of us has a role to play.

Each of us belongs to some group -- a church, a union or a fraternal organization, or even a book club -- that can make a difference. It is those groups that can pool resources and then reach out to their counterparts in the stricken states and ask, "What can we do?" Schools, Girl Scout troops, Rotary clubs -- this is the time for every community group to step forward to lend a helping hand. We need it.

The president also laid out the federal government's goal for rebuilding. It is unprecedented in its scope and ambition, matching destruction that is unprecedented as well. He made the challenge clear: This will be one of the biggest reconstruction projects in history. But he also made it clear that we can and will do this. New Orleans, Biloxi, all of the Gulf Coast will rise again. And the residents are ready to pitch in and do their part.

I know, maybe better than anyone, that there are times when it seems that our nation is too divided ever to heal. There are times when we feel so different from each other that we can hardly believe that we are all part of the same family. But we are one nation. We are a family. And this is what we do. When the president asked us to pitch in Thursday night, he wasn't really asking us to do anything spectacular. He was asking us to be Americans, and to do what Americans always do.

The president has set a national goal and defined a national purpose. This is something I believe with all my heart: When we are united, nothing can stop us. We will not waver, we will not tire, and we will not stop until the streets are clean, every last brick has been replaced and every last family has its home back.

Bush talked about how we bury our family and friends. We grieve and mourn. We march to a solemn song and then we rejoice and step out and form the second line. That line is now open to every American to join us in rebuilding a great region of this country. New Orleans will rise again. My hometown is down but not out, and with the help of every American, it will be back on its feet, bigger and brighter than ever.

Cold Fury

So, other poor people can pay for the poor people of the Gulf?

Bush Calls for Cuts to Offset Relief Plan

By Warren Vieth and Richard Simon, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — President Bush, confronting a brewing rebellion within conservative ranks, promised Friday to help Congress cut spending in other areas to try to offset the cost of Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.

Bush said he still intended to spend whatever it took to finance the massive Gulf Coast rebuilding effort he outlined in Thursday night's address to the nation. White House officials acknowledged that the government would cover most costs in the short term by running up the federal debt.

The president ruled out tax increases to reduce red ink. He said the Office of Management and Budget would help lawmakers trim federal programs to help offset reconstruction costs that independent analysts predicted would exceed $200 billion.

"You bet it's going to cost money," Bush said at a White House news conference.

"The key question is to make sure the costs are wisely spent and that we work with Congress to make sure we are able to manage our budget in a wise way," he said. "And that's going to mean cutting other programs."

GOP lawmakers and conservative activists had been expressing misgivings about what they perceived as an open-ended federal commitment to borrow and spend to rebuild New Orleans and nearby coastal communities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

"This isn't the first time an American city has been devastated," said former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who heads the economically conservative Club for Growth. "We've had great disasters, and the federal government didn't always come in and rebuild these cities. We shouldn't assume the only way to do this is through Uncle Sam."

Fuck you, Pat Toomey. This isn't going to cost you a Goddam dime.

Devastation

DEVASTATION, DEATH HAUNT THE LOWER 9TH WARD
After the water, utter emptiness

By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer

Staff Sgt. Robert Andrade and his two-Humvee patrol rolled past a Lower 9th Ward house Monday when one of the soldiers noticed a dog chained up in front of a house. They figured someone had to have secured the chain, so they approached the house and yelled inside. "Anybody in there?"

No response.

On Tuesday they rolled again past the St. Claude Avenue home, now dry several days after Hurricane Katrina had turned the thoroughfare into a 15-foot canal and a death trap.

No dog. They called into the house again, now nearly certain that the dog's owners had pulled him inside. They called again. No answer. So they left a bottle of water on the porch.

On Wednesday, the water was gone. On Thursday, they left two MREs and a bottle of water, and the next day those were gone as well.

After three days of feeding a ghost in a dead village, surrounded by hungry dogs standing menacingly atop imploded houses, that was the closest Andrade's patrol came to seeing any sign of life. The utter emptiness - the only sounds the faint howls of animals and the roar of helicopters - underscored the nearly complete depopulation of massive swaths of the city and the Herculean, perhaps impossible, task of rebuilding.

All veterans of a recent tour in Baghdad, the soldiers got so bored they took a picture of a dog defecating on a roof, laughing as they pulled the image onto a laptop computer.

When some subjects came up, they didn't joke.

"It's not the ghosts that scare me, it's the nightmares," Staff Sgt. William Thompson said. "That's the bad stuff, the stuff that keeps you up at night."

Asked if he had seen bodies, he closed his eyes, rubbed his temples for several seconds, and said, "Yes. I don't think they'll ever get an accurate count of the dead."

Terrorism

Do you sense I'm working on a theme here? The major national dailies are telling you the same thing: you are on your own, neighbor. The billions of dollars spent in tax money and given in charitable giving, none of them are going to you in your hour of need. The "most powerful nation on earth" has infinite money for the Pentagon, but for you there is bupkis. It is a year after Hurricane Charley and people are still living in trailers.

Southland Not Ready for Disaster
# A major quake or act of terrorism could displace hundreds of thousands, officials say. Relief agencies concede they would be stretched thin.

By Sharon Bernstein, Times Staff Writer

Despite millions of dollars spent in crisis management drills and dozens of plans to deal with earthquakes and other calamities, Southern California emergency preparedness agencies have done little to plan for mass displacement and destruction across a broad swath of the region on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, according to interviews with state and local authorities.

Because the region is so huge and most damage from earthquakes and fires typically is relatively localized, most of the region's planning is based on the assumption that damage will be confined to one or two areas, several officials said.

Detailed plans to deal with a massive emergency — one that displaces more than 300,000 people — have not been developed since the end of the Cold War, said Stephen Sellers, head of Southern California operations for the state Office of Emergency Services.

Sellers and others say a tragedy on that scale goes beyond many worst-case scenarios and would include a chemical or nuclear attack, or a catastrophic earthquake on one of the faults that run directly under Los Angeles, such as Newport-Inglewood or Puente Hills.

Computer models released in May by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Southern California Earthquake Center found that a magnitude 7.5 quake along the Puente Hills fault could kill as many as 18,000 people, injure up to 268,000 and displace as many as 735,000 families. A study by the state Division of Mines and Geology found that a 7.0 temblor on the Newport-Inglewood fault would block freeways, sharply curtail flights at LAX, reduce the number of hospital beds by a third and knock out major power plants for days.

The difficulty of dealing with the volume of displaced people and downed services after Hurricane Katrina has caused some officials of emergency response agencies to think anew.

Katrina "just shattered all of our planning assumptions," said Sharon Grigsby, who heads bioterrorism response for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. "We certainly should be planning for a larger-scale event than we have focused on up to now."

If major portions of the city have been damaged and huge numbers of people displaced or hurt, it could take several days — perhaps up to a week — for government and charitable agencies to respond, several officials said. For that reason, it is all the more important that residents keep survival kits at home, said Constance Perett, director of the Office of Emergency Management for Los Angeles County.

In the past, officials had recommended that residents keep three days' worth of food, water, first aid and other items in a safe place in or near their homes. But in the wake of Katrina, Perett is recommending that everyone keep seven days' worth of supplies.

During the most disruptive natural disaster in recent memory, the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the Red Cross was able to house 20,000 displaced people in tent cities, gyms, hotels and other locations. But the agency, which local officials rely on to provide shelter in emergencies, does not have agreements with large private venues like Staples Center that can hold many thousands of people.

Taking care of hundreds of thousands, said Kevin Leisher, the Red Cross response officer for Los Angeles, would be too much for the agency to handle on its own immediately after a catastrophic event.

"I can't tell you that tonight I could open shelters for 300,000 people," Leisher said. "I can't give everybody a cot and a blanket."

Damage from a major quake in the heart of Los Angeles — where buildings and infrastructures are older and urban faults like Newport-Inglewood and Puente Hills stretch for miles through densely populated areas — would dwarf the destruction from Northridge, said Lucy Jones, scientist in charge of Southern California for the U.S. Geological Survey.

"How do you get people to understand that Northridge was actually a little earthquake?" she said. "Puente Hills would be so much worse than Northridge."

Los Angeles police have participated in dozens of disaster drills, said LAPD Chief William J. Bratton, and the department is developing a response plan meant to be a model for other municipalities.

But the LAPD has just 1,000 officers on the beat at any given time, Bratton said. During Monday's power outage, when traffic lights went out throughout the city, Bratton said, he could not spare enough officers to properly direct and manage traffic at all the places where the signals were out — and that was a relatively minor incident.

"We would be stretched very thin to do the multiplicity of things you have to do in a disaster — assist the injured, secure facilities that are critical to you, prevent disorder," Bratton said.

Such sober assessments come despite statements made by city and state leaders in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that California and the Los Angeles area is relatively well-prepared for a major disaster. On Thursday, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced the formation of a panel to examine the city's emergency plans, proclaiming that Los Angeles "is as prepared as any city in the nation."

This Modern World

When W says, "we will stay as long as it takes," I shudder. Every word out of Daniel Shorr's mouth on Weekend Morning Edition this morning is purest shit.

FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ERIC LIPTON
Published: September 17, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept 16 - Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina cut its devastating path, FEMA - the same federal agency that botched the rescue mission - is faltering in its effort to aid hundreds of thousands of storm victims, local officials, evacuees and top federal relief officials say. The federal aid hot line mentioned by President Bush in his address to the nation on Thursday cannot handle the flood of calls, leaving thousands of people unable to get through for help, day after day.

Federal officials are often unable to give local governments permission to proceed with fundamental tasks to get their towns running again. Most areas in the region still lack federal help centers, the one-stop shopping sites for residents in need of aid for their homes or families. Officials say that they are uncertain whether they can meet the president's goal of providing housing for 100,000 people who are now in shelters by the middle of next month.

While the agency has redoubled its efforts to get food, money and temporary shelter to the storm victims, serious problems remain throughout the affected region. Visits to several towns in Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as interviews with dozens of local and federal officials, provide a portrait of a fragmented and dysfunctional system.

The top two federal relief officials in charge of the effort both acknowledged in interviews late this week that they too have listened to the frustrated voices of local officials and citizens alike, and find their complaints valid.

"It is not happening fast enough, effective enough and it is not impacting the people at the bottom as quickly as it should," said Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, standing along the waterfront in New Orleans on Friday. "I have heard frustrations."

Admiral Allen, who was put in charge of the federal government's emergency operations along the Gulf Coast a week ago Friday, said entrenched bureaucracies hampered attempts to accelerate his top priorities: aid to residents, providing housing and clearing the vast swaths of wreckage from homes and trees damaged by the storm.

Working from Baton Rouge, William Lokey, FEMA's coordinating officer for the three-state region, echoed Admiral Allen's criticisms. "It is not going as fast as I would like, and yes, I do not have the resources I would like," he said on Thursday. "I am going as fast as I can to get them."

The problems clearly stem largely from the sheer enormousness of the disaster. But the lack of investment in emergency preparedness, poor coordination across a sprawling federal bureaucracy and a massive failure of local communication systems - all of which hurt the initial rescue efforts - are now also impeding the recovery.

FEMA, Mr. Lokey said, is an agency with limited federal money that must quickly expand its operational capacity only after a major disaster strikes. It has not won a large chunk of the new federal homeland security dollars, that have been dedicated to terrorism.

"If the billions of dollars that have been spent on chemical, nuclear and biological response, if some of that had come over here, we would have done better," he said. "But after 9/11, the public priority was terrorism."

The Katrina troubles underscore serious questions about the federal government's ability to handle similar disasters in the future.

"I don't think federal bureaucracy can handle the next disaster," said Toye Taylor, the president of Washington Parish, one of the hardest hit areas in Louisiana, who met with Mr. Bush this week.

"I expressed to the president that it would take a new partnership between the military and private sector," Mr. Taylor said. "Because there will be another one and I don't think the federal government is going to be able to help." Indeed, Mr. Bush said in his address to the nation from New Orleans on Thursday night that the military would play a new role in federal disaster relief.

The struggle to return parishes, towns and individual lives to some semblance of working order is visible throughout the region.

The president of St. Tammany Parish, Kevin Davis, is praying that it does not rain in his sweltering corner of Louisiana, because three weeks after the storm severely damaged his drainage system, FEMA has yet to give him approval to even start the repairs.

Bad Weather

Do you think NOLA and the Gulf is a problem? We haven't cleaned up last years hurricanes. Apparently, we aren't good at taking care of poor people. Last year's hurricane victims are still FEMAs victims. The WashPo notices on the front page this morning.

FEMA's City of Anxiety in Florida
Many Hurricane Charley Victims Still Unsure of Next Step

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A01

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. -- "Someone killed my dog," sputtered Royaltee Forman, still livid two weeks later.

"They just threw him out the window and hung him with his own leash," he said, convinced that someone broke into his home while he was out. "I mean, what kind of place has this become?"

Forman's place is FEMA City, a dusty, baking, treeless collection of almost 500 trailers that was set up by the federal emergency agency last fall to house more than 1,500 people made homeless by Hurricane Charley, one of the most destructive storms in recent Florida history. The free shelter was welcomed by thankful survivors back then; almost a year later, most are still there -- angry, frustrated, depressed and increasingly desperate.

"FEMA City is now a socioeconomic time bomb just waiting to blow up," said Bob Hebert, director of recovery for Charlotte County, where most FEMA City residents used to live. "You throw together all these very different people under already tremendous stress, and bad things will happen. And this is the really difficult part: In our county, there's no other place for many of them to go."

As government efforts move forward to relocate and house some of the 1 million people displaced by Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast -- including plans to collect as many as 300,000 trailers and mobile homes for them -- officials here say their experience offers some harsh and sobering lessons about the difficulties ahead.

Most troubling, they said, is that while the badly damaged town of Punta Gorda is beginning to rebuild and even substantially upgrade one year after the storm, many of the area's most vulnerable people are being left badly behind.

The hurricane began that slide, destroying hundreds of modest homes and apartments along both sides of the Peace River as it enters Charlotte Harbor, and almost all of Punta Gorda's public housing. Then as the apartments were slowly restored -- a process made more costly and time-consuming because of a shortage of contractors and workers -- landlords found that they could substantially increase their rents in the very tight market.

As a result, the low-income working people most likely to have been displaced by the hurricane are now most likely to be displaced by the recovery, too.

The unhappy consequence is that FEMA City's population has barely declined -- its trailers are occupied by 1,500 check-out clerks, nurse's aides, aluminum siding hangers, landscapers and more than a few people too old, too sick or too upset to work. A not-insignificant number of illegal immigrants and ex-convicts live there as well.

To the county's surprise, Hebert said, finding solutions to their ever-increasing problems is now the biggest and most frustrating part of the entire hurricane recovery effort.

"Having lived through the last year here, this is my advice to New Orleans and the other Gulf Coast towns: Don't make big camps with thousands of people, because it doesn't work," Hebert said. "It takes a bad situation and, for many people, actually makes it worse."

The Check Is In The Mail

I haven't really counted up what it costs to run this website, but I just mailed off a $300 check for hosting it for the next year. If you can help, the tip jar is over on the right. If this really is a community, I shouldn't have to do this alone. No, the ads didn't cover the hosting bill.

Support Your Blogger

Ick. I've read so much toxic stuff tonight that I just want to go take a long soak in the tub with some bath salts (which the survivors of Katrina can't do, living in armed camps, as they are) but I have to wash some of the bad news out of my hair. God, this week sucked. Roberts, Katrina. I want some bath salts (I will have tantrums if I don't have these, its one of the few middle class privilges I'll claim, other than a bath itself)

This week sucked and I don't think the next one is going to get much better.

Am I tired by the amount of stuff I've turned out this week? I'm so tired my teeth hurt. You could help by hitting the Paypal button. After all, you aren't going to re-subscribe to the NYT are you?

Flu News

Bumpers, avian flu is going to begin claiming more of my time and physical space. The think tank panels are starting to come thick and fast. I'm attending one at The Brookings Institution on Monday (featuring CIDRAP's Dr. Michael Osterholm and Helen Branswell, the medical and science reporter from The Canadian Press who interviewed me earlier this summer. She's doing some of the best reporting on this story in North America.) I'm on a panel for the American Red Cross later in the month. After that, I'll have some travel for other think tanks and conferences. There is a lot to be done, as you know. I'll try to keep you as well informed about all I learn as I can.

If there are things you would like me to find out about, questions you want me to ask at these events, email or leave them in comments. Let me be your eyes and ears and voice at these events. I'm a privileged position here inside the Beltway. Use it. This is one of those days where I begin to think that I'm supposed to be unemployed and living exactly where I am with the time and the interest to pursue flu right now in the hope of saving lives.

Mindblowing Incompetence

FEMA Official Says Agency Heads Ignored Warnings

by Laura Sullivan

Morning Edition, September 16, 2005 · In the days before Hurricane Katrina hit land, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, FEMA Director Michael Brown and other top Homeland Security officials received e-mails on their blackberries warning that Katrina posed a dire threat to New Orleans and other areas. Yet one FEMA official tells NPR little was done.

Leo Bosner, an emergency management specialist at FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., is in charge of the unit that alerts officials of impending crises and manages the response. As early as Friday, Aug. 26, Bosner knew that Katrina could turn into a major emergency.

In daily e-mails -- known as National Situation Updates -- sent to Chertoff, Brown and others in the days before Katrina made landfall in the Gulf Coast, Bosner warned of its growing strength -- and of the particular danger the hurricane posed to New Orleans, much of which lies below sea level.

But Bosner says FEMA failed to organize the massive mobilization of National Guard troops and evacuation buses needed for a quick and effective relief response when Katrina struck. He says he and his colleagues at FEMA's D.C. headquarters were shocked by the lack of response.

"We could see all this going downhill," Bosner said, "but there was nothing we could do."

The NPR Website has links to the National Situation Updates. Pretty damning stuff.

Blather

From an editorial in today's New Jersey Star Ledger:

Roberts ducking and bobbing his way to confirmation

John Farmer
Friday, September 16, 2005

There's a lawyerly reason judicial nominees decline to answer some questions: They don't want to adopt a position or expound on an issue that might come before the Supreme Court later and would require their recusal or paint them as biased. And that's plausible enough. But it's singularly unsatisfying to a layman who'd like to know a bit more about folks who are going to hold our fate in their hands -- for life.

What's more, it seems to emasculate the Senate's constitutional right to advise and consent. Advise on the basis of what -- incomplete information? Consent under what conditions -- a "roll of the dice," as Biden put it? Surely not the best circumstances under which to pass on a chief justice for life. But they're the best we'll get.

That being said, it should be noted that Roberts comes across as exceptionally able. And if Democrats were honest about it, they'd concede he answered more questions than they expected and, in a few cases, more favorably.

The right to privacy, for example. Conservatives contend it has no constitutional basis, enumerated or implied. Oh, yes it does, Roberts said. You'll find it in the liberty clause of the 14th Amendment and other places, he told the committee. And he described Roe vs. Wade, the abortion decision, as due "respect" as settled law, even pointing out that it has been reaffirmed in another high court case, Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. Beyond that, he would not go. And that raises liberal eyebrows.

For while Roe vs. Wade is settled law for lower court judges, which Roberts is at the moment, as a Supreme Court justice he could vote to overturn it, a position he argued for as a lawyer for the first Bush administration. Roberts stressed that his work as a lawyer in the Reagan and first Bush administrations did not necessarily reflect his own views at the time, but what those views are today he would not say.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the hearings has been the performance of the committee's Republican majority. Except for Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the chairman, who asked pointed questions about what he sees as judicial encroachment on congressional authority, the GOP majority members were embarrassingly irrelevant.

They shamelessly fawned over and flattered Roberts. "I've never seen anybody do a better job," intoned Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. "He's the most qualified justice in my lifetime," said Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, a callow youth by the Senate's geriatric standards. And Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, not to be outdone in the keister-kissing contest, opined that Roberts is "the most qualified nominee who has ever been put up for a Supreme Court vacancy." Take that, John Marshall!

When it's all said and done, Roberts is a lock for Senate confirmation. He'll lose some Democrats, no doubt. But that may be more the product of a political need to appease the party's fierce liberal wing and women's groups than any serious ideological doubts about Roberts. He may have fooled us, but from all the signs, he's not a Cotton Mather conservative in the Scalia mold.

That's cynical, Mr. Farmer. There is a principled reason for voting against and you've already named it: we don't know enough about the guy.

Fire Sale for Halliburton

Mr. Big Government

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, September 16, 2005; 12:24 PM

Will the real George W. Bush please stand up?

Several of the key points in President Bush's nationally televised speech last night are being widely welcomed this morning: His vow to rebuild the Gulf Coast, his increasingly direct acknowledgment that there were serious government lapses after Hurricane Katrina, his admission that Americans can and should expect a more effective response to catastrophes in the post 9/11 era.

But the guts of the speech -- in which Bush unfurled his administration's grand plans for the biggest government-funded reconstruction effort in history -- has led to considerable skepticism, if not outright puzzlement, on both sides of the political divide.

Consider two of the more extreme possibilities:

* Either Bush is being entirely forthright, in which case he's talking about something reminiscent of the biggest liberal government programs of the 20th century. That scares some conservatives, certainly fiscal conservatives, to death.

* Or maybe it's just a plan to transform the Gulf Coast into a big test bed for conservative social policy, where tax breaks flow to big business and tax money flows to Halliburton, churches and private schools. That utterly terrifies liberals.

The argument that the administration will consider conservative ideological gains as a paramount consideration certainly gains credence when you consider, as I wrote in yesterday's column , that the White House's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, has apparently been put in charge of reconstruction plans.

But there is nothing remotely reminiscent of Bush's traditional small-government rhetoric about a plan estimated to cost taxpayers at least $200 billion.

I vote for Column B, Dan, and expect it to be as much of a clusterfuck as Iraq.

Pretty Pictures

NBC's Brian Williams was in NOLA for the speech last night and reports:

am duty-bound to report the talk of the New Orleans warehouse district last night: there was rejoicing (well, there would have been without the curfew, but the few people I saw on the streets were excited) when the power came back on for blocks on end. Kevin Tibbles was positively jubilant on the live update edition of Nightly News that we fed to the West Coast. The mini-mart, long ago cleaned out by looters, was nonetheless bathed in light, including the empty, roped-off gas pumps. The motorcade route through the district was partially lit no more than 30 minutes before POTUS drove through. And yet last night, no more than an hour after the President departed, the lights went out. The entire area was plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. It's enough to make some of the folks here who witnessed it... jump to certain conclusions.

It's a photo-op presidency.

Eye Off the Ball

As New Orleans flooded, Chertoff discussed avian flu in Atlanta

By Shannon McCaffrey, Alison Young and Seth Borenstein

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the U.S. official with the power to order a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina, flew to Atlanta for a previously scheduled briefing on avian flu on the morning after the storm swept ashore.

Chertoff's decision to fly to Georgia for a business-as-usual briefing even as residents in New Orleans fought for their lives in rising floodwaters raises new questions about how much top officials knew about what was happening on the Gulf Coast and how focused they were on the unfolding tragedy.

In fact, Chertoff didn't know for sure that New Orleans' life-preserving levees had failed until a full day had passed.

Not until Chertoff was returning from Atlanta on Aug. 30 did he begin writing the memo that declared Katrina "an incident of national significance" and put the full force of the federal government behind the relief and rescue efforts.

Critics charge that the delay in making the designation until about 36 hours after the storm may have been one reason why federal help was slow in coming and why no one seemed to be in charge in the disaster zone.

In a first accounting of Chertoff's activities before and after the storm, Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke portrayed his boss as deeply involved yet not the man in charge.

As the severity of Katrina became apparent on Aug. 26, Knocke said, Chertoff huddled with his staff at Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington. Katrina, he said, was a major concern, but not the only thing preoccupying Homeland Security officials.

On Saturday, Aug. 27, Chertoff worked from home and on Sunday, Aug. 28 - with President Bush on vacation in Texas - he spent a long day in his office monitoring the storm's progress, Knocke said. On Monday, Aug. 29, as Katrina made landfall, Chertoff was hobbled by a lack of specific information from officials on the Gulf Coast, Knocke said.

Chertoff's team was unable to confirm until midday on Aug. 30 that the levees had breached even though the flooding was being widely reported on television beginning that morning and officials in Louisiana first reported those breaches in the early morning hours of Monday, Aug. 29.

The Homeland Security chief was "extraordinarily frustrated with some of the scattered information we were getting," Knocke said.

Stung by criticism, Chertoff's aides this week attempted to downplay his importance in managing the disaster relief, saying that former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown was in charge. Brown resigned this week amid intense criticism about the sluggish and meager initial response to Katrina.

These people cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.

Hurricane Aftermath

michaelmoore.com continues to report that their VFP relief effort in Louisiana are the first relief workers the residents have seen. No Red Cross, no FEMA or anyone else have gotten into the outlying areas.

The Bill

Bush's rescue mission

WHEN PRESIDENT BUSH stepped to the podium in front of New Orleans' St. Louis Cathedral on Thursday night, his topic was rebuilding a hurricane-ravaged region. But his goal clearly was to rescue his presidency, which Katrina's storm surge tattered as well.

Two major polls released Thursday showed that about 40% of those surveyed approved of Bush's work overall, the lowest mark of his presidency. The federal government's slow response to the crisis on the Gulf Coast has compounded growing doubts about other administration initiatives, especially the war in Iraq.

Bush, who looked like he'd dispensed with his tie and jacket just moments before appearing on camera, promised "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen."

"There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans," he said, pledging to pick up the tab for "the great majority" of the infrastructure repairs.

The president listed the impressive array of initiatives undertaken to help evacuees. And he laid out a series of initiatives that would apply Republican principles to the reconstruction effort, including proposals to give away home-building lots to displaced families with low incomes and to slash taxes for entrepreneurs who create jobs in the devastated region. The president's call for a "Gulf Opportunity Zone" is intriguing, but he needs to make sure storm relief doesn't become a Trojan horse for every conservative ideologue's favorite pet project. Flat tax, anyone?

He left for another day any discussion of where the hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for reconstruction will come from, but that day can't be put off indefinitely. He praised the generosity of Americans in the wake of Katrina, but he soon may have to ask for some sacrifice to help pay the bills. The death of the "death tax," for instance, no longer looks certain.

You and I are going to pay for it, of course. Bush's buddies aren't.

Weathering the Storm

Severe Hurricanes Increasing, Study Finds

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 16, 2005; Page A13

A new study concludes that rising sea temperatures have been accompanied by a significant global increase in the most destructive hurricanes, adding fuel to an international debate over whether global warming contributed to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

The study, published today in the journal Science, is the second in six weeks to draw this conclusion, but other climatologists dispute the findings and argue that a recent spate of severe storms reflects nothing more than normal weather variability.

Katrina's destructiveness has given a sharp new edge to the ongoing debate over whether the United States should do more to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. Domestic and European critics have pointed to Katrina as a reason to take action, while skeptics say climate activists are capitalizing on a national disaster to further their own agenda.

According to data gathered by researchers at the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the number of major Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years, even though the total number of hurricanes, including weaker ones, has dropped since the 1990s. Katrina was a Category 4 storm when it made landfall.

Using satellite data, the four researchers found that the average number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes -- those with winds of 131 mph or higher -- rose from 10 a year in the 1970s to 18 a year since 1990. Average tropical sea surface temperatures have increased as much as 1 degree Fahrenheit during the same period, after remaining stable between 1900 and the mid-1960s.

Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist Judith A. Curry -- co-author of the study with colleagues Peter J. Webster and Hai-Ru Chang, and NCAR's Greg J. Holland -- said in an interview that their survey, coupled with computer models and scientists' understanding of how hurricanes work, has given the researchers a better sense of how rising sea temperatures are linked to more-intense storms.

"There is increasing confidence, as the result of our study, that there's some level of greenhouse warming in what we're seeing," Curry said. "Is it the whole story? We don't know."

Higher ocean temperatures result in more water vapor in the air, which, combined with certain wind patterns, helps power stronger hurricanes, Webster said. Small increases in sea temperature, he added, can "exponentially provide more and more fuel for the hurricanes."

Other studies and computer models also have pointed to an increase in storm intensity: Massachusetts Institute of Technology atmospheric scientist Kerry A. Emanuel wrote last month in the journal Nature that the duration and maximum wind speeds of storms in the North Atlantic and North Pacific have increased about 50 percent since the mid-1970s. The storms' growing violence stemmed in part from higher ocean temperatures, he concluded.

This isn't definitive, but this is the third study I've seen in the last three years that points to the same trends. Kyoto Accord, Mr. President?

On Stage

G.O.P. Split Over Big Plans for Storm Spending

By CARL HULSE
Published: September 16, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 - The drive to pour tens of billions of federal dollars into rebuilding the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast is widening a fissure among Republicans over fiscal policy, with more of them expressing worry about unbridled spending.

On Thursday, even before President Bush promised that "federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone," fiscal conservatives from the House and Senate joined budget watchdog groups in demanding that the administration be judicious in asking for taxpayer dollars.

One fiscal conservative, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said Thursday, "I don't believe that everything that should happen in Louisiana should be paid for by the rest of the country. I believe there are certain responsibilities that are due the people of Louisiana."

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, called for restoring "sanity" to the federal recovery effort. Congress has approved $62 billion, mostly to cover costs already incurred, and the price tag is rising. The House and Senate approved tax relief Thursday at an estimated cost of more than $5 billion on top of $3.5 billion in housing vouchers approved by the Senate on Wednesday.

"We know we need to help, but throwing more and more money without accountability at this is not going to solve the problem," Mr. DeMint said.

Their comments were in marked contrast to the sweeping administration approach outlined by Mr. Bush in his speech from New Orleans and a call by Senate Republican leaders for a rebuilding effort similar to the Marshall Plan after World War II. Congressional Democrats advocated their own comprehensive recovery program Thursday, promoting a combination of rebuilding programs coupled with housing, health care, agriculture and education initiatives. The president also emphasized the importance of private entrepreneurship to create jobs "and help break the cycle of poverty."

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said he believed that providing rapid and extensive help overrode the need to cut spending elsewhere. "I think we have to understand that we have a devastation that has to be taken care of," Mr. Reid said. "And I'm not into finding where we can cut yet."

That mindset is troubling to other lawmakers who fear that in addition to a reborn Gulf Coast, something else will rise from the storm: record federal deficits.

"We know this is a huge bill," said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. "We don't want to lay it on future generations." Given the fierce political backlash to the stumbling relief effort in the days after the hurricane struck, House Republican leaders have been reluctant to stand in the way of any emergency legislation. After the speech, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert acknowledged that the price tag means that "for every dollar we spend on this, it is going to take a little bit longer to balance the budget." He said he was willing to listen to ideas to pay for the aid, but, "Quite frankly, we have to get this job done."

Despite those comments, many Republicans are increasingly edgy about the White House's push for a potentially open-ended recovery budget, worried that the president - in trying to regroup politically - was making expensive promises they would have to keep.

"We are not sure he knows what he is getting into," said one senior House Republican official who requested anonymity because of the potential consequences of publicly criticizing the administration.

The fears about the costs of the storm are building on widespread dissatisfaction among conservatives about spending in recent years by the Republican-controlled Congress. That unrest was already high after Congressional approval of a transportation measure that critics denounced as bloated with marginal home-state projects.

That sore spot was rubbed raw earlier this week when Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, suggested that the Republican Congress had already trimmed much of the fat from the federal budget, making it difficult to find ways to offset hurricane spending.

Mr. Coburn called such a claim ludicrous and other Republicans took exception as well.

"There has never been a time where there is more total spending and more wasteful spending in Washington than we have today," said Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania and the head of the conservative Club for Growth. "There is ample opportunity to find the offsets we need so that this does not have to be a fiscal disaster as well as a natural disaster."

On another front, Republicans and Democrats continued their dispute over how to investigate government failures in the storm response. The House approved a select committee to oversee the inquiry despite Democratic objections that only a special commission outside of Congress could do a credible job.

The House voted 224 to 188 to establish a 20-member panel to work in concert with a similar Senate panel in studying the adequacy of local, state and federal preparations for the storm and why the relief effort was so troubled, stranding thousands in chaotic conditions without sufficient food, water or medical care.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said the special committee was an effort to "whitewash" the inquiry though she later said she would not stand in the way if Democrats want to sit on the panel. In another effort to reduce Democratic opposition, Mr. Hastert on Thursday named Representative Thomas M. Davis III, a sometimes Republican maverick from Virginia, to lead the panel.

Tom Davis represents the district next door and he really is and independent. That's good. Can you trust the Repubs to do anything right? No. I found it strange last night that the Preznit and his crew had lights and generators when the people of NOLA didn't.

Function Beats Place

Some of the Uprooted Won't Go Home Again

By Richard Morin and Lisa Rein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 16, 2005; Page A01

HOUSTON, Sept. 15 -- Fewer than half of all New Orleans evacuees living in emergency shelters here said they will move back home, while two-thirds of those who want to relocate planned to settle permanently in the Houston area, according to a survey by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.

The wide-ranging poll found that these survivors of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath remain physically and emotionally battered but unbroken. They praised God and the U.S. Coast Guard for saving them, but two weeks after the storm, nearly half still sought word about missing loved ones or close friends who may not have been as lucky.

Most already know they have no home left to return to. The overwhelming majority lack insurance to cover their losses. Few have bank checking accounts, savings accounts or credit cards that work. Still, nearly nine in 10 said they were "hopeful" about the future. And while half said they felt depressed about what lies ahead, just a third said they were afraid.

"I'm setting goals for myself, and I'm ready to conquer them," said Lakisha Morris, 30, who was plucked from her roof and spent two nights outdoors on an interstate highway before boarding a bus for Houston. She said she wants to start her own business in this city, possibly day care for the children of fellow evacuees.

The poll vividly documents the immediate and dramatic changes that Hurricane Katrina has brought to two major American cities. It also suggests that what may be occurring is a massive -- and, perhaps, permanent -- transfer of a block of poor people from one city to another. That may have social, economic and political consequences that will be felt for decades, if not generations, in both communities.

Forty-three percent of these evacuees planned to return to New Orleans, the survey found. But just as many -- 44 percent -- said they will settle somewhere else, while the remainder were unsure. Many of those who were planning to return said they will be looking to buy or rent somewhere other than where they lived. Overall, only one in four said they plan to move back into their old homes, the poll found.

Where you are matters less than if it works for you. Function beats Location.

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Entertainment & Acceptance

If you decide on self-quarantine during an H5N1 pandemic, what do you do to keep everybody entertained for a maximum of 90 days?

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Introduction and Framework

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Food

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Water

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Medication and CAM

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Emergencies, Evacuation, Protection

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Entertainment & Acceptance

For myself, I have a ton of CDs and access to the web if electricity is present. I have a smaller pile of books available to read if it isn’t. My daughter is almost the same way, except you can substitute a large pile of CDs with a small set of video games and some drawing pads. If I need to, I have a dozen interior projects to work on within the house that mostly require time, focus and patience. Either way, find ways to keep busy if/when the time drags.

And this is where I and the rest of the community here at Bump really, really need your comments. Everybody has their own tastes, as does their loved ones. Anything you consider age or gender-specific and useful would be very much appreciated in the comments.

For my daughter, who just turned 12 this August, anything from the Sammy Keyes series, the Series of Unfortunate Events books, the Japanese comic Ranma ½ and from the author Avi always gets grabbed and read. (We have many of these titles set aside for re-reading as needed.) For material that’s a little different from the norm and thus possibly refreshing for your child, I recommend Thea Beckman’s Crusade in Jeans, as well as Annie M. G. Schmidt’s Minnie. She loves trying to draw Japanese cartoon characters, and so was fascinated by Understanding Comics, which will require a lot of time to read and understand thoroughly. (I’ll be buying some ”learning to draw the human figure” books to stash away as well.) And I just introduced my daughter to an old set of Time-Life “The World of…” series of art books, which she was delighted to find.

I’ll be purchasing the latest Sammy Keyes book soon, along with a few related titles of the same style, a small pile of the Ranma ½ series that she hasn’t acquired yet, as well as a few video games she wants (but not bad enough to pay for with her own money), and stashing them away for when she’ll need something fresh.

As for videos, for my daughter, the broader the comedy and the wilder the action movie (within limits, of course – Sahara and National Treasure are about as far as her comfort zone allows) the better. Your kids and even you will need some escapism, so get some.

And when the electricity is out, or as a means of interaction, board games are a great route to travel. For those new to this hobby in its more extensive form beyond Operation and Monopoly, Funagain Games and Boulder Games tend to offer some of the best prices and explanations around. Taste will vary as to what games are worth purchasing, but if I must give you one piece of advice on this topic, it’s this – buy the best two-player games you can find. To me those are Lost Cities, The Settlers of Cataan Card Game, and Frog Juice (for a slightly younger set than those my daughter’s age).

However, given the void of time to fill, there will also be a desire to deal with death by your children, especially if the death is isolated from their immediate situation. They will eventually hear of childhood friends, teachers, adults they know and trust outside of family, and relatives passing away more as words told to them and less as part of the events that make up one’s life. They will want to both talk to you eventually, and they will want to expereicne and learn from the situation, if possible, through the media as much as via talking with you.

I’m no child psychologist by any means, but I do recommend a book called Killing Monsters by Gerard Jones. Its primary thesis is that children often deal with a violent world by obsessing about it through movies, video games, whatever is handy, and then at some point no longer need to be in such a mode to deal with it rationally. I think this may also apply to our children (and maybe ourselves) regarding death, especially if we try to hide the uglier aspects of it from them as the flu epidemic goes through its process.

Toward that end, some movies regarding children and their dealing with death that I recommend are Finding Neverland, Time of the Wolf, and A Boy From Mercury - the last is particularly hard to find in the USA, but may be possible to find through Amazon UK and related sites.

Please feel free to add your own recommendations.

Predicting the Future

Mr. Bush in New Orleans

Published: September 16, 2005

President Bush said three things last night that desperately needed to be said. He forthrightly acknowledged his responsibility for the egregious mishandling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He spoke clearly and candidly about race and poverty. And finally, he was clear about what would be needed to bring back the Gulf Coast and said the federal government would have to lead and pay for that effort.

Once again, as he did after 9/11, Mr. Bush has responded to disaster with disconcerting uncertainty, then risen to the occasion later. Once again, he has delivered a speech that will reassure many Americans that he understands the enormity of the event and the demands of leadership to come.

But there are plenty of reasons for concern. After 9/11, Mr. Bush responded not only with a stirring speech at the ruins of the World Trade Center and a principled response to the Taliban in Afghanistan. He also decided to invade Iraq, and he tried to do it on the cheap - with disastrous results, for which the country continues to pay every day.

This time, Mr. Bush must come up with a more coherent and well-organized follow-through.

Clearly chastened by the outcry over his slow response to the disaster and his administration's bumbling performance, Mr. Bush said last night that he was prepared to undertake "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." If he is sincere about his commitment to New Orleans and the other damaged localities, and to the displaced residents, he may have a fight on his hands in persuading Congress to support such an ambitious and necessary effort. Obviously, any official with even a minimal sense of responsibility would understand that this work will have to begin with a promise to give up on any more of the Republican Party's cherished tax cuts.

The speech, as good as it was, marks only a moment of clarity. Mr. Bush's problem in dealing with Katrina has been, at bottom, the same one that has bedeviled the administration since 9/11. The president came to office with a deep antipathy toward big government that has turned out to be utterly inappropriate for the world he inherited. The result has not been less government, but it has definitely been inept government.

We have already seen what happened to the Federal Emergency Management Agency when it was taken over by an administration that didn't like large federal agencies with sweeping mandates. For Iraq, the White House asserted that open-ended and no-bid contracts doled out to big corporations run by people known to government officials would mean swifter, more efficient operations. What we got was gross inefficiency, which has run up costs while failing in many cases to do the jobs required.

Given this history, it's impossible not to worry about what will happen to the billions of dollars being committed to New Orleans, especially since the Army Corps of Engineers' top man in the reclamation effort was once the corps' top man overseeing contracts in Iraq.

NYT, you trusted him once before and look how he screwed that up. Why are you tempted to trust him again? This looks like "beaten wife" syndrome to me. If you haven't learned better by now, I doubt you ever will. The man is a chronic screwup and thief and you haven't figured it out yet, which makes you a fool. Why you think he has the capability to make anything better, when he never has in his life, is just a puzzle to me. The man is a fuck-up and I fail to see how he has ever changed. And you are co-dependents.

Don't Let Them See

As bodies recovered, reporters are told 'no photos, no stories'
Cecilia M. Vega, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 13, 2005

New Orleans -- A long caravan of white vans led by an Army humvee rolled Monday through New Orleans' Bywater district, a poor, mostly black neighborhood, northeast of the French Quarter.

Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead bodies inside.

Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their press credentials and kick them out of the state.

"No photos. No stories," said the man, wearing camouflage fatigues and a red beret.

On Saturday, after being challenged in court by CNN, the Bush administration agreed not to prevent the news media from following the effort to recover the bodies of Hurricane Katrina victims.

But on Monday, in the Bywater district, that assurance wasn't being followed. The 82nd Airborne soldier told reporters the Army had a policy that requires media to be 300 meters -- more than three football fields in length -- away from the scene of body recoveries in New Orleans. If reporters wrote stories or took pictures of body recoveries, they would be reported and face consequences, he said, including a loss of access for up-close coverage of certain military operations.

Dean Nugent, of the Louisiana State Coroner's Department, who accompanied the soldier, added that it wasn't safe to be in Bywater. "They'll kill you out here," he said, referring to the few residents who have continued to defy mandatory evacuation orders and remain in their homes."

"The cockroaches come out at night," he said of the residents. "This is one of the worst places in the country. You should not be here. Especially you," he told a female reporter.

Nugent, who is white, acknowledged he wasn't personally familiar with the poor, black neighborhood, saying he only knew of it by reputation.

Later Monday, the recovery team collected a body from a green house on St. Anthony Street in nearby Seventh Ward. The dead man, who was slipped into a black body bag and carried out to one of the white vans, had been lying alone on the living room floor for nearly two weeks, neighbors said.

"I told them weeks ago he was in there," said Barry Dominguez, 39, who lives across the street and has refused to leave the neighborhood he grew up in.

After the recovery team took away the St. Anthony Street body, two workers urinated on the side of a neighbor's house.

The CNN suit was in response to comments Friday at a news conference in which officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency said members of the news media would not be allowed to witness the recovery of hurricane victims' bodies.

Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security director, had said Friday that the recovery effort would be done with dignity, "meaning that there would be no press allowed." Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore later said there would be zero access to the recovery operation.

During a hearing Saturday morning in U.S. District Court in Houston, a lawyer who represented the government said FEMA had revised its previous plans to limit coverage.

Government agencies may still refuse requests from members of the media to ride along, or be "embedded," on recovery boats as crews gather the dead. "But, to the extent the press can go out to the locations, they're free to do that," said Keith Wyatt, an assistant U.S. attorney, according to a transcript of the hearing. "They're free to take whatever pictures they can take."

Army Lt. Col. Richard Steele said the government's position as explained in court Saturday didn't represent a change in policy. Reporters can watch recovery efforts they come upon, but they won't be embedded with search teams.

"We're not going to bar, impede or prevent" the media from telling the story, he said. "We're just not going to give the media a ride."

Bushco will do everything possible to cover up the human scale of this tragedy, just as they have stage-managed every other aspect of this failed presidency. This monsterous human tragedy is nothing more than "more of the same" for Karl Rove.

How does this help?

No pay for New Orleans teachers

Reuters
Wed. September 14, 2005

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - New Orleans teachers will not get paid for periods after Hurricane Katrina because there is almost no money left in the city's strapped school system, an executive of the outside firm that runs the schools said on Wednesday.

But a team of experts was set to descend on the city on Wednesday to find schools that can be reopened as soon as possible, providing the system gets emergency funding from the government to operate.

The paycheck issued this week to teachers is for the last pay period before the storm hit, said Bill Roberti, a director with the restructuring firm of Alvarez & Marsal, which runs the school system.

"This is the last payroll we will be able to issue for the time being," Roberti said in a briefing. "We were not able to move forward with the $50 million financing we were pursuing to keep the district afloat. We are very low on cash at this time."

The 7,000-employee, 116-school system was already in dire financial shape before Katrina hit, which is why the firm was pursuing the $50 million finance package.

You know, how can you expect these teachers to be able to put their life back together and be ready for their students if you aren't going to pay them?

I understand that the city schools in New Orleans are a complete and utter disaster, hence why I didn't stay after I graduated from Tulane, but this is insane.

If there are any Bumpers who have kids in a school district that has been taken over by one of these companies, can you answer this: Are they always this... clueless? The article comments later that they want some of the reconstruction pork er... mana , money that George promised this evening, but are they actually going to get it?

And who knows how many students/teachers will actually return.... it's not like the teachers can afford a great home in New Orleans to begin with.

To Hell in a Hyundai

Circles of Hell

New Orleans Gives Us a Glimpse of Bush's Vision for America
by Robert Koehler

The squalid innermost circles of hell, which thousands of American citizens may still be trapped in, are distinctly manmade.

Something far more sinister than incompetence has been at work in post-Katrina New Orleans. While there was plenty of that — “racism and incompetence seemed to merge to create a sluggish response,” Christian Parenti wrote in The Nation — the fumbling cluelessness of FEMA under George Bush is a minor aspect of the vision of America, armed and gated, he and his cohorts have bestowed on us.

In this virulent, militarized vision, disaster relief is an afterthought. What this administration does enthusiastically is wage war, or at least take potshots at fear. Thus the commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times, as quoted by Rebecca Solnit in Harper’s, “This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

If it’s a combat operation, you need an enemy — and the poor and destitute of New Orleans got conscripted into this role. As Solnit pointed out, “The Convention Center and the Superdome became open prisons.” The evacuees sequestered in these hellholes were not allowed to leave. The National Guardsmen there, like other law enforcement officials in the stricken city, seemed to be employed less in disaster relief than “enemy” containment.

The nation has suddenly learned what compassionate conservatism looks really like: “Inside there were National Guard running around, there was feces, people had urinated, soiled the carpet. There were dead bodies. The smell will never leave me.”

So Duke University student Hans Buder told Durham’s Herald-Sun about his visit to the New Orleans Convention Center a few days after Katrina hit. He and two classmates had swiped an Associated Press ID from a Baton Rouge TV station, copied it at Kinko’s and thus got through roadblocks to make a freelance run into New Orleans. They evacuated people in their two-wheel drive Hyundai before any FEMA buses had arrived.

This is disaster relief under George Bush’s leadership — kids in Hyundais, doing an end run around authority.

It’s also mercenaries. Why should that be a surprise? Under Bush, Americans are encouraged to be afraid. So private military companies such as Blackwater, which contract their services to the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan, now have their men roaming the streets of New Orleans wielding M-16s, presumably protecting private property from the desperate people who are not allowed to leave.

This paradoxical, manmade hell — this compounding of disaster with fear and racism — needn’t have happened and shames us deeply. It’s the result of a massive and predictable failure of leadership stemming from a failure of vision. Our government, instead of rallying the nation, encouraged its descent into barbarism.

Emphasis mine. Welcome to The Resistance.

Speech and Open Thread

Think Progress will be live blogging the Preznit's speech this evening with rapid response research. They have been doing this for a while and they are very good at it. If you are of a mind to listen to Chimpy tonight, check in with TP to get the immediate un-spin. Judd, Nico and Christy will have all of the facts at their fingers. I'm of two minds about listening to the speech, as I think I could probably write it at this stage of the game and the mere sound of W's voice makes every nerve in my body scream and my teeth itch. All that smirking arrogance raises my blood pressure. You'll be happy to know that I'm wearing my soft Keds mules instead of my Dr. Scholl's sandals this evening, so if I have to throw shoes at the TV, I won't hurt it.

This is an open thread for your thoughts on Dumbya's performance this evening and whatever else is on your mind. This has been a very tough week for me and I'm brain dead, so don't ask any hard questions....

BTW, things in NOLA are much, much worse than the media are being allowed to report. There is a Pulitzer waiting for the Times-Picayune if they are willing to tell the real story.

I'm going to be looking for perfect Italian eggplants at the Farmers' Market this Saturday, and I'm looking for ratatouille recipes. If you have one you particularly like, add it. I have several, but I'm always open to new interpretations. The Farmers' Market should have giant elephant garlic this weekend. Ya can't make ratatouille with out a lot of garlic, and, for me, the more garlic, the merrier. Ratatouille freezes well, singles, and gives you the bounty of late summer/early fall harvest well into the winter. If you are eating local produce from your Farmers' Market/local farmstands and saving it into the winter, you're extending your own immunity to the local bugs, as well. The local tomatoes are in and the heritage varieties are just gorgeous.

My herb garden is ready to harvest and freeze into the winter as well. Make your pesto in your food processor according to your favorite recipe, freeze the result in ice cube trays, and you have portion size servings of pesto while it lasts in Zip-Lok bags in the freezer. My basil plants are HUGE this year and the resultant pesto should hold me to at least Christmas.

That's something to smile about while I'm listening to the way the Preznit is going to further pillage my lower middle class wallet.

Cost of Living

Winter Heating Bills Set To Soar
High Fuel Prices, Low Temperatures Chill the Forecast

By Peter Behr
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, September 15, 2005; Page D01

This summer's gasoline price shock will be followed by a similarly sharp jump in winter heating bills in the Washington area, analysts are warning, and fuel bills will leap even higher if forecasts for unusually cold weather prove true.

Winter heating costs have followed in lockstep with the rise of crude oil and natural gas prices, as supplies of energy commodities strain to keep up with growing demand for fuels worldwide. Natural gas prices paid by consumers have doubled since the beginning of 2000, and the increase in heating oil costs has been almost as great.

Consumers nationwide are expected to spend 34 percent more for heating oil this winter than last, 52 percent more for natural gas, 16 percent more for coal and 11 percent more for electricity, according to the preliminary winter fuel projection by the government's Energy Information Administration. The heaviest burden should fall on natural gas customers in the Midwest, the EIA predicts, with costs 71 percent higher than last winter.

The winter fuel increases will bring total energy spending for the nation to just over $1 trillion this year, 24 percent higher than in 2004, claiming the biggest share of U.S. output since the end of the oil crisis 20 years ago, the EIA said.

The higher fuel prices pose a severe threat to low-income households from the Midwest to the Northeast, said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Association. "A few years ago, you could heat a home for $500. Now it takes $1,500," said Wolfe, whose association represents state residential heating assistance programs. "Energy has become a lot less affordable for low-income families," and they will face painful spending choices this winter, he said.

The important wild card this winter is not price, but weather. Energy analysts are pointing to forecasts such as the current AccuWeather Inc. projection of an early arrival of much colder winter weather from Maine to the District.

Kenneth Reeves, AccuWeather's senior meteorologist and forecasting director, said winter temperatures in the Northeast are expected to be three degrees lower than a year ago, throughout the winter heating season. A persistent temperature drop over three months of winter has a big impact, he said.

Almost all of the nation east of the Mississippi River is in for colder winter weather, AccuWeather forecasts, citing an unusually large area of warm water off the East Coast, which is expected to linger and draw cold Canadian air to the Northeast.

"It's actually a pretty dreadful forecast if it holds up," said Zeta Rosenberg, senior vice president for ICF Consulting in Fairfax. "It doesn't just drive up demand [for fuel] and prices," she said. "The whole [energy supply] infrastructure gets strained" as harsh weather disrupts fuel deliveries and stresses pipeline operations.

Turdblossom

Who's in Charge? Karl Rove!

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, September 15, 2005; 12:00 PM

All you really need to know about the White House's post-Katrina strategy -- and Bush's carefully choreographed address on national television tonight -- is this little tidbit from the ninth paragraph of Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson 's story in the New York Times this morning:

"Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort."

Rove's leadership role suggests quite strikingly that any and all White House decisions and pronouncements regarding the recovery from the storm are being made with their political consequences as the primary consideration. More specifically: With an eye toward increasing the likelihood of Republican political victories in the future, pursuing long-cherished conservative goals, and bolstering Bush's image.

That is Rove's hallmark.

Rove, Bush's long-time political adviser and the "architect" of Bush's ascendancy, was rewarded after the 2004 election with a position at the White House with overt policy responsibilities. But whereas in some previous White Houses, governance took precedence over campaigning once the election was safely over, Rove has shown no sign of ever putting policy goals above political ones. (See my Rove profile .)

Tonight's speech promises two classic features of the Rove approach.

Bush will take advantage of powerful imagery -- the Associated Press reports the speech will be held in historic Jackson Square, with the famous St. Louis Cathedral as a backdrop -- and he won't risk having anyone around who might disagree with him or ask an impertinent question. In fact, the AP says, there won't be a live audience at all. (And even the journalists covering the event are being told they won't be allowed to stray from their press vans.)

As for the speech itself, it will inevitably seek to answer any naysaying about Bush by recasting him in the heroic, leadership role he played after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- while advocating a range of measures that are dear to the conservative political agenda.

It will, on the other hand, feature one very unRovian tactic. Typically, it is the Democrats who are blamed for wanting to solve problems by throwing money at them. But tonight, Bush will be the one throwing the money around.

Will it work? Rove has an astonishing track record of success. But at the same time, Bush finds himself today a deeply unpopular president according to the opinion polls, particularly damaged by his lackluster response to the protracted, televised suffering in New Orleans.

And Rove himself has not been at his best of late. Unlike many of Bush's advisers, who have plausible deniability for his initial under-reaction because they weren't with him on vacation, Rove was tagging along with the president, blithely touring the West Coast even as the Gulf Coast drowned. Rove is haunted by the possibility of indictment by a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA agent. And according to Time magazine, he was briefly hospitalized last week with painful kidney stones.

Even many of the president's traditional allies say Bush -- and by extension, Rove -- have been off their political game. We'll know better by tomorrow morning whether that continues to be the case.

Roberts the Man

Discovered in Slate, the online magazine:

From: Dahlia Lithwick
Subject: Oh, the Humanity!
Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2005, at 5:41 PM PT

Senate Democrats have had it up to here with "John Roberts the lawyer." And it's hard to blame them. John Roberts the lawyer won't answer any questions. At least, as the sole arbiter of what questions he'll answer, he's doing a rather phenomenal job of broadly defining great classes of questions as unanswerable:

* He won't answer questions about any case currently pending before the Supreme Court (abortion, right-to-die);
* He won't answer questions about any case that might someday conceivably be pending before the Supreme Court (separation of powers, contested presidential elections);
* He won't answer questions he's decided on the court of appeals (since they may someday conceivably be pending before the Supreme Court);
* He won't answer questions about prior nominees (Robert Bork) because that is not appropriate;
* He can't answer questions about general legal doctrine because they are too general;
* He can't answer questions about specific legal doctrine because they are too specific;
* He can't answer questions about his early memos because a robot wrote them.

One question Roberts does feel comfortable answering today, in response to a lengthy ramble by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.: "Would you agree that the opposite of being dead is being alive?"

Since this will probably never come before the court, Roberts is comfortable answering, "Yes."

Because they are making absolutely no headway with John Roberts the Lawyer, senators start to chip away at his steely reserve through various clumsy requests that he reveal "John Roberts the Man." It starts with a weird little Shakespearean caution by Mike DeWine, R-Ohio: "President Bush nominated John Roberts, the man. … Please don't check any of that at the door. … When you put on that black robe and assume your spot on the Supreme Court, you will surely bring with you your heart and your soul, the values you learned from your parents and others that you learned as you grew up in the wide open fields of your youth. … I must say, sir, they must never leave you." Oh, and neither a borrower nor a lender be.

That was a bizarre interchange.

Looking Ahead to the Winter

Jobless Claims, Energy Prices Both Soar

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A total of 68,000 Americans who lost their jobs due to Hurricane Katrina filed for unemployment benefits last week, pushing these applications up by the largest amount in nearly a decade.

The Labor Department reported that claims for benefits rose by 71,000 last week, with 68,000 of that total attributed to layoffs due to Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and other areas along the Gulf Coast. That figure exceeded the claims filed in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, and analysts predicted that it would be revised even higher once states catch up with processing a flood of claims.

Meanwhile, consumer inflation surged by 0.5 percent in August as energy prices shot up by the largest amount in more than two years, even before Katrina hit at the end of the month. The hurricane caused a further spike in energy prices due to widespread shutdowns of oil and natural gas facilities in the Gulf Coast region.

Analysts have predicted that Katrina, the country's worst natural disaster, will trim economic growth by as much as a full percentage point in the second half of this year and cost around 400,000 jobs.

While they do not believe that storm-related disruptions will be enough to push the country into a recession, they caution that this forecast could be proven wrong if energy prices keep soaring, triggering significant cutbacks in spending by consumers in other areas.

Phil Hopkins, managing director of U.S. regional services for Global Insight, estimates that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the area of New Orleans, Metairie and Kenner was 4.9 percent in July. He said that based on his calculations, the jobless rate there could easily climb to 25 percent.

And analysts predicted that the overall inflation figure will be even higher in September, reflecting the fact that gasoline prices climbed even higher to more than $3 per gallon in September as the impacts of the Gulf Coast shutdowns were felt in supply shortages.

"Gasoline prices have gone through the roof," said Labor Department analyst Patrick Jackman, who said gasoline was about 30 percent higher in the first two weeks of September as compared to the first two weeks of August.

The economy was expanding at a solid pace before Katrina hit and it is this momentum that analysts believe will help keep the economy from being pushed into a full-fledged downturn.

The report on jobless claims showed that the increase of 71,000 applications last week was the biggest one-week increase since a rise of 82,000 claims the week ending Jan. 20, 1996, a period when claims soared after a severe winter storm along the East Coast. The increase pushed total jobless claims to 398,000 last week, the highest weekly total in two years.

The 0.5 percent rise in consumer prices followed a similar 0.5 percent increase in July with inflation in both months being pushed higher by rising energy prices. Over 80 percent of the jump in inflation in August was attributed to a 5 percent surge in energy prices, the biggest one-month gain since March 2003.

The 71,000 gain in claims last week exceeded the one-week increases in layoffs seen after the Sept. 11 attacks although in the final two weeks of September, claims posted back-to-back increases of 59,000 and 64,000.

Chaos

'It Was as if All of Us Were Already Pronounced Dead'
Convention Center Left a Five-Day Legacy of Chaos and Violence

By Wil Haygood and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 15, 2005; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS For five eternal-seeming days, as many as 20,000 people, most of them black, waited to be rescued, not just from the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina but from the nightmarish place where they had sought refuge.

During that time, the moon that hovered over the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center seemed closer than anyone who could provide those inside the center with any help.

On the fourth day, after TV had been filled with live reports from the center describing sexual assaults, robberies and gunfire, single mothers desperately seeking help for their children and fathers doing their best to protect them, the federal official charged with leading the hurricane response, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, responded to an interviewer's question by saying it was the first he had heard that people "don't have food and water in there."

"It was as if all of us were already pronounced dead," said Tony Cash, 25, who endured three nights of hunger, violence and darkness at the convention center. "As if somebody already had the body bags. Wasn't nobody coming to get us."

No one has been able to say how many people died inside the convention center; police, military and center officials estimate the number is about 10. Nor has there been any attempt to document the number of assaults, robberies and rapes that eyewitnesses said occurred from the time the first people broke into the convention center seeking shelter on the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, and when units of the Arkansas National Guard moved into the center on Friday, Sept. 2.

But even without those numbers, what happened in the convention center stands as a harsh indictment of government's failure to help its citizens when they needed it most. That futility was symbolized by the presence in the convention center for three of the most chaotic days of at least 250 armed troops from the Louisiana National Guard. They were camped out in a huge exhibition hall separated from the crowd by a wall, and used their trucks as a barricade when they were afraid the crowd would break in.

The troops were never deployed to restore order and eventually withdrew, despite the pleas of the convention center's management. Louisiana Guard commanders said their units' mission was not to secure the facility, and soldiers on the scene feared inciting further bloodshed if they had intervened. "We didn't want another Kent State," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, commander of the active-duty military forces responding to Katrina. "They weren't trained for crowd control."

In more than 70 interviews, with both military and law enforcement officials -- who were themselves sometimes inside the center -- and with many of the survivors who suffered over the course of several nights, a chilling portrait emerges of anarchy and violence, exacerbated by young men from rival housing projects -- Magnolia, St. Bernard, Iberville, Calliope.

"Everywhere I went, I saw people with guns in their hands," said Troy Harris, 18. "They were putting guns to people's heads."

Recounting their pleas for milk for their babies, for food, for protection, many survivors described the same sense of bewilderment and anger -- broadcast, surreally, on live television. "This is America," one woman shouted into the TV cameras. What she meant was, this is not supposed to happen here.

CNN Isn't Telling You

It's Salon, so watch the ad. Karen Lash is a former colleague of mine.

The Forever Elsewhere Management Agency
In Gulfport, Miss., 13 days after Katrina roared through, we couldn't find one resident who had ever seen a FEMA official.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Karen A. Lash

Sept. 14, 2005 | I arrived in Jackson, Miss., from Washington, D.C., last Wednesday, hoping to help the Mississippi Center for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, coordinate pro bono attorneys, law professors and legal aid offices, an army of whom are ready to respond to the overwhelming need that hurricane victims have for legal assistance. In the midst of this effort, two other out-of-state volunteers -- Bonnie Allen, also with MCJ, and Trisha Miller, a Skadden Fellow with Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law -- and I left for the Mississippi coast. Armed with 25 copies of "Help After a Disaster," FEMA's applicant guide, and cases of bottled water, we headed south to let people know law schools and lawyers would be providing help with the myriad legal issues they'd be facing.

But when I arrived in Gulfport on Saturday, I was simply not prepared for what I saw. Chaos, devastation and an apparent inability to deliver the most basic help to so many people in so much despair. It was day 13 after Katrina struck, and no one was coordinating the relief effort in one of the poorest communities along the coast.

We never found a resident who had ever seen even one FEMA official. No one had been able to successfully complete "Registration Intake" via the toll-free number. Most people we met still didn't have electricity or phone service. We finally heard of one man who got through to FEMA -- at 2:30 a.m. But when asked for insurance information he didn't have and didn't know how he could get since he'd lost everything and had no place else to turn, he just broke down and cried. The bureaucracy was killing him.

It's no wonder. The Sept. 11 Clarion-Ledger, Jackson's local paper, reported that U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering (R) had said FEMA needs 10,000 operators to properly staff the phones, but Homeland Security regulations require employees to pass security clearance, typically a months-long process. The paper quotes Pickering as concluding, "In other words, the phone line is useless."

Meanwhile, our efforts were complicated because our phones rarely rang -- spotty cell reception. Although I could usually call out, I wasn't able to receive calls.

Again, the Clarion-Leger provided some insight. Pickering's office reported that two days after the hurricane hit, a company offered to launch balloons that would restore cellular phone service in the region -- for free. FEMA told him the company would have to go through a typically months-long competitive bidding process. The bureaucracy simply could not be avoided. FEMA representatives were nowhere to be found, but their rules and regulations are everywhere.

We stopped first at the Good Deeds Community Center, which was serving hot meals and distributing donated goods to hundreds of North Gulfport and Turkey Creek residents. Red Cross volunteers told us the Florida church that had been feeding more than 600 residents two hot meals a day was leaving on Sunday and asked if we could track down another mobile kitchen. Without a second thought, we set out to help. But this was crucial stuff. Why were we doing it? Where was FEMA?

That effort had us going to area churches -- where we found similar stories. Arkansas church members set up at the Grace Memorial Baptist Church had been serving up hundreds of hot meals since Thursday. They were almost out of food, leaving on Monday, but offered us their several hundred peanut butter and jelly sandwich surplus. We gratefully took it.

Another church in Ocean Springs didn't have a kitchen or cleaning supplies but could send new clothes and canned goods in a truck returning to Kentucky. Everywhere we went people asked for bleach -- both to kill the bacteria from raw sewage so they could safely take a bath, and also to stop the spread of black mold that was swallowing the walls of those fortunate enough to still have a home.

The sympathetic workers in the county courthouse had few ideas for us. When asked where FEMA was, one responded, "Your guess is as good as mine."

Looking for another church we'd heard was preparing large numbers of hot meals, we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in a red zone. We passed ominous buildings, some of which had a bright orange spray-painted "X" indicating that the dead bodies still in the building had been identified so rescue workers had moved on. We also passed a van with Indiana license plates, and signs hanging in the windows that read CAN'T FIND MY FATHER -- PLEASE HELP.

Returning to Good Deeds to report on our progress, we saw a county worker pull up with a truckload of ice. Twenty minutes later, with the truck unattended, no one aware of its precious cargo, and the ice quickly melting in the stifling sun, my colleagues and I hopped into the back of the truck. Yelling "free ice" we urged people to take as many bags as they could carry and distribute it to neighbors on their way home.

Meanwhile, the on-site Red Cross volunteers gave out the last of their day's food and toy stash from their U-Haul, distraught because 600 people were going to show up the next day expecting a hot meal and wouldn't get one. No one knew what would happen next. There was simply no delivery or distribution system in place. Without the inspiration of leaders from groups like North Gulfport Community Land Trust and Turkey Creek Community Initiatives, and an army of volunteers, nothing would be getting done.

We next drove down Rippy Road, the center of the northern Gulfport community of Turkey Creek, to see its destruction firsthand. The historic residences in this African-American neighborhood were part of a settlement built by freed slaves in the Reconstruction era. Many of those homes are now uninhabitable.

In another church parking lot, all three of us were on separate cellphone conversations. Tricia whooped with delight when she heard that the Kentucky-bound truck had arrived at Good Deeds. "I'm in the chain gang unloading now," reported the Harrison County Supervisor staffer who had been working 14-hour days for 11 days straight. Unfortunately, I had to report that the Long Beach pastor who was trying to track down a volunteer McDonald's truck could not find it and no one knew where it had gone. We still had hope the Colorado Springs volunteers we met in the county courthouse could make a miracle happen. They'd promised to look for a mobile kitchen and cleaning supplies.

There's no question that eventually the need for legal services will be a top priority and that it will be an ongoing effort -- likely for years. The Mississippi Bar, clinical law professors and students, and pro bono law firm and legal aid attorneys are continuing their Herculean efforts. Lawyers will be critical. Only they can help people get legal guardianship of the children they now care for, help the newly disabled get SSI benefits, help elderly homeowners avoid predatory lenders, advise families filing for bankruptcy, assist the insured in appealing denials of coverage because their damage is deemed caused by flood (not covered), not hurricane (which is), and help with myriad other legal issues.

However, the immediate imperative is to cut through the bureaucracy and get the hurricane's victims the most basic of life's needs -- now. The United States is the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world. That power and those resources now need to be used to get life's essentials to thousands of people who are facing chaos, devastation and death. But what we saw, or didn't see, was as potentially devastating. A system that has broken down is failing those who are in need. Headlines tell us that the relief effort is stepping up, but to the people we met in North Gulfport and Turkey Creek, and hundreds of places like them, those headlines are meaningless.

# There are things you can do to help. Please contact your congressional representative and senators and demand the FEMA red tape be cut.
# Contact your local churches and synagogues to see how you can help their efforts -- be aware that needs change every 36 hours at least, so contact with churches in the affected areas is key.
# Donate money to community-based organizations and legal aid organizations in the affected states.
# Brainstorm new ways to get help to the most affected areas immediately.

Before returning to Jackson, we left the 25 copies of the FEMA guide with the supervisor's staffer at Good Deeds. She promised to distribute them at Sunday church services.

Just Words

Ignorance and abdication that amounts to madness

All political leaders sometimes parry with the truth, but with Bush the disconnections are systematic

John Berger
Thursday September 15, 2005
The Guardian

As a consequence of the catastrophe that occurred in New Orleans, people in the US and throughout the world have started to re-examine the record of the present leaders of the first world superpower. A shift in opinion has taken place almost overnight. History, throwing us all back into our seats, suddenly opened its throttle.

Katrina - everyone refers to the hurricane by her name as if she were some kind of avatar - revealed that there is dire and increasing poverty in the US, that black people are typically treated as unwanted second-class citizens, that the systematic cutting of government investment in public institutions has produced widespread social disequilibrium and destitution (40 million Americans live without any aid if they fall ill), that the so-called war against terrorism is creating administrative chaos, and that within and against all this, voices of protest are being raised loud and clear.

All this though was evident before Katrina to those living it, and to those who wanted to know. What she changed was that the media were there for once, showing what was actually happening, and the fury of those to whom it was happening. With her terrible gesture she wiped the opaque screens clean for a little while.

In some gnomic way the as-yet-innumerable dead on the Gulf coast spoke not for but with the 100,000 Iraqis who have died as a consequence of the ongoing disastrous and criminal war. Time and again in the US press, Katrina and Iraq are being mentioned together. Yet Katrina was regular. She belonged to the familiar weather conditions which affect the Gulf of Mexico. She was not hiding in Afghanistan. And merciless as she was, she did not belong to any axis of evil. She was simply a natural threat to American lives and property, and she was heading for Louisiana.

It was in the self-interest (as well as the national interest) of the president and his chosen colleagues to meet the challenge she threw down, to foresee the needs of her victims and to reduce the ensuing pain and panic to the minimum possible. If they, the government, happened to fail to do this, they would be able to blame nobody else, and they themselves would be blamed. A child could foresee this. And they failed utterly. Their failure was technical, political and emotional. "Stuff happens," murmurs Donald Rumsfeld.

Is it possible that this administration is mad? Let us try to define the variant of madness, for it may be that it has never occurred before. It has very little to do, for example, with Nero when he fiddled while Rome burned. Any madness, however, implies a severe disconnection with reality, or, to put it more precisely, with the existent.

The variant we are considering touches upon the relationship between fear and confidence, between being threatened and being supreme. There is no negotiation between the two. Their "madness" operates like a switch which turns one off and the other on. And what is grave about this is that it is in the long periods of negotiating between fear and confidence that the existent is normally surveyed and observed in its multitudinous complexity. It is there that one learns about what one is facing.

Five days after Katrina had struck, when President Bush finally visited the devastated city, he astounded journalists by saying: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." On the same day, in the wrecked small town of Biloxi, the president's flying visit was preceded by a team who quickly cleared the rubble and corpses from the route his cortege would take. Two hours later the team vanished, leaving everything else in the town exactly as it was.

The calculations of the present US government are closely related to the global interests of the corporations, and what has been termed the survival of the richest, who today also vacillate abruptly between fear and confidence.

The lobbyist Grover Norquist, who is a talking head for corporate interests and to whom Bush and co listened when planning their tax reforms for the benefit of the rich, is on record as saying: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

All political leaders sometimes parry with the truth, but here the disconnections are systematic and crop up not only in their announcements but in their every strategic calculation. Hence their ineptness. Their operation in Afghanistan failed, their war in Iraq has been won (as the saying goes) by Iran, Katrina was allowed to produce the worst natural disaster in US history, and terrorist activities are increasing.

An ignorance about most of what exists, and an abdication from the very minimum of what can be expected of government - are we not approaching disconnections which amount to what can be called madness when found in the minds of those who believe they can rule the planet?

I'm sure we'll get another lecture tonight about good and evil as Bush tries to impose his Manichean worldview on the weather. US=good. Hurricane=bad. Compassion. It will be the same old code words and nothing will get fixed as more people die of starvation and dehydration because there aren't enough relief workers in the Gulf, nor enough supplies. Speeches substitute for actually getting the job done with George W. Bush.

The Real Story

From michaelmoore.com:

Our group has visited many outlying towns and villages in Mississippi and Louisiana, places the Red Cross and FEMA haven't visited in over a week. Often our volunteers are the first relief any of these people have seen. They have no food, water or electricity. People die every day. There are no TV cameras recording this. They have started to report the spin and PR put out by the White House, the happy news that often isn't true ("Everyone gets 2,000 dollars!").

The truth is that there are dead bodies everywhere and no one is picking them up. My crew reports that in most areas there is no FEMA presence, and very little Red Cross. It's been over two weeks since the hurricane and there is simply not much being done. At this point, would you call this situation incompetence or a purposeful refusal to get real help down there?

Opportunity Knocks

I actually figured this would happen.

Speculators Rushing In as the Water Recedes
# Would-be home buyers are betting New Orleans will be a boomtown. And many of the city's poorest residents could end up being forced out.

By David Streitfeld, Times Staff Writer

BATON ROUGE, La. — Brandy Farris is house hunting in New Orleans.

The real estate agent has $10 million in the bank, wired by an investor who has instructed her to scoop up houses — any houses. "Flooding no problem," Farris' newspaper ads advise.

Her backer is a Miami businessman who specializes in buying storm-ravaged property at a deep discount, something that has paid dividends in hurricane-prone Florida. But he may have a harder time finding bargains this time around.

In some ways, Hurricane Katrina seems to have taken a vibrant real estate market and made it hotter. Large sections of the city are underwater, but that's only increasing the demand for dry houses. And in flooded areas, speculators are trying to buy properties on the cheap, hoping that the redevelopment of New Orleans will start a boom.

This land rush has long-term implications in a city where many of the poorest residents were flooded out. It raises the question of what sort of housing — if any — will be available to those without a six-figure salary. If New Orleans ends up a high-priced enclave, without a mix of cultures, races and incomes, something vital may be lost.

"There's a public interest question here," said Ann Oliveri, a senior vice president with the Urban Land Institute, a Washington think tank. "You don't have to abdicate the city to whoever shows up."

For now, though, it's a seller's market, at least for habitable homes.

Two months ago, Steve Young bought a two-bedroom condo in New Orleans' Garden District as an investment for $145,000. Last month, he was transferred by Shell Oil to Houston. Last week, he put the condo on the market.

In a posting on Craigslist, an Internet classified advertising site, Young asked $220,000. He got a dozen serious expressions of interest — enough so he's no longer actively pursuing a buyer.

"I'm pretty positive the market's going to move up from here," he said.

So, to their surprise, are many others.

"I thought this storm was the end of the city," said Arthur Sterbcow, president of New Orleans-based Latter & Blum, one of the biggest real estate brokerages on the Gulf Coast.

"If anyone had told me two weeks ago that I'd be getting the calls and e-mails I'm getting, I would have thought he was ready for the psychiatric ward."

Messages from those wanting to buy houses — whether intact or flooded — and commercial properties are outrunning those who want to sell by a factor of 20, said Sterbcow, who has set up temporary quarters in his firm's Baton Rouge office.

My Country

Sick and Abandoned

By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 15, 2005

It was the stuff of nightmares. Poisonous water moccasins were swimming in the filthy water of the flooded first floor, and snipers, rats and even a 12-foot alligator were roaming the treacherous area just outside the hospital's doors.

"To me, it was like being in hell," said Carl Warner, the chief engineer for Methodist Hospital in the hard-hit eastern part of New Orleans. "There were bodies floating in the water outside the building, and our staffers had to swim through that water to get fuel for the generator."

The patients and staff at Methodist could have been evacuated before Hurricane Katrina hit. But instead they were condemned to several days of fear and agony by bad decision-making in Louisiana and the chaotic ineptitude of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some of the patients died.

Incredibly, when the out-of-state corporate owners of the hospital responded to the flooding by sending emergency relief supplies, they were confiscated at the airport by FEMA and sent elsewhere.

The time to evacuate the hospital was when it became clear that New Orleans was in the path of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. "We had about 137 patients," said Dr. Jeffrey Coco, the hospital's chief of staff, "and we had a company called Lifeguard that was going to take them out."

But apparently there was a reluctance to evacuate without some sort of governmental guidance. When the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, issued a mandatory evacuation order, hospitals were exempted. Dr. Fred Cerise, secretary of Louisiana's Department of Health and Hospitals, said Methodist officials could have decided on their own to evacuate, but that never happened.

Some of the patients were extremely ill, requiring ventilators or dialysis treatment or major surgery. When the hurricane hit, part of the roof blew off, windows were blown out, the atrium was badly damaged and the hospital was drenched with rain. On Monday night the power went out, and on Tuesday, after the levees broke, the first floor became hopelessly flooded.

By midweek you had a bizarre situation in which hundreds of people (patients, doctors, nurses, administrative staffers, relatives and people seeking emergency shelter) were stranded, cut off from the rest of the world, in a badly damaged hospital in a major American city.

Staffers with flashlights worked heroically in a sodden, stench-filled environment in which temperatures reached 110 degrees. Elevators did not work, and some patients weighing more than 400 pounds had to be carried up dark, reeking staircases. When ventilators shut down with the loss of power, volunteers worked in shifts to do the difficult hand-pumping necessary to keep patients alive.

Nevertheless, according to Dr. Albert Barrocas, the chief medical officer, the decline in the well-being of the patients was both palpable and widespread. "All of them were deteriorating in the sense of becoming weak," he said. "You could see in their faces the fact that they were scared."

By Tuesday evening four patients had died, and a dozen were dead by the time the hospital was finally evacuated Friday. Doctors believe half of the deaths were caused by the dreadful conditions in the hospital.

Everybody's suffering would have been eased if the emergency relief effort mounted by the hospital's owner, Universal Health Services in King of Prussia, Pa., had not been interfered with by FEMA. Company officials sent desperately needed water, food, diesel fuel to power the hospital's generators and helicopters to ferry in the supplies and evacuate the most vulnerable individuals.

Bruce Gilbert, Universal's general counsel, told me yesterday, "Those supplies were in fact taken from us by FEMA, and we were unable to get them to the hospital. We then determined that it would be better to send our supplies, food and water to Lafayette [130 miles from New Orleans] and have our helicopters fly them from Lafayette to the hospital."

Significant relief began to reach the hospital on Thursday, and by Friday evening everyone had been removed from the ruined premises. They had endured the agonies of the damned, and for all practical purposes had been abandoned by government at all levels.

When you consider that the Methodist Hospital experience was just one small part of the New Orleans catastrophe, you get a sense of the size of the societal failure that we allowed to happen.

Welcome to the United States in 2005.

Worst. President. Ever.

Support for Bush Continues to Drop, Poll Shows

By TODD S. PURDUM and MARJORIE CONNELLY
Published: September 15, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - A summer of bad news from Iraq, high gasoline prices, economic unease and now the devastation of Hurricane Katrina has left President Bush with overall approval ratings for his job performance and handling of Iraq, foreign policy and the economy at or near the lowest levels of his presidency, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

For the first time, just half of Americans approve of Mr. Bush's handling of terrorism, which has been his most consistent strength since he scored 90 percent approval ratings in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 6 in 10 now say that he does not share their priorities for the country, 10 percentage points worse than on the eve of his re-election last fall, while barely half say he has strong qualities of leadership, about the same as said so at the early low-ebb of his presidency in the summer of 2001.

More Americans now distrust the federal government to do the right thing than at any time since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And the poll revealed a sharp racial divide. While half of all respondents disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled the aftermath of Katrina, nearly three quarters of blacks do. (Mr. Bush won only about 10 percent of the black vote last year.)

The hurricane, alone, does not appear to have taken any significant toll on Mr. Bush's overall job approval rating, which remains stuck virtually where it has been since early summer. But the findings do suggest that the slow federal response to the hurricane has increased public doubts about the Bush administration's effectiveness. Fifty-six percent of Americans said they were now less confident about the government's ability to respond to a terrorist attack or natural disaster.

Taken together, the numbers suggest that a public that has long seen Mr. Bush as a determined leader, whether it agreed with him or not, has growing doubts about his capacity to deal with pressing problems. More than 6 in 10 said they were uneasy about his ability to make the right decisions about the war in Iraq, and half expressed similar unease about his ability to deal with the problems of the storm's victims.

Mr. Bush's support remained strong among Republicans, conservatives, evangelical Christians and those who said they voted for him last fall. Nearly twice as many people - 63 percent - said the country was "pretty seriously" on the wrong track as those who said it was headed in the right direction, equal to the worst level of Mr. Bush's presidency during a spate of bad news last year.

Over all, 41 percent of respondents approved of Mr. Bush's performance in office, while 53 percent disapproved. Those figures are in line with other national polls conducted in the last week, roughly equal to the worst ratings Mr. Bush has ever received, comparable to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton's worst ratings, but well above the worst ever posted by the president's father, Jimmy Carter and Richard M. Nixon.

Worst. President. Ever.

As Brad DeLong likes to say,"Impeach him. Now."

The Clergy Gap

Vatican to Check U.S. Seminaries on Gay Presence

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: September 15, 2005

Investigators appointed by the Vatican have been instructed to review each of the 229 Roman Catholic seminaries in the United States for "evidence of homosexuality" and for faculty members who dissent from church teaching, according to a document prepared to guide the process.

The Vatican document, given to The New York Times yesterday by a priest, surfaces as Catholics await a Vatican ruling on whether homosexuals should be barred from the priesthood.

In a possible indication of the ruling's contents, the American archbishop who is supervising the seminary review said last week that "anyone who has engaged in homosexual activity or has strong homosexual inclinations," should not be admitted to a seminary.

Edwin O'Brien, archbishop for the United States military, told The National Catholic Register that the restriction should apply even to those who have not been sexually active for a decade or more.

American seminaries are under Vatican review as a result of the sexual abuse scandal that swept the priesthood in 2002. Church officials in the United States and Rome agreed that they wanted to take a closer look at how seminary candidates were screened for admission, and whether they were being prepared for lives of chastity and celibacy.

The issue of gay seminarians and priests has been in the spotlight because a study commissioned by the church found last year that about 80 percent of the young people victimized by priests were boys.

Experts in human sexuality have cautioned that homosexuality and attraction to children are different, and that a disproportionate percentage of boys may have been abused because priests were more likely to have access to male targets - like altar boys or junior seminarians - than to girls.

But some church officials in the United States and in Rome, including some bishops and many conservatives, attributed the abuse to gay priests and called for an overhaul of the seminaries. Expectation for such a move rose this year with the election of Pope Benedict XVI, who has spoken of the need to "purify" the church.

It is unknown how many Catholic priests are gay. Estimates range widely, from 10 percent to 60 percent.

The catechism of the Catholic Church says people with "deep-seated" homosexual tendencies must live in chastity because "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."

The Rev. Donald B. Cozzens, a former seminary rector who set off a controversy five years ago when he published a book asserting that "the priesthood is or is becoming a gay profession," said in an interview yesterday that many in the church had come to accept his observation.

But he said he was concerned that the seminary review would lead the church to ask celibate faculty members and seminarians to withdraw.

"That would be a major mistake from my perspective," said Father Cozzens, who teaches in the religious studies department at John Carroll University in Cleveland. "First, I think it's unfair if not unjust for committed gay seminarians and faculty who are leading chaste lives. And secondly, I don't know how you can really enforce that."

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a sociologist who resigned in May as editor of the Jesuit magazine America under pressure from the Vatican, said that with the shortage of priests, the church can hardly afford to dismiss gay seminarians.

"You could have somebody who's been in the seminary for five or six years and is planning to be ordained and the rector knows they're a homosexual," said Father Reese, now a visiting scholar at Santa Clara University in California. "What are they going to do, throw them out?

"It's much healthier if a seminarian can talk about their sexuality with a spiritual director, but this kind of policy is going to force it all underground."

Archbishop O'Brien, who is supervising the seminary review, did not respond to requests for interviews made to his office in Washington. In an interview with The Associated Press, he said the Vatican document was being reviewed by the pope and could be released this year.

The seminary review, called an apostolic visitation, will send teams appointed by the Vatican to the 229 seminaries, which have more than 4,500 students. The last such review began about 25 years ago and took six years to complete.

If you think the Catholic Church has a clergy crisis right now, you ain't seen nothing yet. Fully 75% of my male seminary classmates were gay. I'm sure that in the more "orthodox" schools like Stuebenville and Emmitsberg, the numbers would have been slightly lower, but the die has already been cast: the clergy, in general, is going to be more female (in the protestant ranks and in the RC lay ministry) and more gay and more rare. Gee, people aren't signing up for a profession which pays poorly, has terrible hours and no credibility in the larger culture.

Good Corn

Reinventing the cob
# Corn is sweeter than ever, but how to recapture its true flavor? A few cooking tricks make all the difference.

By Russ Parsons, Times Staff Writer

THE taste of corn isn't what it used to be, people complain. And you know what? They're right. There's one very good reason for that — corn isn't the same plant it used to be.

Modern corn, for all its faults, is the result of thousands of years of painstaking genetic selection. And therein lies a very important lesson: In agriculture, as in life, you have to be careful what you wish for.

New varieties of corn, bred to have higher levels of sugar and to preserve that sweetness longer, have flooded the market in the last 15 years. Today they're about the only types of corn you'll find.

These brave new cobs are definitely sweeter than the old varieties, but they also tend to be a little tougher and somewhat lacking in that ephemeral "corny" flavor.

Early in the season, we are willing to overlook these shortcomings, so overjoyed are we by the sheer presence of corn at all. But by this time of year, when that sweet honeymoon feeling has worn off, we start to get a little restive. Still, it is way too early to give up on corn. Southern California farmers will be harvesting it for at least two more months and possibly even until Thanksgiving.

Instead, you need to use a few tricks. Granted, the appeal of plain old corn on the cob, simply buttered and generously salted, may not be what it was two months ago. Now you have to get a little creative in your cooking, picking good partners for corn and looking at those kernels in a whole new way. You might even have to throw out some old notions about how to cook corn. But that's getting a little ahead of the story. What happened to corn in the first place?

A complicated history

CORN is a grain, but one that we eat at an immature stage. If left on the stalk to full maturity, the kernels would become as hard as wheat and almost as full of starch. In fact, this is the state in which most of the corn that is grown in America is harvested — those varieties are not intended for eating but for processing in a whole range of industrial applications, including sweeteners, textiles, automobile fuels and feed for cattle.

The kinds of corn we eat are picked within a month of pollination. In agriculture, these are called "sweet" corn, to differentiate them from field corn. Because of their immaturity, they also have been called "green" corn (hence green corn tamales, which are made with the addition of sweet corn rather than purely from masa, or ground dried corn).

Almost every type of sweet corn grown today has been developed by man for a certain set of characteristics. This is not an example of Frankenfood genetic tinkering — modern corn isn't a genetically modified organism, or GMO. It has been going on for centuries. The ur-corn, teosinte, had cobs 2 to 3 inches long that contained half a dozen hard, starchy kernels.

The new super-sweet corns are the result of traditional plant breeding spurred by naturally occurring genetic mutations. Think of it in terms of basketball players: In the general population, the occurrence of extremely tall humans is rare. But if two extremely tall people should find each other, fall in love and have children, the odds that their offspring will be extremely tall are, well, pretty short.

And so it is with corn. Once breeders started working with a few "freak" corn plants that produced ears with very sweet kernels, it was just a matter of breeding and crossbreeding a few dozen generations to get where we are today.

But genetics is as complicated as a jigsaw puzzle, and it's hard to alter one factor without changing another. In the case of corn, increasing the sugar content has meant a decline in that amorphous quality called "corn flavor." It also means kernels that are no longer creamy but crunchy.

The textural difference is easy to explain: The kernels are so full of sugar that there's not as much room for moisture. And to hold it all in, the skins are tougher.

Flavor is a little harder to explain. What we think of as corn flavor — as opposed to sweetness and texture — appears only after cooking; it's based primarily on aroma. It is mainly a function of a chemical compound called dimethyl sulfide (which is also found in a wide range of foodstuffs, ranging from cabbage to lobster meat). The new varieties of corn are lower than traditional varieties in the chemicals that create dimethyl sulfide.

There is hope for people who miss real corn flavor. In the last couple of years, varieties have been introduced with complicated genetics that offer the best characteristics of the old and new types. The goal is an ear of corn with the sweetness and slow sugar-to-starch conversion of the new corn, but with the creaminess and strong corn flavor of the old.

The seeds for these varieties are more expensive, so the farmer has to charge more. For this reason, they have been slow to catch on so far. Craig Underwood, who runs his family's popular farm stand in Somis, says he has tried these varieties. "I did like the flavor. It was really sweet corn," he says. "But people weren't willing to pay the extra money for it."

In any case, when you're at the farm stand or produce market shopping for corn, odds are you won't have a clue about the particular genetic strain you're buying. At best, you'll be offered a choice of yellow or white — or bicolor, a cross-pollinated combination of the two.

The differences are meaningless in terms of flavor. Despite what you may have been told, one color of corn is not necessarily sweeter or "cornier" than the other. The small amount of beta-carotene pigment that gives yellow corn its color is flavorless, and the new varieties all come in both white and yellow.

Really, the choice of color is just packaging; the one you prefer will to a great extent be based on where you live. Different areas of the country prefer different colors of corn. Generally speaking, white corn is preferred from the mid-Atlantic region through the South, bicolor is popular in the Northeast, and yellow rules most everywhere else.

In Southern California, white corn has come to dominate to the point that today, yellow and bicolor can be extremely hard to find. Color preferences in Southern California have done an about-face in the last 15 years, switching from yellow to white in response to what farmers say was overwhelming demand.

Tom Tapia, of the Tapia Brothers farm stand in the San Fernando Valley, still grows some yellow corn, but it is an early variety, available only in July. "After that, it's all white," he says. "Back in the day, when they were first coming out with super-sweet varieties, we could only get white ones. So when people tasted that, they were like, 'Wow, that's really good.' Today we can get yellow corn that is just as sweet, but people just have in their head that white is better."

Steve Tamai, of growers-market favorite Tamai Farms, says he has experienced the same reversal in customer preference. "We used to grow all yellow, and now we grow all white and a little bicolor," he says. "The market changed. Before, we couldn't give white corn away. As soon as the super-sweets came up, white corn really took off."

The rules have changed

HOW do you get the best flavor out of these new super-sweet varieties? Remember that corn flavor (as opposed to sweetness) develops with heat, so the first rule is to be sure to cook them thoroughly, but without overcooking. This runs counter to the traditional wisdom of undercooking corn — that was when the problem was preserving sugar rather than keeping corn flavor. Older varieties that were higher in dimethyl sulfide precursors gave you a greater margin of error. Undercook modern varieties and you'll end up with something simple as candy. (There is, of course, an upper limit to this — keep tasting the corn to see when it's ready, and if you see the kernels starting to dimple, stop cooking immediately.)

If you want traditional corn on the cob, put the ears in a pot just big enough to hold them and cover with cold water. Bring the water to a boil and cook the corn for a few minutes. The kernels will darken slightly. Pull the corn from the pot and let it cool a bit.

There are also ways to reinforce the natural corn flavor. Soak corn still in its husks in water, then grill it. The green-flavored steam from the husks will give the cob a boost. You can then eat the corn either on the cob (try using a flavored butter — cream the butter with some chipotle purée, or even just lime zest, then shape it in a log and chill it), or use it in combination with other ingredients, such as mixed with spicy arugula, sweet tomatoes and nutty Parmigiano-Reggiano in a late-summer salad.

Another way to bolster the flavor of sweet corn is by pairing it with another type of corn — such as masa, or plain cornmeal. San Francisco chef Jeremiah Tower's great corn blini can be transformed by adding kernels of sweet corn and some minced peppers. He served them as a mild foil for smoked sturgeon and caviar. These new blini are so rich-tasting that you can simply smear them with a little Mexican sour cream and some fresh cilantro.

On the other hand, you can play up the sweetness and crisp texture of the new corn while downplaying its lack of deep corn flavor. Combine corn with lots of complementary ingredients. Make a "risotto" with corn kernels and liven it up with chorizo, green onions, red bell peppers, zucchini, shrimp and fresh basil.

It's a pretty safe bet no one's going to complain, "You know, I just don't think this corn tastes like it used to."

Tapia Brothers, 5251 Hayvenhurst Ave., Encino; (818) 905-6155.

Underwood Farm Market, 5696 Los Angeles Ave., Somis; (805) 386-4660.

Tamai Farms is at the following growers markets: Tuesday: Pasadena (Villa Park) and Culver City; Wednesday: Santa Monica and Fullerton; Thursday: Westwood, Glendale and La Cienega Plaza; Friday: Long Beach and San Pedro; Saturday: Santa Monica, Santa Monica (Pico), Torrance and La Cañada Flintridge; Sunday: Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles.

**

Yesterday, today and tomorrow in the cornfield

BESIDES traditional corn — which is practically nonexistent today (and would be so starchy you wouldn't like it even if you could find it) — corn breeders recognize three main families of improved sweet corn, each with its own set of attributes.

Agronomists refer to these genotypes using two-letter shorthand. The most basic improved corn is "su," for "sugary." This type of corn was first mentioned in seed journals in the 1820s but had probably existed before. It was the result of the earliest kind of genetic manipulation, farmers selecting seeds from the sweetest plants to propagate the next year.

Most varieties of this type of corn have sugar contents ranging from 10% to 15%, about the same as a supermarket peach. But this sweetness is fleeting; the sugar starts converting to starch the moment it is picked. If left at room temperature, an ear of "su" corn will lose half of its sugar in less than a day. Even if chilled to normal refrigerator temperatures (40 to 50 degrees), it'll lose two-thirds of its sweetness within three days.

Corn that is bred to be sweeter is called "se," for "sugar-enhanced." These types are a lot sweeter than normal corn — they contain as much as twice the sugar — but the sugar-to-starch conversion occurs at about the same rate as with "su" corn. The advantage is that because the corn starts out so much sweeter, it takes up to a week of storage before the sweetness falls to the level of normal corn.

The real King Kongs of the corn world are varieties that are not only super-sweet but also go starchy much more slowly. These are called "sh2" corns because of the way they shrivel and appear shrunken after drying. These varieties contain sugar levels between 30% and 45% — two to three times that of normal corn. And their sugar-to-starch conversion rate is so slow as to be almost nonexistent. Even after a couple of days of storage at warm room temperature — 80 degrees — these varieties still have more than twice as much sugar as a freshly picked ear of "su" corn.

Most of the corn you buy today is either "se" or "sh2." The corn of the future will probably be one of the new varieties that aim for a combination of old and new qualities. These fall into two main categories. Some try to accomplish this by a straight genetic blend, combining the best characteristics of each in every kernel. Others take a different route, mixing on the same cob kernels of each type of corn, so a single ear might contain 25% "su," 50% "se" and 25% "sh2."

Small Town Fun

Falls Church Festival Set for Next Weekend

Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page VA05

The city of Falls Church Recreation and Parks Division will hold its annual fall festival Sept. 17 in Cherry Hill Park.

The hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be live entertainment, amusement rides and crafts, and booths run by businesses and civic organizations. In addition, there will be a children's activity tent from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., with face painting and craft projects.

Admission is free; $1 tickets are required for amusement rides, some of which may charge more than one ticket.

The park is at 312 Park Ave. For more information, call 703-248-5077.

Oddly enough, my little city does a bang up job at these sorts of things. The street food is great fun, the Farmers' Market will be in full swing and there will be old-fashioned kinds of amusement park rides for the kids. It's an old-timey small town experience, the kind I remember from my childhood in Northern Minnesota. If you are in the DC area and want to give your kids an escape from the gloom of our days, weather permitting, this should be a fun experience. Center City Falls Church is a 20 minute hike from either East or West Falls Church Metro stops and is reachable by Metro bus on weekend. Get off the 3B or 28B buses at Virginia Avenue and follow your ears for one block if you want to avoid the hike from Metro. Parking will be tight so consider Metro. And have a good time.

One Night in Bankok

I found an interesting link to The Hindu Business Line about Tasty-Bites which Rich Erwin provided as a link to easy to store, serve and prepare disaster food. I have a lot of experience with Koh-I-Noor products, and I'm a gourmet of Indian food and cooking. This stuff is good.

Koh-I-Noor makes a quality product that the Indian nationals I know trust. If you have allergies to the chemicals in "shelf-stable" products, you might have a problem with them. I don't and enjoy these products as one-off from my local (superb, one of the best in DC, which has a large Indian community) Indian restaurant. One of the joys of living where I do is the proliferation of excellent ethnic resaurants, which provide superb meals at afforable prices. Falls Church is a garden of superb ethnic cooking and I tend to order meals which can teach me something. Unless I've had a horrible day and need a comfort food like pad thai and tom kahr ghai from Pilin. This is a "date" restaurant for Thai couples, notice what they are eating and you will get the kitchen's best. Most of the menu is Thai street food dressed up for white plate dining, the four chili sauce condiment containters will only be provided to Anglos if you request it. The sambar and other chili and fish sauces are exquisite, if you like that sort of thing. I do. Kick up that Pad Thai the way a Thai would.

Post-Modernism

Roberts Appears Headed For Confirmation

UPDATED: 2:28 pm EDT September 14, 2005

WASHINGTON -- On the second day of Senate questioning of chief justice nominee John Roberts, there are clear signs that he's on a smooth path toward confirmation to head the Supreme Court.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told Roberts, "If people can't vote for you, then I doubt that they can vote for any Republican nominee."

Roberts answered questions Wednesday on a variety of subjects. He said if four justices vote for a stay of execution, and a fifth vote would keep the appeal alive temporarily, he'd cast that vote. And he said he opposes the use of foreign law in rendering U.S. court decisions.

On another issue, Roberts said the government should not keep the news media from recording events to which the public has access. Among those things, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, is the government's response and recovery effort from the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

Regarding cameras in the high courtroom, Roberts didn't exactly say whether they should be there, but he quipped that former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson -- now in the cast of TV's "Law and Order" -- has assured him that "television cameras are nothing to be afraid of." Thompson is shepherding Roberts through the nomination process.

On one of the more controversial subjects to come before the high court this past year, Sen. Sam Brownbeck, R-Kan,, asked Roberts about a ruling that OK'd seizure of people's property for commercial development.

In his answer, Roberts said the ruling has sparked a widespread reaction, including bills to restrain government powers to take property by eminent domain. Roberts said that "leaves the ball in the court of the legislature."

He refused to say whether he thought the ruling was correct or not.

He also refused to answer a question on the legal status of the unborn.

Democrats on the committee are sometimes showing frustration with the answers being given -- or not given -- by chief justice nominee Roberts.

He's said several times that he can't answer questions because they deal with issues that could come before the Supreme Court.

At one point on Tuesday, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden told him, "Go ahead and continue not to answer."

He later interrupted an answer from Roberts. And when the committee chairman told him to let Roberts answer, Biden said, "His answers are misleading."

Republican chairman Sen. Arlen Specter said, "They may be misleading, but they are his answers."

And Roberts responded, "With respect, they are my answers, and with respect, they are not misleading."

As a practical matter, I suppose he had to do this, but this is the most frustrating set of hearings I can ever remember viewing. Roberts' writings are pretty scary, but you wouldn't know that from watching this particular kabuki performance. I'll be waiting to see how the liberal groups respond during the rest of the week.

I've seen Nan Aron, Ralph Neas and company in action, in person over the summer. Talking points for the liberals haven't been nearly as effective as the simple ones for the conservatives. If the Dems buy some decent marketing help for this effort, there is a chance. Memo to the Senate Dems: you didn't change one mind with this set of hearings. You are hapless toads. You need a marketing summary of three talking points. That's it, America is not a country of policy wonks. You aren't trying to convince Bill Clinton, you are talking to the broad middle who doesn't sit around parsing legal findings. Tell me, in five sentences, why I should buy your product. If you can do it in three, so much the better.

Right now the talking points are all RNC: he's a great guy, smart, with a wonderful family. Dems, show me what you got.

Setting the Scene

Avian flu 'could spread in weeks'

ITN Wednesday September 14, 02:59 PM

Experts have warned that the UK will have just weeks to prepare for a bird flu pandemic once it begins to spread in Asia.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has been trying to work out how soon a pandemic could start affecting the UK.

This has involved assessing whether methods such as travel bans and screening people at airports could slow down the spread.

It is believed little can be done once the infection arrives, as just one case can multiply and quickly infect many other people.

Experts say that avian flu, which affects birds, will eventually mutate so it can spread easily between humans, leading to a pandemic strain.

Dr John Edmunds, from the HPA's centre for infections, said: "One of the areas we have been looking at is the international spread.

"That is looking at how quickly it might spread from the source of the pandemic, which most people would assume to be south east Asia because most cases have come from there, and how you might be able to slow that down by implementing travel restrictions.

"But how effective are travel restrictions at slowing that spread?

"In fact, the results of the models suggest that travel restrictions really aren't that effective at all.

"They buy you very little time but they may be economically very expensive."

There have been more than 100 cases of humans catching flu from birds in Asia, but once it starts spreading in people, the risks become greater.

Bush's disaster response makes me feel real confident. We are on our own.

I'm working with several groups who will be getting togethers meetings of epidemiologists, the American Red Cross and other disaster relief agencies up to speed. It is going to be a busy fall. We are going to have to work around FEMA and that will take extraordinary coordination between the NGOs. We know it and we're at work already. Getting the American MSM up to speed is the next task in the pipeline and I'm already in touch with the working groups who are tasked with this critical piece of work. The MSM may be asleep (or, more likely, too afraid of the subject to cover it) but there is a large group out here in the flu community who aren't and we are using the Internet and the phone to pull together a massive response. If you are in the habit of prayer, praying that we have enough time to save lives would be on order.

Notice that we have a huge population of people in the American South who are stressed and immuno-compromised, along with the soldiers and civilians in Iraq. The conditions are actually worse than WWI.

Beneath the Band-Aid

Sometimes, you have to get out of yourself to see what is going on. The Economist's cover story this week is Katrina and the failures of the USG. The cover photo is revealing, this is the face of the disaster that the rest of the world is seeing, but we aren't, unless we read the foreign press. The Economist is not a liberal publication by any sense that I understand the word and I've been reading it for ten years. Go look at the images they chose and what this UK publication has to say.

The UK has their own racial problems, but that has made this publication sensitive to issues. When a truthteller has problems of their own, that doesn't make them less credible when they tell the truth. When I have a broken leg, I'll be inclined to listen to the testimony of someone else who has had one, too.

Plannzzz

I will be attending the anti-war rally/march on September 24 here in DC. If you are going to be in the area for the march, email me and let's get together to march together. I'll be with the other group bloggers from American Street.

As soon as I get an idea where we are going to meet up, I'll let you know. I'll turn the site over to the guest bloggers for that day. Once the rally is over, I anticipate going out for dinner with the other bloggers and interested readers. AmStreet bloggers are scattered all over the country so I've only met one or two. Hell, Neddie Jingo is right here in Northern Virginia and we haven't met yet, so this is a day I'm really looking forward to, both to be one of the peasants with pitchforks in the street and to meet my readers and blogging colleagues. It's good to have things to look forward to.

Once we get past the Supreme Court fight, I'm also going to grab a vacation. I haven't had one since 1998 and I'm definitely feeling the need for R and R.

Rehibilitation

Hurricane George

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, September 14, 2005; 1:13 PM

After two weeks of being battered for ignoring a drowning city in the wake of a hurricane, the Bush White House is trying to get back into the business it knows best: Making its own weather.

President Bush was famously on vacation when the disaster hit. He and his hurriedly reconstituted staff of political operatives floundered for a while, reflexively pursuing the time-honored White House strategy of admitting no mistakes -- and sticking to it, even after it was clear that the nation had seen those mistakes with its own eyes.

But now there's a new plan.

The first stage of the White House's strategy: Stop defending the indefensible.

So Bush yesterday, in an almost unprecedented move, took responsibility for the problematic response to Katrina -- at least "to the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right."

That strained, vague, partial acknowledgement -- wedged into a brief appearance with the visiting Iraqi president -- was nevertheless enough to garner the White House "Bush Takes Blame" headlines everywhere this morning.

And that, the White House hopes, will be enough to start putting the controversy behind him.

Then it's on to the next stage: Trying to shift the nation's attention away from the past and toward a future in which Bush looks more like he did after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. That means reclaiming his mantle as a leader, championing the heroism of rescue workers, celebrating the compassion of the American people, and taking advantage of new opportunities to pursue conservative ideological goals.

With a nationally televised address from Louisiana on Thursday and a prayer service at the National Cathedral Friday morning, White House officials are hoping that their careful choreography and meticulously crafted scripts will give the media new imagery and a new story line to rival -- and hopefully even eclipse -- the horror of New Orleans.

Accountability Moment

Remember Condi saying, "Nobody ever said anything about flying airplanes into buildings"?

F.A.A. Alerted on Qaeda in '98, 9/11 Panel Said

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: September 14, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 13 - American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission. The officials also realized months before the Sept. 11 attacks that two of the three airports used in the hijackings had suffered repeated security lapses.

Federal Aviation Administration officials were also warned in 2001 in a report prepared for the agency that airport screeners' ability to detect possible weapons had "declined significantly" in recent years, but little was done to remedy the problem, the Sept. 11 commission found.

The White House and many members of the commission, which has completed its official work, have been battling for more than a year over the release of the commission's report on aviation failures, which was completed in August 2004.

A heavily redacted version was released by the Bush administration in January, but commission members complained that the deleted material contained information critical to the public's understanding of what went wrong on Sept. 11. In response, the administration prepared a new public version of the report, which was posted Tuesday on the National Archives Web site.

While the new version still blacks out numerous references to particular shortcomings in aviation security, it restores dozens of other portions of the report that the administration had considered too sensitive for public release.

The newly disclosed material follows the basic outline of what was already known about aviation failings, namely that the F.A.A. had ample reason to suspect that Al Qaeda might try to hijack a plane yet did little to deter it. But it also adds significant details about the nature and specificity of aviation warnings over the years, security lapses by the government and the airlines, and turf battles between federal agencies.

Weather Report

We are already getting heavy showers from the first feeder bands of Ophelia, and this is expected to result in thunderstorms later tonight and tomorrow. All the usual provisos about service outages apply. The grid in this part of the world is pretty fragile

The Vulnerable

A Fatal Incuriosity

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 14, 2005

I hate spending time in hospitals and nursing homes. I find them to be some of the most depressing places on earth.

Maybe that's why the stories of the sick and elderly who died, 45 in a New Orleans hospital and 34 in St. Rita's nursing home in the devastated St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans, haunt me so.

You're already vulnerable and alone when suddenly you're beset by nature and betrayed by your government.

At St. Rita's, 34 seniors fought to live with what little strength they had as the lights went out and the water rose over their legs, over their shoulders, over their mouths. As Gardiner Harris wrote in The Times, the failed defenses included a table nailed against a window and a couch pushed against a door.

Several electric wheelchairs were gathered near the front entrance, maybe by patients who dreamed of evacuating. Their drowned bodies were found swollen and unrecognizable a week later, as Mr. Harris reported, "draped over a wheelchair, wrapped in a shower curtain, lying on a floor in several inches of muck."

At Memorial Medical Center, victims also suffered in 100-degree heat and died, some while waiting to be rescued in the four days after Katrina hit.

As Louisiana's death toll spiked to 423 yesterday, the state charged St. Rita's owners with multiple counts of negligent homicide, accusing them of not responding to warnings about the hurricane. "In effect," State Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. said, "I think that their inactions resulted in the death of these people."

President Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have reached a patch of reality beyond spin. Now he's the one drowning, unable to rescue himself by patting small black children on the head during photo-ops and making scripted attempts to appear engaged. He can keep going back down there, as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation, but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many lives could have been saved.

He made the ultimate sacrifice and admitted his administration had messed up, something he'd refused to do through all of the other screw-ups, from phantom W.M.D. and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to the miscalculations on the Iraq occupation and the insurgency, which will soon claim 2,000 young Americans.

How many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?

How many indeed, MoDo?

All Blogged Out

The Knight-Ridder news service has a John Roberts blog! Roberts Left and Right:
A Conversation features posts by Alliance for Justice President and founder Nan Aron and legal director Seth Rosenthal and Lee Otis, a former associate White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush (41) and participated in Supreme Court confirmations. She is also a former general counsel for the Department of Energy, and a former law clerk for Justice Antonin Scalia.

So, the old media are using the new media. We are living in a hybrid world.

Inept From The Top

Chertoff delayed federal response, memo shows

By Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

As thousands of hurricane victims went without food, water and shelter in the days after Katrina's early morning Aug. 29 landfall, critics assailed Brown for being responsible for delays that might have cost hundreds of lives.

But Chertoff - not Brown - was in charge of managing the national response to a catastrophic disaster, according to the National Response Plan, the federal government's blueprint for how agencies will handle major natural disasters or terrorist incidents. An order issued by President Bush in 2003 also assigned that responsibility to the homeland security director.

But according to a memo obtained by Knight Ridder, Chertoff didn't shift that power to Brown until late afternoon or evening on Aug. 30, about 36 hours after Katrina hit Louisiana and Mississippi. That same memo suggests that Chertoff may have been confused about his lead role in disaster response and that of his department.

"As you know, the President has established the `White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response.' He will meet with us tomorrow to launch this effort. The Department of Homeland Security, along with other Departments, will be part of the task force and will assist the Administration with its response to Hurricane Katrina," Chertoff said in the memo to the secretaries of defense, health and human services and other key federal agencies.

On the day that Chertoff wrote the memo, Bush was in San Diego presiding over a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo for the first time declared Katrina an "Incident of National Significance," a key designation that triggers swift federal coordination. The following afternoon, Bush met with his Cabinet, then appeared before TV cameras in the White House Rose Garden to announce the government's planned action.

That same day, Aug. 31, the Department of Defense, whose troops and equipment are crucial in such large disasters, activated its Task Force Katrina. But active-duty troops didn't begin to arrive in large numbers along the Gulf Coast until Saturday.

White House and homeland security officials wouldn't explain why Chertoff waited some 36 hours to declare Katrina an incident of national significance and why he didn't immediately begin to direct the federal response from the moment on Aug. 27 when the National Hurricane Center predicted that Katrina would strike the Gulf Coast with catastrophic force in 48 hours. Nor would they explain why Bush felt the need to appoint a separate task force.

Chertoff's hesitation and Bush's creation of a task force both appear to contradict the National Response Plan and previous presidential directives that specify what the secretary of homeland security is assigned to do without further presidential orders. The goal of the National Response Plan is to provide a streamlined framework for swiftly delivering federal assistance when a disaster - caused by terrorists or Mother Nature - is too big for local officials to handle.

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, referred most inquiries about the memo and Chertoff's actions to the Department of Homeland Security.

"There will be an after-action report" on the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Perino said. She added that "Chertoff had the authority to invoke the Incident of National Significance, and he did it on Tuesday."

Perino said the creation of the White House task force didn't add another bureaucratic layer or delay the response to the devastating hurricane. "Absolutely not," she said. "I think it helped move things along." When asked whether the delay in issuing the Incident of National Significance was to allow Bush time to return to Washington, Perino replied: "Not that I'm aware of."

Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, didn't dispute that the National Response Plan put Chertoff in charge in federal response to a catastrophe. But he disputed that the bureaucracy got in the way of launching the federal response.

"There was a tremendous sense of urgency," Knocke said. "We were mobilizing the greatest response to a disaster in the nation's history."

Knocke noted that members of the Coast Guard were already in New Orleans performing rescues and FEMA personnel and supplies had been deployed to the region.

The Department of Homeland Security has refused repeated requests to provide details about Chertoff's schedule and said it couldn't say specifically when the department requested assistance from the military. Knocke said a military liaison was working with FEMA, but said he didn't know his or her name or rank. FEMA officials said they wouldn't provide information about the liaison.

Knocke said members of almost every federal agency had already been meeting as part of the department's Interagency Incident Management Group, which convened for the first time on the Friday before the hurricane struck. So it would be a mistake, he said, to interpret the memo as meaning that Tuesday, Aug. 30 was the first time that members of the federal government coordinated.

The Chertoff memo indicates that the response to Katrina wasn't left to disaster professionals, but was run out of the White House, said George Haddow, a former deputy chief of staff at FEMA during the Clinton administration and the co-author of an emergency management textbook.

"It shows that the president is running the disaster, the White House is running it as opposed to Brown or Chertoff," Haddow said. Brown "is a convenient fall guy. He's not the problem really. The problem is a system that was marginalized."

A former FEMA director under President Reagan expressed shock by the inaction that Chertoff's memo suggested. It showed that Chertoff "does not have a full appreciation for what the country is faced with - nor does anyone who waits that long," said Gen. Julius Becton Jr., who was FEMA director from 1985-1989.

"Anytime you have a delay in taking action, there's a potential for losing lives," Becton told Knight Ridder. "I have no idea how many lives we're talking about. ... I don't understand why, except that they were inefficient."

Chertoff's Aug. 30 memo came on the heels of a memo from Brown, written several hours after Katrina made landfall, showing that the FEMA director was waiting for Chertoff's permission to get help from others within the massive department. In that memo, first obtained by the Associated Press last week, Brown requested Chertoff's "assistance to make available DHS employees willing to deploy as soon as possible." It asked for another 1,000 homeland security workers within two days and 2,000 within a week.

Emphasis mine.

Aftermath and the Law

Owners of Nursing Home Charged
Negligent Homicide Alleged in Deaths of 34 Patients Who Were Not Evacuated

By Peter Whoriskey and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 14, 2005; Page A01

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 13 -- Louisiana authorities charged the owners of a New Orleans area nursing home with negligent homicide Tuesday after 34 patients perished in the facility in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

On a day in which Louisiana's death toll escalated to 423, state Attorney General Charles C. Foti Jr. said the owners of St. Rita's nursing home in St. Bernard Parish had been warned repeatedly by government officials and the news media that Katrina was coming, and also declined to evacuate the patients when asked if they wanted to do so. "In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these patients," he said.

Foti announced the charges against the owners, Mable B. Mangano, 62, and Salvador A. Mangano, 65, at a late-afternoon news conference here. He said they had turned themselves in and had been booked on 34 counts of negligent homicide at the East Baton Rouge Parish jail.

Foti also said the state would investigate the deaths of 45 patients whose bodies were discovered Monday at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, as well as any other instances in which negligence may have led to the deaths of senior citizens or others unable to care for themselves.

"I'm going to look at every place in the affected area where patients died of unnatural causes," he said. A hospital or health care facility with "people that can't make a free choice because they are sick or unable to care for themselves has a duty to provide for their safety."

I appreciate the work of the reporters who are, in essence, working in a war zone.

Over There

Series of Baghdad Bombings Kill at Least 141
Attacks Mounted for Hours and Targeted Civilians and U.S. Military

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 14, 2005; 8:33 AM

BAGHDAD, Sept. 14 -- Insurgents killed at least 141 people Wednesday in at least 10 separate bombings and rocket attacks that made for one of Baghdad's deadliest days.

Targets included crowds of Iraqi civilians and at least three U.S. military convoys. The deadliest attack, in a northwest Baghdad neighborhood, exploded among crowds of Shiite Muslim day laborers gathered to look for work. Iraq's Interior Ministry said at least 88 died in that attack alone, news agencies said.

Television footage showed victims lying on the floors of hospitals, wincing in pain. Iraqi security forces and women in black abayas ran among the twisted, blackened frames of cars, peering inside for victims.

Attacks mounted for hours throughout the day, bringing Baghdad to a standstill.

Panicked families ran from hospitals to morgues, many seeking more than one dead. Armed gunmen--both of Shiite militia and Iraqi regular forces-- held intersections and closed roads around the city as attacks, and rumors of attacks, grew.

"Explosion! Explosion!" a Shiite militia fighter yelled at one crossing, waving an AK-47 to turn back families looking for their dead.

Other attacks included two other car bombs that killed a total of 26 people; a rocket attack that killed two Iraqi civilians; a car bomb that targeted an Iraqi army convoy, killing three police, and two separate car bombs that hit separate U.S. military convoys, wounding two Americans, Iraqi and U.S. officials said.

Does it strike anybody besides me that the "Iraqi insurgents" (I think of them as Iraqi citizens who don't like being occupied) have all the intel and we have none?

Media Read Around

Here's WashPo media critic Howard Kurtz's wrap of yesterday's Roberts' coverage on the tube:

The Confirmation Waltz

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 14, 2005; 9:03 AM

John Roberts must be a good ballroom dancer.

He displayed all kinds of stutter-step moves in gliding by and tap-dancing around the tougher questions he got at yesterday's Senate hearing.

The tone was more legal seminar than confrontation, almost a chin-pulling session among constitutional scholars. Arlen Specter kicked things off by exploring the doctrine of stare decisis and then moving into more technical terms, such as super stare decisis and the rarely invoked super-duper stare decisis.

The only real sparks in the opening hours came when champion talker Joe Biden pressed JR to answer questions he felt were improper for a potential Supreme Court justice to answer, and Biden accused him of "filibustering" and providing non-answers (which is of course the goal of every nominee), and when Roberts accused Ted Kennedy of having "not accurately represented my position" in citing an old memo on civil rights.

Whatever the issue, Roberts tried to deflect it with talk of two-part tests and three-part tests and balancing acts and respect for precedents. He said he viewed Roe v. Wade as settled law -- "entitled to respect" under stare decisis (but not super stare decisis !) -- without binding himself in any way. ( Stare decisis , for you non-Latin speakers, essentially means respect for precedent.) On Reagan-era issues, he said he was just representing the administration he worked for while ducking any hint of his own opinion. In many cases, he said nothing and said it very well.

The simple fact is that Roberts has the votes to become the next chief justice, and no senator can force him to answer any question he doesn't want to. Which may explain why the hearing seemed to lack much passion.

Almost everyone leads with Roberts on abortion:

Los Angeles Times: Roberts "indicated today that it would be hard for the Supreme Court to overturn its landmark Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion, but he refused to say whether he would support efforts to do so."

USA Today: "In a sometimes testy hearing marked by tart exchanges with Democrats, chief justice nominee John Roberts would not say Tuesday if he'd vote to overturn the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide."

Chicago Tribune: "Asserting that judges should not seek to 'solve society's problems,' chief justice nominee John Roberts Jr. on Tuesday declined to discuss specific cases related to abortion, while outlining a restrained and conservative view of the courts that recognizes overturning precedent is a 'jolt' to the legal system."

Wall Street Journal: "raised concerns among conservatives by telling senators that he recognized a constitutional right to privacy, and backed the 1965 Supreme Court opinion that was used to justify abortion rights."

And here's a quick look at the analysis:

LAT: "John G. Roberts Jr. exuded the quiet confidence of a man who knew that he was ahead in the game during a lengthy but mostly sedate confirmation hearing."

Boston Globe: "Day Two of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings featured Judge John G. Roberts Jr. doing his own performance of the hit single, '50 Ways To Stay Undercover.' "

NYT: "His face never scowled. His level tone seldom varied. He answered questions he found useful to his cause and avoided those he did not. Above all, Judge John G. Roberts Jr. explained his views and defended his honor with the force and fluidity of an advocate who has argued often before tougher judges than those he faced on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday."

Washington Post: "The very model of an enigmatic nominee."

Washington Times: "Republicans and conservatives said John G. Roberts Jr. acquitted himself perfectly before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, but Democrats and liberal activists said he ducked questions and probably lost support for his nomination to be chief justice of the United States."

Salon's Michael Scherer picks up on Roberts's self-description as a baseball umpire: "He spent the day stepping back from the plate, ducking and dodging. With furrowed brow and earnest demeanor, he declined to answer question after question. Even his wife, Jane, appeared to fall into a trance, repeatedly fighting back yawns and drooping eyelids."

While the cable networks stuck with the Roberts hearings far longer than I would have expected, the broadcast networks all led with Bush's semi-mea culpa on the hurricane, not Roberts. The White House is clearly shifting tone in the post-Brownie era. Yesterday was the first time I saw Bush admit there were serious problems with the federal response, although he looked like he was being made to eat his broccoli as he said it. (In fact, that was the first time I saw Bush acknowledge a serious problem anywhere in his administration.) And with tomorrow night's prime-time speech, the White House is clearly making a new push to get off the defensive.

Timely but Worth It

This is for a very traditional Cuban "Ropa Vieja." Serve it with white rice, fried plantains and black beans.
Ropa Vieja

Braised Meat:

2 pounds flank steak

1 onion
4 cloves
3 garlic cloves, mashed
1 bay leaf
1 carrot, cut in chunks
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
Water
Tomato Sauce:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, sliced into rings
1/2 green bell pepper, julienned
3 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
1/4 teaspoon dry oregano
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup reserved beef broth
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 large, ripe tomatoes, coarsely pureed
1/2 teaspoon pimenton (weet paprika)
Salt and fresh-ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs
2 roasted red peppers, sliced

To make meat: Place the meat in a heavy pot, add the remaining ingredients including enough water to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat, cover, reduce heat and simmer 2 hours or until meat is very tender.

Remove meat from the pot and set aside to cool. Reserve 1/2 cup cooking broth for the sauce and freeze the rest for another use.

To make sauce: Heat the oil in a nonreactive large skillet over medium heat. Saute the sliced onions and peppers 5 minutes until soft. Add garlic, oregano, bay leaf, reserved 1/2 cup broth, white wine, tomatoes and paprika. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat and simmer about 10 minutes.

Using your fingers, shred the cooled meat into strands. Add the shredded beef to the sauce, cover and simmer 30 minutes. Correct seasoning by adding salt and pepper. Stir in enough bread crumbs to lightly thicken the sauce. Transfer to warm serving platter and garnish with strips of roasted red peppers. Makes 6 servings.

This is a lot of work, but it is SO worth it. This is a Company meal. Serve it with white rice and black beans. Add a cafe Cubano and your guests will be begging for more.

I really can't think of anything better than ropa vieja and cafe cubano, but my favorite Cuban restaurant seems to have gone out of business, so I'll have to make them myself.

Pappa Arroyo's Black Beans and Rice.

A Good Enchilada

This is simple and quite good. For a family,

Preparation time: 30 minutes.

Enchiladas were a family staple growing up, though thankfully this cheese enchilada recipe has much less fat in it these days. Mom loves to tell the story about how in the 60s my Aunt Jo went out to eat at a new Mexican restaurant in Boston (run by non-Mexicans), only to be fed enchiladas where the corn tortillas (taken out of a package) had not been fried before being cooked with cheese and sauce. (You have to re-cook the tortillas to soften them up and give them more flavor.) She then went into the restaurant's kitchen and taught the chef how to properly make an enchilada. My aunt and my mother, both fifth generation hispanic Arizonians, learned this recipe from my grandmother. Note that there are many kinds of enchiladas - green chile, shrimp, red chili - to name a few. This recipe just happens to be our favorite one.

1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 lb of mild cheddar or longhorn or any mild yellow cheese, grated
12 corn tortillas
grapeseed oil or vegetable oil
1 cup of salsa (mild prepared salsa or make your own. Even though we are salsa snobs, we use Pace Picante Sauce, which we find to be just fine for cooking and it saves a big step in making our own, which we did for years)
3 Tbsp of tomato paste
1 cup water
1 cup of canned crushed tomatoes (preferably fire roasted)
a handful of cilantro
1 cup of sour cream
half a head of iceberg lettuce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large fry pan at high heat add 3 Tbsp of grapeseed oil or vegetable oil. Add a tortilla to the pan. Cook for 2-3 seconds, lift up the tortilla with a spatula, add another tortilla underneath. Cook for 2-3 seconds, lift again, both tortillas, and add another tortilla underneath. Repeat the process with all the tortillas, adding a little more oil if needed. This way you can brown and soften the tortillas without using a lot of fat. You do this process to develop the flavor of the tortillas. As the tortillas brown a little, remove from the pan one by one to rest on a paper towel, which absorbs any excess fat.

(Ed. note: you can accomplish the same thing by heating up a burner on your stove and cooking the tortilla on the heat.)

Saute up the chopped onion and garlic, then turn off the heat. Add 1 cup of Pace salsa. Dissolve 3 Tbsp of tomato paste into 1 cup of water, add to pan. Add 1 cup of crushed fire roasted canned tomatoes. Taste. If the sauce tastes too vinegary, add a teaspoon of sugar.

Put some olive oil on the bottom of a large casserole pan. Take a tortilla, cover 2/3 of it lightly with the shredded cheese, then roll up the tortilla and place it in the casserole pan. Continue until all tortillas are filled and rolled. Add sauce to the top of the tortillas in the the casserole pan. Make sure all are covered with the sauce. If not, add a little water. Cover the whole thing with the rest of the grated cheese. Put the casserole in the oven for 10 minutes or until the cheese melts.

Garnish with cilantro and sour cream. Serve with sliced iceberg lettuce that has been dressed only with vinegar and salt. See Perfect Guacamole for a great guacamole avocado side dish.

Serves 4.

Our Poverty Problem

D.C.'s Compassion Stretches Only So Far

By Courtland Milloy

Monday, September 12, 2005; Page B01

The District's largest emergency shelter for homeless families is called D.C. Village. But don't let the quaint-sounding name fool you. The shelter sits next to a junkyard and close to a sewage treatment plant at the city's southwestern tip, long regarded as a dumping ground.

"When they stuck us out here, they knew exactly what they were doing," said Miss Avis, a name she used to protect the identity of her children. "All us black people, like, they put us somewhere we can be forgotten."

The shelter is home to about 68 families, including about 100 children. The air is rife with junkyard dust and stench from the Blue Plains Wastewater Treatment Facility. The ground is contaminated -- a "brownfield," as environmentalists call it -- toxic, but supposedly not serious enough to be considered a hazard. At least not as far as the health of these homeless families is concerned.

"This place is health epidemic central," said Miss Princess, mother of two. "You name it, we got it: pinworm, skin rash, headache, asthma, spider bites, bedbugs . . . "

"Don't forget the roaches," another resident chimed in.

There was a rare moment of joy at the shelter yesterday when volunteers from the Homeless Children's Playtime Project showed up with toys and games. Children ran up to their favorite volunteers, hugged them and continued holding on as if for dear life. When the volunteers began dispensing toys and bags of nuts and fruit, the children cheered. They also brought them containers of cold, filtered water to drink, a luxury compared with what flows out of those dirty, leaking shelter faucets.

"We were having behavior problems with some of the children until we realized they hadn't eaten all day," said Jamila Larson, coordinator of the playtime project. "Now we bring nutritious food and cold, clean water, and we don't have those problems anymore."

Asked how the children feel when their once-a-week, two-hour playtime is over, Larson said, "We've had children hop in our cars and try to leave with us."

To better understand the treatment of residents at D.C. Village, consider the reception given to those who were rescued from the floodwaters in New Orleans last week and brought to live in the D.C. Armory on Capitol Hill. They were greeted with balloons, handshakes and applause from city officials; given medical attention, including mental health counseling; and assigned a cadre of emergency workers to help them get back on their feet. They receive three meals a day, access to computers, help getting children into schools, help filling out applications for public assistance and help writing résumés.

A job fair is planned for them, and affordable housing is being arranged. D.C. Council member David A. Catania (I-At Large) said his office plans to compile a calendar that will list the various barbecues, other dinners, church outings, zoo trips and other social events being organized for the evacuees by area residents and nonprofit groups.

Told about this, residents at D.C. Village said they were happy for the evacuees. They said they knew how bad it feels to lose everything and they could only imagine how good it must feel to have so many people care so much.

"I wish somebody would adopt me," Miss Princess said.

A teenager was asked what improvements she'd like to see at D.C. Village: "Food that's edible."

Her friend added, "It's like nursing home food, only not sanitary."

A boy who was bouncing a worn-out basketball said, "I want to be on a football team." His mother put her arms around him and said: "The children just want to be children. But they can't be children here."

The slow response of the federal government to victims of Katrina had shamed America around the world. Now the nation's capital was attempting to refurbish that image, with D.C. officials seeming to be in competition with other cities to show the most compassion for the homeless evacuees. The deadly storm had succeeded in turning the impoverished poor of New Orleans into "innocent victims" and helped a nation see them in a more sympathetic light.

And yet, at the same time, D.C. Village is a reminder of the contempt with which we still hold people like them and the lengths we go to keep them and the suffering out of sight.

Cut to the Chase

Was Kanye West Right?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; 12:06 PM

Rap star Kanye West's seemingly radical off-script assertion two weeks ago during a Hurricane Katrina telethon that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" has become a full-blown topic of public policy debate.

A slew of recent polls have found that large majorities of blacks believe that the federal response to Hurricane Katrina would have been considerably speedier had those trapped in New Orleans been rich and white, and that the slow response was an indication of continuing racial inequity in this country. Large majorities of whites disagree.

Most of the press coverage of these poll results has concentrated on the vast racial divide they expose. But that's not necessarily the biggest story.

The latest Gallup cuts to the chase and asks: "Do you think George W. Bush does - or does not - care about black people?"

Among blacks, 21 percent say he does and 72 percent say he doesn't.

Among whites, 67 percent say he does and 26 percent say he doesn't.

Overall, 62 percent say he does and 31 percent say he doesn't.

Obviously, that's a pretty dramatic rift. But consider the absolute numbers: Three out of four blacks, one out of four whites, and one out of three people across the country regardless of race actually believe that President Bush doesn't care about black people.

Sorry, but the question: "Does the president of the United State care about black people" should be a no-brainer. Of course he does should be the overwhelmingly common answer.

Here's a question for Washington's punditocracy: What percentage of people believing that the president doesn't care about black people should be considered alarming?

Bush and the White House are trying urgently to refute this belief with imagery from Bush's three (and soon to be four) trips to the region.

But at his morning photo-op yesterday, his first comments on the issue were far from comprehensive.

"Q Sir, what do you make of some of the comments that have been made by quite a number of people that there was a racial component to some of the people that were left behind and left without help?

"THE PRESIDENT: My attitude is this: The storm didn't discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort. When those Coast Guard choppers, many of whom were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin. They wanted to save lives."

One could argue, of course, that the storm disproportionately impacted those who were left, abandoned by the government, in its path -- most of whom were black and poor. And while no one suggests that chopper pilots were racially selective about who they rescued, the real question is what took the choppers and the other rescuers so long? Why weren't there more of them?

Turn the Page

End of the Bush Era

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A27

The Bush Era is over. The sooner politicians in both parties realize that, the better for them -- and the country.

Recent months, and especially the past two weeks, have brought home to a steadily growing majority of Americans the truth that President Bush's government doesn't work. His policies are failing, his approach to leadership is detached and self-indulgent, his way of politics has produced a divided, angry and dysfunctional public square. We dare not go on like this.

The Bush Era did not begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It began on Sept. 14, 2001, when Bush declared at the World Trade Center site: "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." Bush was, indeed, skilled in identifying enemies and rallying a nation already disposed to action. He failed to realize after Sept. 11 that it was not we who were lucky to have him as a leader, but he who was lucky to be president of a great country that understood the importance of standing together in the face of a grave foreign threat. Very nearly all of us rallied behind him.

If Bush had understood that his central task was to forge national unity, as he seemed to shortly after Sept. 11, the country would never have become so polarized. Instead, Bush put patriotism to the service of narrowly ideological policies and an extreme partisanship. He pushed for more tax cuts for his wealthiest supporters and shamelessly used relatively modest details in the bill creating a Department of Homeland Security as partisan cudgels in the 2002 elections.

He invoked our national anger over terrorism to win support for a war in Iraq. But he failed to pay heed to those who warned that the United States would need many more troops and careful planning to see the job through. The president assumed things would turn out fine, on the basis of wildly optimistic assumptions. Careful policymaking and thinking through potential flaws in your approach are not his administration's strong suits.

And so the Bush Era ended definitively on Sept. 2, the day Bush first toured the Gulf Coast States after Hurricane Katrina. There was no magic moment with a bullhorn. The utter failure of federal relief efforts had by then penetrated the country's consciousness. Yesterday's resignation of FEMA Director Michael Brown put an exclamation point on the failure.

The source of Bush's political success was his claim that he could protect Americans. Leadership, strength and security were Bush's calling cards. Over the past two weeks, they were lost in the surging waters of New Orleans.

But the first intimations of the end of the Bush Era came months ago. The president's post-election fixation on privatizing part of Social Security showed how out of touch he was. The more Bush discussed this boutique idea cooked up in conservative think tanks and Wall Street imaginations, the less the public liked it. The situation in Iraq deteriorated. The glorious economy Bush kept touting turned out not to be glorious for many Americans. The Census Bureau's annual economic report, released in the midst of the Gulf disaster, found that an additional 4.1 million Americans had slipped into poverty between 2001 and 2004.

The breaking of the Bush spell opens the way for leaders of both parties to declare their independence from the recent past. It gives forces outside the White House the opportunity to shape a more appropriate national agenda -- for competence and innovation in rebuilding the Katrina region and for new approaches to the problems created over the past 4 1/2 years.

When you have EJ and Brooksie agreeing with each other, we are indeed in momentous times.

Scales Falling from Eyes

Robert Scheer:
Finally fooling none of the people

Even if our high officials bothered to care about the poor, mostly black victims of Katrina enough to change their schedules, the administration would probably have bungled the relief effort anyway, because the Federal Emergency Management Agency is now run by political hacks appointed by Bush who know zilch about disaster relief.

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said to Michael Brown a few days before the FEMA chief was relieved of his oversight of the relief efforts after massive public pressure over the agency's response to the hurricane. Brown, who reportedly doctored his unimpressive resume and didn't have a background in emergency management, resigned Monday. He had secured this plum job because he was a college buddy of his predecessor, Joe Allbaugh, who managed Bush's 2000 presidential campaign.

During the Clinton years, FEMA was turned into a model of efficiency, as demonstrated after the Northridge earthquake and the Oklahoma City bombing. How bizarre, then, that in the wake of 9/11, the administration handicapped FEMA by axing its Cabinet-level status, turning it back into what some call a "turkey farm" for patronage jobs and slashing its budget because, as Allbaugh complained, it had become "an oversized entitlement program."

Then there is the fact that the first-responder corps has been vastly depleted by Bush's misadventure in Iraq. Visiting New Orleans on Monday, Bush argued that "it is preposterous to claim that the engagement in Iraq meant there weren't enough troops" to help with hurricane relief. Oh yeah? Tell that to the nearly 35% of Louisiana's Army and Air National Guard forces and 37% of Mississippi's National Guard troops deployed abroad, mostly in Iraq. "Had [they] been at home and not in Iraq, their expertise and capabilities could have been brought to bear," said Army Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, the National Guard Bureau's chief, referring to the critical first hours of the disaster.

Unfortunately, what the Bush White House is good at when it comes to national security is providing flash over substance, as Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana found out the hard way. After riding in a helicopter with the president and seeing machinery apparently working on the breached 17th Street levee, she was shocked the next day to find the work mysteriously stopped. "Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment," said the senator in a press release.

For far too long, this kind of shenanigan worked well for Bush, allowing him to narrowly win a second term. His administration was asleep at the switch on 9/11 even though "the system was blinking red," according to the then-CIA chief. Bush grabbed a bullhorn at ground zero and remade himself as a "war president" — and suffered no real political damage from the failure to either capture Osama bin Laden or find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But, as one of this nation's greatest war presidents said, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. With the Iraq war grinding on with no end in sight and the postmortems of the Katrina debacle showing the White House and Homeland Security Department to have been as confused and inept as FEMA itself, Bush's support in several national polls has continued a steady plunge to below 40%. A Newsweek poll found that, for the first time, less than a majority of Americans felt Bush possesses "strong leadership qualities," his signature claim to fame. Boy, have they got that right.

Show me one competent thing that Bushco has accomplished, beyond looting our wallets and handing out corporate welfare at a breathtaking rate.

Small Circle of Friends

Roberts' bad decision

By Stephen Gillers, David Luban and Steven Lubet, STEPHEN GILLERS is a professor of law at New York University; DAVID J. LUBAN is a professor of law and philosophy at Georgetown University (and a faculty colleague of Hamdan's attorney) and STEVEN LUB

JUST FOUR DAYS before the Bush administration named John G. Roberts Jr. to fill retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court, the District of Columbia federal appeals court decided a case called Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld. In a crucial victory for the administration, the court upheld President Bush's creation of special military tribunals for trials of alleged terrorists and denied them the protection of the Geneva Convention. Roberts was one of the judges who decided that case, but he should have recused himself.

While the case was pending in his court, Roberts was interviewing with high White House officials — including Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove — for a seat on the Supreme Court. In the words of the federal law on judicial disqualification, this placed the judge in a situation where "his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

It is not too late to correct this error, and with Roberts slated to become the next chief justice, it is especially important that he do so.

In Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, a three-judge panel upheld the use of military tribunals to try detainees held at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But the decision didn't stop there. Roberts and a second judge also ruled that the Geneva Convention — which guarantees basic human rights — does not protect alleged Al Qaeda members. The third judge disagreed on the question of the Geneva Convention. Thus, Roberts cast a deciding vote on an issue of central importance to the president, just as administration aides were holding out the possibility that the president might choose him for a place on the highest court in the American legal system.

Previous federal cases, as well as advisory opinions of the Judicial Conference of the United States (the official policymaking body for the federal judiciary), have uniformly held that a judge must recuse himself when a lawyer in a case or a party to it is in a position to influence the judge's job prospects. In some instances, the judge was considering leaving the bench to work as a lawyer. In others, the judge was seeking reappointment within the judiciary.

Some legal scholars have defended Roberts' participation in the Hamdan case, arguing that it would be impractical and unnecessary to require Supreme Court hopefuls to recuse themselves in any case in which the federal government is party. That makes sense as a general proposition — after all, administrations usually cast a wide net for potential nominees, and the process may take months. But the Hamdan case was no ordinary appeal.

First, Bush was a defendant in the case, because he had signed orders setting up the military commissions and removing them from the coverage of the Geneva Convention (following the advice of Gonzales, then the White House counsel). The president had also personally determined that there was reason to believe that Hamdan was an Al Qaeda member engaged in terrorism, and thus was outside the Geneva Convention's protection. Secondly, the Hamdan case set a precedent for interrogations and trials of other Guantanamo detainees. By rejecting the Geneva Convention's protections, the case eliminates an important legal safeguard against humiliating or degrading treatment of prisoners.

No doubt during his interviews for the Supreme Court, Roberts avoided all discussion of pending cases. But conflict of interest can be about appearance as much as reality. A reasonable person may wonder whether a judge, even with the best of intentions, could remain impartial in those circumstances.

Let us be clear that we do not question Roberts' integrity, or his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court. We believe that he decided the Hamdan case as he thought the law required. We do think, however, that he erred by continuing to sit in the case. Even if he considered disqualifying himself but decided against it, he should at least have notified Hamdan's attorneys once the administration showed serious interest in promoting him to the Supreme Court. That would have given them an opportunity to file a formal recusal motion and argue the point.

This is a lot more than a procedural nicety; it is a major ethical lapse, but I guess It's OKAY If You Are a Republican, not unlike Nino Scalia going duck hunting with Dick Cheney before considering the constitutionality of the energy task force. Hey, we're all friends here.

Not Funny

Bush's Approval Rating Drops To New Low in Wake of Storm
He Says Race Didn't Affect Efforts; Blacks in Poll Disagree

By Michael A. Fletcher and Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A08

Touring devastated portions of New Orleans yesterday, President Bush sought to reassure the public that the government is responding to Hurricane Katrina with equity and dispatch, even as his standing hit record lows amid broad support for an independent investigation of the federal response to the storm.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that clear majorities of Americans disapprove of the way officials at all levels of government are handling the recovery from Katrina. A 54 percent majority disapproved of Bush's response to Katrina, while an even larger majority -- 57 percent -- say state and local officials should bear responsibility for the problems.

Attitudes toward Bush and the government's overall response to Hurricane Katrina fracture along clear racial lines. Nearly three in four whites doubted the federal government would have responded more quickly to those trapped in New Orleans if they had been wealthier and white rather than poorer and black, the poll found. But an equal share of blacks disagreed, saying help would have come sooner if the victims had been more affluent whites.

More than six in 10 blacks -- 63 percent -- said the problems with the hurricane relief effort are an indication of continuing racial inequity in this country, a view rejected by more than seven in 10 whites, according to the poll.

Speaking to reporters after touring New Orleans yesterday, Bush sought to dispel the view that race played a role in the government's response to the disaster. "When those Coast Guard choppers, many of who were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin," Bush said. "They wanted to save lives."

Bush vowed that the massive federal response, which already has received funding of more than $62 billion and involves more than 71,000 federal personnel on the ground, would be managed fairly. "The storm didn't discriminate, and neither did the recovery effort," he said, adding: "The rescue efforts were comprehensive, and the recovery will be comprehensive."

The bungled response to the hurricane has helped drag down Bush's job-approval rating, which now stands at 42 percent -- the lowest of his presidency -- in the Post-ABC poll and down three points since the hurricane hit two weeks ago. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of Bush's performance, a double-digit increase since January.

Even some members of Bush's own party appear to have lost faith in their leader: The president's overall approval rating among Republicans has declined from 91 percent in January to 78 percent in the latest poll.

Overall, half the country now characterizes Bush as a "strong leader" -- down 12 points since May of last year. And the proportion who say he can be "trusted in a crisis" likewise has fallen from 60 percent to 49 percent now.

The survey found that 76 percent of the public favors an investigation of federal storm response efforts by an independent commission similar to the one that probed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The proposal drew strong bipartisan support: 64 percent of all Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats favored creating the independent panel.

Republican leaders in Congress already have announced plans for a congressional inquiry into the federal storm response -- a probe that seven in 10 Americans fear will "get bogged down in partisan politics," according to the poll. Bush also has vowed to lead an investigation of the federal response.

Bubble Boy is going to investigate himself? That'll be incompetent, too. What a joke.

The Grown-Ups?

Roberts Sees Role as Judicial 'Umpire'
# 'I have no platform,' the chief justice nominee tells senators at start of confirmation hearings.

By David G. Savage, Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Judge John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush's choice for chief justice of the United States, said Monday that he aspired to a humble and limited role as leader of the Supreme Court, more akin to an umpire who calls the balls and strikes rather than the star player who is the center of attention.

"Justices and judges are servants of the law, not the other way around," Roberts told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. Nobody ever went to a ballgame to see the umpire."

Roberts' comments came on the first day of his confirmation hearings before the Judiciary Committee. And his short, simple statement showed the qualities that made him a well-regarded advocate before the Supreme Court as a lawyer, both for the government during the administration of President George H.W. Bush and in private practice.

He spoke directly to the senators and without notes. And he used the baseball analogy to convey his view that the nation's highest court should play a more modest role in American government.

That echoed a theme that had been voiced by the committee's 10 Republican senators. They complained that the Supreme Court had become a "super-legislature" in recent decades, regularly deciding the most controversial political questions of the day. They said the hard political questions should be decided by elected officials, and Roberts indicated that he agreed with them.

A major divide among committee members became clear as several of the panel's eight Democrats said they intended to question Roberts sharply to discern his views on civil rights and abortion. Republicans, however, argued that court nominees should not be quizzed about specific issues or cases.

Although Monday's opening session took place in the grand hearing room in the Russell Building that was the site of earlier confrontations over the Supreme Court nominations of Robert H. Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991, it had none of the tension and acrimony of those battles.

At the hearing's start, Roberts and his wife, Jane, introduced their two children — Josie, 5, and Jack, 4. Senators smiled at them like proud grandparents.

Even as Roberts spoke of a limited role for the court, he also stressed its crucial role in upholding individual rights against the power of the government — a favorite theme of the Democrats and liberals.

Roberts, who is a federal appellate judge, said that as a lawyer in private practice he was awed to go before the Supreme Court representing a client who was fighting the federal government.

"Here was the United States, the most powerful entity in the world, aligned against my client. And yet, all I had to do was convince the court that I was right on the law and the government was wrong and all that power and might would recede in deference to the rule of law," he said.

"That is a remarkable thing. It is what we mean when we say that we are a government of laws and not of men," he said.

Most of this is banal and unremarkable. The sports metaphor, however, is not. Supreme Court justices are nothing at all like baseball umpires. The SCOTUS actually makes the rules, unlike umpires. That Roberts could fail to understand that simply floors me. He was playing to the lowest common denominator in the TV audience. That's appalling.

State of Emergency

45 Bodies Found In La. Hospital
Bush Visits New Orleans and Defends Federal Response; FEMA Chief Quits

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 13, 2005; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 12 -- The bodies of 45 patients left in a hasty evacuation were recovered from a New Orleans hospital, officials said Monday, as the city braced for the scenes left by the receding waters.

The news of the grim recovery at the Memorial Medical Center, the largest such discovery since Hurricane Katrina struck, came hours after President Bush completed a tour of parts of the city and spoke to local officials. He defended his administration's record, even as the chief of the federal emergency agency, Michael D. Brown, said in Washington that he was resigning after being yanked off the hurricane relief job three days ago.

Bush said that he will name R. David Paulison, now U.S. fire administrator and director of preparedness for FEMA, to lead the agency. A poll showed that Bush's standing reached a new low and that a majority of Americans disapprove of his response to Katrina.

Wrapping up his two-day visit, Bush saw a city trying to struggle back to life. But while the higher and drier downtown area buzzed with the sounds of generators and cleanup, vast swaths of the city remained a devastated frieze of dried mud, broken homes and foul stench.

Officials said the bodies found Sunday in the Memorial Medical Center were left there after a frantic evacuation, days after the storm passed and floodwaters began to rise. An official of the hospital owners said the patients died before the evacuation and their bodies were left in the facility.

But the discovery was certain to raise new questions about why so many city hospitals were not evacuated before the storm. Two medical professionals inside the Memorial Medical Center said conditions began to turn desperate shortly after the floodwaters cut off roads. The darkened corridors were jammed with families. Drinking water grew scarce. Medical supplies exhausted quickly; even IVs were being rationed, they said.

"Things looked like they were going downhill quickly," said Scot Sonnier, an oncologist there. He left before the evacuation, thinking other doctors were handling it, he said.

The city braced for more grim discoveries as the receding waters allowed search parties to reach isolated buildings. But the death toll -- 279 for Louisiana -- was still far below the initial prediction of the city's mayor that 10,000 perished.

All of this is shameful. Disaster preparation means that you can't prepare for everything, but there are some things which are predictable. The situations in the hospitals was predictable. The patients AND staffs should have been evacuated. Louisiana had 72 hours of warning.

I'm living in an emergency zone right now. The governor of Virginia declared it this morning as Hurricane/Tropical Storm Ophelia is threatening right now. It looks like we'll get some high winds and rain in the next 24 hours. What this will mean for power here is unclear. It's hot and smoggy here today. The air stinks.

Mr, Justice Roberts?

The NYT frontpages this story today:

Democrats Seek Papers to Define Whys of Roberts

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: September 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 - In opening statements on Monday kicking off the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge John G. Roberts Jr. and in a follow-up letter to President Bush, Democratic senators continued their calls for the release of documents from Judge Roberts's years as a senior lawyer in the first Bush administration.

Judge John G. Roberts was trailed by Senators Arlen Specter and Patrick Leahy as he walked into the hearing room.

The documents, said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, could help illuminate the nominee's views in three areas: civil rights, privacy and access to justice. While the first two areas have garnered attention from interest groups and the news organizations, the third category - access to justice - has received relatively little scrutiny.

Most of these cases did not concern issues of great public moment, but a theme runs through them. They involved people who claimed to have suffered serious and sometimes terrible harms, including sexual abuse and torture. In response, briefs signed by Judge Roberts often accepted, at least for argument's sake, the truth of what was alleged but opposed the lawsuits under various legal doctrines that can limit plaintiffs' access to the federal courts.

Analyzed one way, his arguments reflect a cramped view of the role of the courts, exalting technicalities over justice. Viewed another way, they represent exacting fidelity to the law and a keen awareness of the limited power of the federal courts to right every wrong.

"Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction," he told the Supreme Court in an oral argument in one of the 16 cases on the Democrats' list. "The presumption is that they are without jurisdiction, and the plaintiff must affirmatively prove that he has standing to invoke the power of the court."

In 1992, he signed a brief arguing that federal courts could not consider newly discovered evidence that was put forward by a death row inmate, Leonel Herrera, because he had raised the issue too late. It added that fears that innocent inmates had or would be executed were overblown.

The only forum in which Mr. Herrera could now make his case, the brief said, was in a clemency application to the governor of Texas. The Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Herrera but left open the possibility that an inmate with "truly persuasive" evidence of innocence could get a court hearing notwithstanding court deadlines. Mr. Herrera was executed in 1993.

In 1992, Mr. Roberts signed a brief in a case brought by an American who said he had been falsely arrested and tortured while employed by a Saudi Arabian hospital. The brief argued that the hospital was immune from a suit because it was owned by the Saudi government. "Allegations of inhumane treatment," the brief said, "should not obscure the legal issue in this case."

Though there is an exception to foreign sovereign immunity for a government's commercial activities, the brief argued that the mistreatment of the plaintiff, Scott Nelson, was not based on commercial activities like his recruitment and employment but on purely governmental conduct. The Supreme Court agreed.

In 1991, another Roberts brief made a subtle distinction. The case involved a Georgia student who had sued her school district, asserting that a teacher had forced her to have sex with him. The brief conceded that the suit itself was proper under a federal antidiscrimination law. But, the brief continued, the student was not entitled to recover money damages. "The existence of a cause of action," the brief said, "by no means assures a right to an unlimited array of remedies."

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected that position.

Think the SCOTUS doesn't apply to you?

The Story of the Century

St. Bernard Parish residents overflow the Capitol
9/12/2005, 5:29 p.m. CT
By MELINDA DESLATTE
The Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Thousands of St. Bernard Parish residents who journeyed to the state Capitol, desperate for information about their homes, received only grim news Monday: Every part of the parish was flooded by Hurricane Katrina. Some homes were coated with oil from a nearby refinery. And one official estimated no one would live in the parish until at least summertime. "When you go back to St. Bernard, the only memories you're going to have is what you left with," Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez told a crowd in the House chamber that lined the walls, filled up the balcony and spilled down the stairs of the building.

State police estimated the crowd reached as many as 5,000 people, who filled hallways of the Capitol, hoping to gather scraps of information about a parish whose devastation was overshadowed by the flooding of New Orleans and the chaos that followed there.

"It's sort of like the stepchild and the forgotten parish," said Frances Smith, a resident of Meraux, awaiting a briefing from parish officials.

Rodriguez was upfront about the status of the parish. To Shell Beach residents, he told them a few buildings weathered the storm but may not be repairable. To Hopedale residents, he said not one structure was standing.

"When you go back, you won't recognize it," he told all residents.

For homes that may have been repairable after the waters receded, an oil spill at Murphy Oil in Meraux may have made them uninhabitable, officials warned.

Amid the questions and the descriptions of devastation, a bitterness tinged with pride was obvious among both the residents and parish officials, who said they were left to rescue their own as the floodwaters swallowed homes and businesses. State Sen. Walter Boasso, whose business and home were submerged in the flooding, noted Canadian help arrived before the U.S. Army did.

"Did we get neglected? Absolutely we got neglected," he said. "But did the local people take up the slack? You're damn right we did. We didn't wait for anybody to show up."

"Good thing," a resident shouted back.

Bodies of the dead still were being collected Monday. Sheriff Jack Stephens said the parish death toll stood at 56 but officials knew of at least 10 more locations where they needed to recover bodies. He said the highest risk areas, where water covered the roofs of houses, hadn't been searched yet.

Boasso said 30,000 homes were completely lost and he's heard estimates that it would take at least four months to clean up the parish that is home to 68,000 residents.

"I'm told we're going to be able to go back in an organized fashion to our homes and try and recover what we want," said Boasso, choking up.

He said the water should be drained by Tuesday, but officials said environmental testing to determine whether the soil or air was contaminated must be completed before residents would be allowed back into the parish to collect what belongings they could. And Rodriguez said when people are allowed to briefly return, they should bring rubber gloves, boots and masks.

The disaster continues, bounced off the TV screens by Blitzer inter alia.

Some folks don't get to "move on" yet. Being homeless really fixes your attention. But it doesn't make a great piece of video for CNN. Applying for relief doesn't make a video story.

The Power of Blog

Nico Pitney at the Center for American Progress just sent this out. It made me smile. Very few things do these days.

If only bloggers would shut up about Roberts, Sen. Grassley would be happy. -- Nico

Sen. Grassley to Bloggers: Please Stop Making Me Do My Job

At today's Roberts confirmation hearings, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) shared his fond regard for the brief 1962 Court hearings for Byron White, which "lasted all of 15 minutes and eight questions."

Grassley told Roberts to expect a much more probing set of questions, since…

…you are the first nominee of the Internet age. With millions of eyes scrutinizing thousands of downloading pages of writing, not to mention the hundreds of website blogs characterizing the documents that have been produced in an accurate — or more likely inaccurate — way, and opining on every record that you have been involved with, and doing it by the minute. So to some extent, there is no turning back from what we have created here, and you just happen to be the latest victim of such scrutiny.

Bloggers, always characterizing documents and opining! Why won't they just stop paying attention and let Senators hold the trite 15-minute hearings they really want?

And we are doing this FOR FREE. Hit the tip jar at the top right hand side bar if you can help.

Roberts' Big Day

I come with no agenda, Roberts tells hearing
Chief justice nominee to face questions about judicial philosophy

Monday, September 12, 2005; Posted: 3:46 p.m. EDT (19:46 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Shortly after beginning his testimony at his confirmation hearing Monday, chief justice nominee John Roberts told the Senate Judiciary Committee he has no agenda.

"I come before the committee with no agenda. I have no platform. Judges are not politicians," he said.

The confirmation hearing began with statements from senators, who have promised tough questioning of the federal judge.

Roberts, 50, will give his opening statement after the 18 senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee have spoken. Specific questioning of his judicial record is set for Tuesday and Wednesday.

It is the first confirmation for a chief justice in 19 years. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, the committee's chairman, said in opening remarks that Roberts' impact on the court could last until the year 2040, if Roberts stayed on the bench that long.

Roberts originally was nominated in July to fill the vacancy created by the pending retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

But after the sudden death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist September 3, President Bush asked Roberts to fill the top spot on the nine-member court. The full Senate ultimately must vote on whether to confirm him. (Related story.)

Some Democrats on the committee promised to question Roberts sharply on his record concerning equal rights, civil rights and the role of the judiciary in limiting congressional power.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, the only woman on the panel, said Roberts' views on abortion rights would be of special importance.

"For me, one of the most important issues that needs to be addressed by Judge Roberts is the constitutional right to privacy," said Feinstein, according to her pre-released opening remarks. "I am concerned by a trend on the court to limit this right and curtail women's autonomy. It would be very difficult for me to vote to confirm someone to the Supreme Court whom I knew would overturn Roe v. Wade," the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion.

And Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, urged candor and expressed personal reservations.

"There are real and serious reasons to be deeply concerned about Judge Roberts' record," he said. "Many of his past statements and writings raise questions about his commitment to equal opportunity and the bipartisan remedies we have adopted in the past."

I listened to the hearing and was impressed by Biden and Schumer on the Dem side, the rest, not so much.

Katrina's Aftermath

Via Susie

NBC Anchor Says Reporters Feisty Again

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

Published: September 12, 2005 9:13 AM ET

NEW YORK (AP) NBC's Brian Williams says the lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina for journalists may be the end of an unusual four-year period of deference to people in power.

There were so many angry, even incredulous, questions put to Bush administration officials about the response to Katrina that the Salon Web site compiled a "Reporters Gone Wild" video clip. Tim Russert, Anderson Cooper, Ted Koppel, and Shepard Smith were among the stars.

The mute button seemingly in place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been turned off.
....
He was one of a few reporters stationed at the dome as it degenerated into a house of horrors, and used his cell phone to snap a picture of its damaged roof that was widely circulated on NBC and MSNBC.

"I can't shake the belief that I got to know people who aren't with us anymore," he said.

One imaginative piece was produced simply by using a camcorder at the Baton Rouge airport on Labor Day when Williams and a crew returned, illustrating how the airport itself was filled with hundreds of compelling human stories.

About the only blemish on Williams' record was NBC's failure to lead its Aug. 30 "Nightly News" with the levees breaking in New Orleans, said Andrew Tyndall, a consultant who studies news content. NBC says that criticism is unfair, since the levee breaches were one of several angles Williams touched upon at the opening of that newscast.

Williams has had a hellish travelogue the past year, including Banda Aceh after the tsunami and a battleground in Mosul, Iraq, filled with the dead and dying. He never thought he'd see such suffering in his own country.

"I measure my words very carefully," he said. "I guard my opinions very carefully. To me, this was life and death.

"I refuse to believe that anyone I met at the dome has lesser value than anybody in my family that I go home to. I don't believe that about this country. I don't want that to be the lesson in this. I was angry. People were going without and dying in the wealthiest country the world has ever known."

I'll believe it when I see it. CNN reporters are pretty good at spinning W's talking points.

Third World Country

The Other America
An Enduring Shame: Katrina reminded us, but the problem is not new. Why a rising tide of people live in poverty, who they are—and what we can do about it.

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Sept. 19, 2005 issue - It takes a hurricane. it takes a catastrophe like Katrina to strip away the old evasions, hypocrisies and not-so-benign neglect. It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again. For the moment, at least, Americans are ready to fix their restless gaze on enduring problems of poverty, race and class that have escaped their attention. Does this mean a new war on poverty? No, especially with Katrina's gargantuan price tag. But this disaster may offer a chance to start a skirmish, or at least make Washington think harder about why part of the richest country on earth looks like the Third World.

"I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the hurricane," Sen. Barack Obama said last week on the floor of the Senate. "They were abandoned long ago—to murder and mayhem in the streets, to substandard schools, to dilapidated housing, to inadequate health care, to a pervasive sense of hopelessness."

The question now is whether the floodwaters can create a sea change in public perceptions. "Americans tend to think of poor people as being responsible for their own economic woes," says sociologist Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University. "But this was a case where the poor were clearly not at fault. It was a reminder that we have a moral obligation to provide every American with a decent life."

In the last four decades, part of that obligation has been met. Social Security and Medicare have all but eliminated poverty among the elderly. Food stamps have made severe hunger in the United States mostly a thing of the past. A little-known program with bipartisan support and a boring name—the Earned Income Tax Credit—supplements the puny wages of the working poor, helping to lift millions into the lower middle class.

But after a decade of improvement in the 1990s, poverty in America is actually getting worse. A rising tide of economic growth is no longer lifting all boats. For the first time in half a century, the third year of a recovery (2004) also saw an increase in poverty. In a nation of nearly 300 million people, the number living below the poverty line ($14,680 for a family of three) recently hit 37 million, up more than a million in a year.

Toxic Gumbo

Cover-up: toxic waters 'will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade'
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Correspondent
Published: 11 September 2005

Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.

In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health.

The pollution was far worse than had been admitted, he said, because his agency was failing to take enough samples and was refusing to make public the results of those it had analysed. "Inept political hacks" running the clean-up will imperil the health of low-income migrant workers by getting them to do the work.

His intervention came as President Bush's approval ratings fell below 40 per cent for the first time. Yesterday, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, turned the screw by criticising the US President's opposition to the Kyoto protocol on global warming. He compared New Orleans to island nations such as the Maldives, which are threatened by rising sea levels. Other US sources spelt out the extent of the danger from one of America's most polluted industrial areas, known locally as "Cancer Alley". The 66 chemical plants, refineries and petroleum storage depots churn out 600m lb of toxic waste each year. Other dangerous substances are in site storage tanks or at the port of New Orleans. No one knows how much pollution has escaped through damaged plants and leaking pipes into the "toxic gumbo" now drowning the city. Mr Kaufman says no one is trying to find out.

Few people are better qualified to judge the extent of the problem. Mr Kaufman, who has been with the EPA since it was founded 35 years ago, helped to set up its hazardous waste programme. After serving as chief investigator to the EPA's ombudsman, he is now senior policy analyst in its Office of Solid Wastes and Emergency Response. He said the clean-up needed to be "the most massive public works exercise ever done", adding: "It will take 10 years to get everything up and running and safe."

Mr Kaufman claimed the Bush administration was playing down the need for a clean-up: the EPA has not been included in the core White House group tackling the crisis. "Its budget has been cut and inept political hacks have been put in key positions," Mr Kaufman said. "All the money for emergency response has gone to buy guns and cowboys - which don't do anything when a hurricane hits. We were less prepared for this than we would have been on 10 September 2001."

He said the water being pumped out of the city was not being tested for pollution and would damage Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi river, and endanger people using it downstream.

Toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade, a US government official has told The Independent on Sunday. And, he added, the Bush administration is covering up the danger.

In an exclusive interview, Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste and responses to environmental disasters at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the way the polluted water was being pumped out was increasing the danger to health.

The pollution was far worse than had been admitted, he said, because his agency was failing to take enough samples and was refusing to make public the results of those it had analysed. "Inept political hacks" running the clean-up will imperil the health of low-income migrant workers by getting them to do the work.

His intervention came as President Bush's approval ratings fell below 40 per cent for the first time. Yesterday, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, turned the screw by criticising the US President's opposition to the Kyoto protocol on global warming. He compared New Orleans to island nations such as the Maldives, which are threatened by rising sea levels. Other US sources spelt out the extent of the danger from one of America's most polluted industrial areas, known locally as "Cancer Alley". The 66 chemical plants, refineries and petroleum storage depots churn out 600m lb of toxic waste each year. Other dangerous substances are in site storage tanks or at the port of New Orleans. No one knows how much pollution has escaped through damaged plants and leaking pipes into the "toxic gumbo" now drowning the city. Mr Kaufman says no one is trying to find out.

I know I have regular readers at the EPA. If you can add to this account, email me. I'll be happy to keep your identity protected.

Maximum Input

Alliance for Justice will be live blogging and podcasting the Roberts' hearings beginning today. New Media are going to be changing the way we experience this event.

Shameful

A Rush of Stories

By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 12, 2005

The stories - freakish, tragic and sadly true - continue to come out of New Orleans in an awful, unending rush, like blood from a sudden gaping wound. The stunned survivors have scattered to places like Houston, Dallas, Baton Rouge and here - Lafayette - where the Cajundome (yet another sports palace turned homeless shelter) rises like a giant mushroom from the flat, shimmeringly hot parish landscape.

JoAnn Kelly, 25, and her sister Nicole, who is 28, were sitting on a low brick ledge outside the Cajundome when I walked up. Each was holding a nervous Chihuahua. "This is Pebbles," said JoAnn. "That one's Powder. We kept them with us the whole time."

The two women, who lived in the Magnolia projects in New Orleans, were tired but anxious to tell their story. Like so many others, they thought the worst was over when the winds from Hurricane Katrina subsided and the weather began to clear.

"The sun was out," said Nicole. "But the water started coming right up the street and it kept rising. Then we heard Governor Blanco saying on the radio that they couldn't stop the water and everybody should just get out.

"So we started calling 911, but we couldn't get any help."

The sick feeling of panic began to rise up in the residents who had stayed in the projects during the hurricane. "There were helicopters flying by," JoAnn said. "We were up on the fire escape waving white towels, pleading for somebody to help us."

Eventually a few men from the neighborhood began showing up in stolen boats and trucks. The elderly and small children were the first to be evacuated. JoAnn, Nicole and the dogs were bundled into a milk truck crowded with people. Once again they thought the worst of their ordeal was over, and once again they were wrong.

Packed with hot and filthy evacuees (and crates of rapidly souring milk), the truck crossed a bridge from New Orleans to Jefferson Parish, where the desperate occupants were promptly and grotesquely humiliated by several heavily armed plainclothes officers.

There were dozens of men, women and children in the truck when it was stopped. They were hungry, thirsty and frightened. It should have been obvious to any sentient being that they were fleeing the flood. Nevertheless, said Nicole, they were ordered out of the truck at gunpoint, with their hands up. One young man was thrown to the ground. The others were ordered to get on the ground, face down.

The occupants of the milk truck were black, and they were in dire need of assistance. But in the midst of one of the greatest emergencies in the nation's history, the opportunity to gratuitously humiliate them proved irresistible.

"They laid us out on the ground," said JoAnn. Her voice quivered and tears began to leak down her face. "I was pleading. I was saying, 'Sir, please - - ' And then we all went to praying. Crying and praying.' "

"We were all praying," said Nicole, "because we were afraid, the way they were acting, that they would shoot us."

Eventually, the officers let the group go. No one was charged with any crime. "They even helped us start the milk truck," Nicole said. "The last thing they told us was, 'Y'all get on out of here. And don't come back.' "

The milk truck made its way west on Route 10, and the homeless, bedraggled occupants ultimately were directed to the Cajundome, where, according to JoAnn and Nicole, the officials and volunteers couldn't have been more gracious and helpful.

Amateur Hour

All the President's Friends

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 12, 2005

Yesterday The Independent, the British newspaper, published an interview about the environmental aftermath of Katrina with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, whom one suspects is planning to join the exodus. "The budget has been cut," he said, "and inept political hacks have been put in key positions." That sounds familiar, and given what we've learned over the last two weeks there's no reason to doubt that characterization - or to disregard his warning of an environmental cover-up in progress.

What about the Food and Drug Administration? Serious questions have been raised about the agency's coziness with drug companies, and the agency's top official in charge of women's health issues resigned over the delay in approving Plan B, the morning-after pill, accusing the agency's head of overruling the professional staff on political grounds.

Then there's the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, whose Republican chairman hired a consultant to identify liberal bias in its programs. The consultant apparently considered any criticism of the administration a sign of liberalism, even if it came from conservatives.

You could say that these are all cases in which the Bush administration hasn't worried about degrading the quality of a government agency because it doesn't really believe in the agency's mission. But you can't say that about my other two examples.

Even a conservative government needs an effective Treasury Department. Yet Treasury, which had high prestige and morale during the Clinton years, has fallen from grace.

The public symbol of that fall is the fact that John Snow, who was obviously picked for his loyalty rather than his qualifications, is still Treasury secretary. Less obvious to the public is the hollowing out of the department's expertise. Many experienced staff members have left since 2000, and a number of key positions are either empty or filled only on an acting basis. "There is no policy," an economist who was leaving the department after 22 years told The Washington Post, back in 2002. "If there are no pipes, why do you need a plumber?" So the best and brightest have been leaving.

And finally, what about the department of Homeland Security itself? FEMA was neglected, some people say, because it was folded into a large agency that was focused on terrorist threats, not natural disasters. But what, exactly, is the department doing to protect us from terrorists?

In 2004 Reuters reported a "steady exodus" of counterterrorism officials, who believed that the war in Iraq had taken precedence over the real terrorist threat. Why, then, should we believe that Homeland Security is being well run?

Let's not forget that the administration's first choice to head the department was Bernard Kerik, a crony of Rudy Giuliani. And Mr. Kerik's nomination would have gone through if enterprising reporters hadn't turned up problems in his background that the F.B.I. somehow missed, just as it somehow didn't turn up the little problems in Michael Brown's résumé. How many lesser Keriks made it into other positions?

The point is that Katrina should serve as a wakeup call, not just about FEMA, but about the executive branch as a whole. Everything I know suggests that it's in a sorry state - that an administration which doesn't treat governing seriously has created two, three, many FEMA's.

The Blue Line

New Orleans Police Keep Public Trust, Private Pain
Stress, Homelessness Afflict Many on Force

By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 12, 2005; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS -- They sleep on the concrete sidewalk or in their cars. They scavenge for food from abandoned stores and cook by fire. They wash the laundry by hand and leave it to dry on lines hung from lampposts.

This is what life has been like for New Orleans police officers since Hurricane Katrina tore apart their city nearly two weeks ago.

The Wal-Mart Supercenter on the riverfront, looted in the storm's aftermath, is the new headquarters -- and for many, the new home -- for the 103 officers of the 6th District, which includes the city's historic Garden District. Their station house, as well as those of the 3rd, 5th and 7th districts, was flooded.

In the days before the hurricane, the police force numbered 1,750. After Katrina, officials could account for only a few more than 1,200. No one knows whether the missing are dead, injured or just could not face the horror of the work.

During the worst of it, when people were drowning in their homes and dying because of a lack of basic necessities, two officers put guns to their heads and killed themselves. Two hundred quit. An estimated 70 percent of the force is now homeless.

Officer Dave Lapene, 25, a former Marine who served in Iraq during the invasion, is among them.

"The feeling is similar to being in Iraq," said Lapene, whose house was destroyed. "But when you realize that this is your home, you know it's not right. It's worse. When you're overseas the motivation is to get back to something. Here, we don't have anything to go back to."

Local officers have been criticized for not doing more to evacuate people before the waters rushed in. From their point of view, however, they struggled desperately to do all they could. But it was not enough.

Until Thursday, when the first batch of officers was allowed to take a five-day vacation, the force had been working nonstop for 11 days. They watched people urinate on themselves because no bathrooms were available, they saw babies die of starvation, and they pulled dead bodies from the Superdome and convention center.

To other rescue workers, the victims were nameless strangers. To New Orleans officers, they were neighbors, friends, family members.

There will a lot of hard stories to be told. This is one.

Profit Motive

Democrats rip Bush hurricane response
9/11/2005, 9:52 p.m. CT
By LARRY MARGASAK
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Louisiana's senior senator on Sunday escalated the Democrats' rhetoric against the Bush administration's hurricane response, accusing the White House of a "full court press" to blame state and local officials for the initial sluggish rescue effort.

The government's emergency managers came under fire from the lone black senator, Democrat Barack Obama, who said they were clueless about the inner-city in New Orleans when they failed to plan for the evacuation of poor people.

The White House sought to deflect criticism ahead of President Bush's third trip to the stricken Gulf Coast, saying blame could be assessed later.

"It's not the time for blame. It's the time for helping the people on the ground that have been severely impacted by Hurricane Katrina," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said. "We'll continue to provide aid and assistance to those who have been severely impacted."

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said officials at all levels eventually would share blame for an inadequate response, but she cited only the administration for the finger-pointing that followed the killer storm.

"While the president is saying that he wants to work together as a team, I think the White House operatives have a full court press on to blame state and local officials whether they're Republicans or Democrats. It's very unfortunate," she told CBS' "Face the Nation."

She said Washington was obligated to support local and state officials, "particularly in times of tragedy and stress, not to pile on them, not to make their suffering worse."

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said on `Fox News Sunday" he would give "the entire big government organized relief effort a failing grade, across the board." But, he added that state and local governments shared in the blame, too.

Landrieu's office said the senator based her accusation in part on comments by the Homeland Security chief, Michael Chertoff, and by administration allies on Capitol Hill, who cited the responsibility of state and local officials in planning for and responding to disasters. She also cited several news stories about a White House campaign to deflect criticism.

Obama was asked on ABC's "This Week" whether there was racism in the lack of evacuation planning for poor, black residents of New Orleans. He said he would not refer to the government response in that way, but said there was a much deeper, long-term neglect.

"Whoever was in charge of planning was so detached from the realities of inner city life in New Orleans ... that they couldn't conceive of the notion that they couldn't load up their SUV's, put $100 worth of gas in there, put some sparkling water and drive off to a hotel and check in with a credit card," Obama said.

"There seemed to be a sense that this other America was somehow not on people's radar screen. And that, I think, does have to do with historic indifference on the part of government to the plight of those who are disproportionately African-American." He added that "passive indifference is as bad as active malice."

The House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., proposed an independent commission to watch for contractor scams in hurricane repairs.

"Already we have seen despicable stories of those trying to profit off desperate Gulf Coast residents," she said. Her plan would investigate waste and fraud as soon as contracts are awarded.

Bush is already trying to turn the anguish of the Gulf into profit for his friends. Halliburton is already in the streets. A canny crook hides it. Bushco doesn't even have to try to hide it, America is sleeping.

Taking Stock

Once again, just go read Juan Cole's take on where we stand on the fourth anniversary of 9-11. The news is pretty damn depressing.

On the fourth-year anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks on the US, it is important that we take stock of where we stand. We do not stand in a good place. The US military is bogged down in an intractable guerrilla war in Iraq, which most Muslims view as an aggressive neo-imperialism. Afghanistan is still unstable. The major al-Qaeda leaders are still at large, and recently struck London. Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans on 8/30 have demonstrated that the US government is unprepared to deal with major disasters, and that Bush administration priorities have often been capricious.

There have been no further major acts of terrorism in the United States. There are many theories for why this should be. It is certainly the case that there are al-Qaeda members who would like to hit the US again. But al-Qaeda is only interested in what might be called theatrical terrorism, an attack that takes a big toll of dead and wounded and makes an impact on the enemy's economy. Such attacks are not easy for a tiny organization like al-Qaeda, which lacks the backing of a state, to carry out. Al-Qaeda used up its really capable people on 9/11 and is now left mostly with incompetents and marginal personalities. The US is a long way from the Middle East or Europe, and security measures have made it difficult for al-Qaeda operatives to get here or to do damage without being discovered first. The American Muslim community is on the whole fairly well integrated into American society, and clearly all but a handful are loyal Americans who wish to see the country they live in flourish. It was the American Muslims who turned in the Lackawanee five, Yemeni-American young men who had been in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. One group of Muslim American associations pledged $10 million for Katrina relief efforts. Still, an al-Qaeda attack on a dam or on a nuclear plant is still plausible, and there is no room for complacency.

Al-Qaeda simply hasn't been a priority for Bush. His first priority, all along, has been cutting taxes on his rich friends. The American public is so innumerate that they cannot seem to figure out that if you exclude from taxes another 5 percent of a man's income who pulls down $10 billion, you are talking about $500 million on which he doesn't have to pay taxes every year. But if you exclude the same percentage from taxes for someone making $20,000 a year (and there are a lot of those), then you are only saving her from paying taxes on $1000 a year. That the government could cut taxes on the low-income earners, and not cut them on the super-rich, doesn't seem to occur to the middle class that is so eager for a few crumbs from Bush that they are willing to sell their birthright to government services. Because Bush cut taxes so deeply, and therefore reduced government income and produced a big chronic deficit, he had to steal money for Iraq from various places. The government he appointed to run Iraq for a year (which never had any legal charter) essentially stole Iraq's petroleum income to use on its projects. Billions of dollars are unaccounted for. It is well documented that Bush stole money from Louisiana ear-marked for improving the levees at New Orleans, and also that he sent Louisiana national guardsmen to Iraq.

The Bush administration has put enormously more resources into its problematic Iraq War than it ever did into the fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates. That they have not succeeded in capturing Usamah Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri is a sign of extreme negligence or lack of seriousness. Likewise, the US government appears to have had no inkling that the March, 2004, bombings in Madrid or the July, 2005 bombings in London were in the offing. Given that a very large number of CIA personnel are in Iraq, it is no wonder that they hadn't been able to penetrate or monitor the radical Muslim terrorists in Western Europe.

The most criminal and incompetent administration in the history of the republic. And if you know much about the history of the republic, that's saying something.

Wealthy Justice

Roberts's stock ownership raises flags
Nominee's portfolio may force recusals on certain cases
By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
Last Update: 11:10 AM ET Sept. 11, 2005

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Judge John Roberts owns a broad section of stocks of major U.S. companies, holdings that could create problems if cases involving those companies reach the Supreme Court.

He can keep his holdings, but under Supreme Court rules, President Bush's pick to serve as the next chief justice will be disqualified from hearing any cases involving those corporations.

According to Roberts' report to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which begins hearings on his nomination Monday, the federal appeals court judge's net worth was $4.6 million on Aug. 1.

His individual holdings include pharmaceutical firms like Merck & Co. (MRK: news, chart, profile) and Pfizer Inc. (PFE: news, chart, profile) as well as technology concerns like Intel Corp. (INTC: news, chart, profile) , Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN: news, chart, profile) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT: news, chart, profile) , and he also owns shares in numerous mutual funds, totaling $1.7 million.

"Stocks are always a delicate issue for the justices," said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington attorney. "They do create serious recusal issues."

Roberts might have to bow out of cases involving some of Corporate America's biggest players, like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ: news, chart, profile) , in which Roberts owns $12,864 worth of shares, and Hewlett Packard Co. (HPQ: news, chart, profile) , in which Roberts owns $20,016.

Among Roberts's biggest holdings are XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (XMSR: news, chart, profile) , in which he owns $291,200, and Time Warner Inc. (TWX: news, chart, profile) , in which he owns $212,992. See full story on investment advisers' take on Roberts' portfolio.

Roberts wouldn't be the first justice with stock-related conflicts. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, for instance, excused herself from considering hundreds of hearing petitions, citing her stock holdings.

If justices own shares of companies whose cases routinely come before the high court, guidelines state that they should divest themselves of those holdings.

Time Warner could represent an early test for Roberts.

"There's almost nothing the [Federal Communications Commission] can do in the cable area that doesn't have an impact on Time Warner," said Alan Morrison, who teaches at Stanford Law School.

CNN Sucks

I didn't think it would be possible to find a newsreader more incompetent than Kyra Phillips, but weekend bubblehead Frederika Whitfield is coming real close.

The End of Republic

Rob Kall: "IT" Is Happening Here!!

Heavily armed mercenaries, authorized to kill, roving US streets.

by Rob Kall

http://www.opednews.com

I woke up at 4:30 AM to a nightmare that is real. Paid mercenary killers—Blackwater paramilitary mercenaries—the ones that are hired to stalk the worst danger zones of Iraq—are roving the streets of New Orleans, armed to the teeth, with permission to kill.

They have been purportedly hired by the federal and Louisiana governments.

About three years ago, I read Sinclair Lewis’s book, It Can’t Happen Here, which describes how a hayseed good ol’ boy southerner managed by treacherous handlers becomes president. They tear apart one after another American institution—schools, health care, while at the same time appointing politically loyal incompetents with no experience to manage all aspects of US government and other bureaucracies. The media are totally controlled, with uncooperative editors and reporters jailed or killed (Aug. 30th: UN inquiry called for after 18th journalist killed by US troops)

Lewis describes how towns and cities become militarized, how people are sent to jail without trials, or with fixed trials by crooked, corrupt judges appointed by the corrupt president and his cronies. (Jose Padilla and the Death of Personal Liberty)

Gun toting militias terrorize the nation at a local level, with the redneck morons handed leadership roles in every community, with the right to summarily execute people who say the wrong thing. Resistors are threatened with imprisonment or death if they don’t go public supporting the party line.

Lewis wrote his book in 1937, having see Hitler’s rise to Power. We’ve seen many articles describing how similarly the Bush administration has operated, starting with When Democracy Failed by Thom Hartmann. In 2002, Hartmann’s article seemed to reek of conspiracy theory and paranoia to some. Now, it is a frightening portent, characterizing too many parallels suggesting that we are much further along the dangerous road that Sinclair Lewis created as a fiction.

The thought of armed, privately paid mercenaries roaming the streets of a major American city, a city filled with Democrats, with poor, helpless African Americans and the most independent, insistent upon being self-sufficient Americans is horrifying. These guns for hired are reportedly authorized to not only make arrests but also to use “lethal force.”

We know that when hundreds of victims of the levee floods—New Orleans residents and tourists—tried to cross a bridge to safety, police officers from Gretna, in the Jefferson Parish, fired over their heads and forced them back into the flood ravaged, toxic water deluged city.

An American city is under military rule, with citizens being dragged and handcuffed out of their homes, helpless, frail old women thrown around, manhandled, captured and thrown into transport trucks. FEMA has created “detainment camps” which people are not allowed to leave, where they get two meals a day, are not allowed to cook, can’t leave to go to church….

This can not be. This must not be allowed. We must do all we can to end this. President Bush has asked the nation to hold a vigil next Friday. And we must hold one, but not quietly in our churches, temples and mosques. We must go to the streets, raise our voices and tell these betrayers of democracy that it’s over, that they can’t do this. Tell your congregations you don’t want to sit in a building a passively allow this to happen. Wake up your church, your synagogue, temple or mosque and lead them to a local demonstration—a vigil that truly, spiritually supports the victims of both Hurricane Katrina and the Levee Flood Bush’s incompetent appointees and stupid funding withdrawals caused.

America is at risk. You can no longer just read about it. You must do something today, not just donating money or goods to the victims in Mississippi and Louisiana. YOU are a victim of this disaster and you have to ask yourself what you’re going to do today, what you did last week, what you will do next week to save the USA. Do you live in another country? You can still support publications that tell the truth. You can still contribute to private think tanks.

Send your legislators this message. Write to your newspapers. Tell them to end the martial law, the mercenaries and detainment camps.

Averting Their Eyes

Covering New Orleans: The Decade Before the Storm

By BYRON CALAME
Published: September 11, 2005

"As a close reader of The Times and of poverty trends," S. M. Miller, of Brookline, Mass., told me in an e-mail last week, "I was surprised to learn of the poverty conditions that prevailed in New Orleans. ... Why didn't the economic-social-racial conditions in New Orleans get some attention in the paper?" His conclusion: "The Times let us down."

Indeed, over the past decade Times readers would have been hard-pressed to find a news headline about the poverty in the midst of the city that brings to the minds of many Americans the revelry of Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street. A search of substantive Times news articles about New Orleans since September 1995, conducted with the help of a researcher for the paper, found none that focused on the city's poor and the racial dimension of poverty. And there were only two articles about the city - both feature stories - that contained a few paragraphs on poverty and race.

Poverty's presence was vividly described in a November 2000 feature article in the Weekend section. "Poverty persists, cheek by jowl with wealth, much of it inherited," the article said. "A block or two from mansions with palm-shaded gardens stand crude unpainted bungalows fronting on crumbling streets, more reminiscent of the third world than dot-com America." It added: "Most of the poor, in a city almost three-quarters black, are African-American." Unfortunately, however, finding these words required reading to the 16th paragraph of the 3,700-word article.

A 1996 Sunday Magazine profile of the city's police superintendent noted that more residents of New Orleans lived in poverty then than in any other large American city except Detroit. The article suggested that the ghettos of New Orleans "have been ignored for decades because even though black politicians have controlled City Hall since 1978, African-Americans have never broken the white hold on economic power." These insights didn't come until the 12th paragraph of the 3,400-word article.

What readers would have been more likely to find in The Times's past decade of news coverage of New Orleans were stylishly written articles about the city's charm, cuisine and colorful characters. While some of those articles dealt with crime in the city's predominantly black neighborhoods, the issue of poverty was seldom explored in any depth.

None of the MSM ever cover poverty. Ever. Unless you are reading third-stream periodicals like The Progressive, you aren't going to read about it. In the national dailies, only the WaPo even mentions it because DC has a poor, black demographic not all that different from NOLA.

Stretched Too Thin?

Scores Denied Leave Time To Aid Displaced Families

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, September 11, 2005; Page A13

BAGHDAD, Sept. 10 -- Scores of Mississippi National Guard troops in Iraq who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina have been refused even 15-day leaves to aid their displaced families, told by commanders there were too few U.S. troops in Iraq to spare them, according to members of the Mississippi Guard.

About 600 members of the Mississippi Guard's 155th Brigade Combat Team, posted south of Baghdad in the area known as the "Triangle of Death" for the frequency of insurgent attacks there, live in the parts of southern Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana hit hardest by Katrina, Maj. Neil F. Murphy Jr., a spokesman with the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, said by e-mail Saturday. The brigade is attached to the Expeditionary Force.

Guard members and relatives said in e-mails or telephone interviews that virtually all of the roughly 300 soldiers of 155th Brigade's B and C companies had their homes destroyed or severely damaged in the hurricane.

Eighty Mississippi Guard members have been granted emergency leave, Murphy said.

The rest have been refused leave, told by their brigade command that all other forward operating bases "are tapped out and cannot send troops," one Mississippi Guard member wrote in an e-mail that was shared by a family member, with his permission, on condition of anonymity.

"All I know is that we are combat-ineffective due to the problems at home," wrote the Guard member, whose wife and young child escaped before their apartment building was washed away.

"We will start patrolling again soon so we have to get back out and try not to get blown up," the Guard member said. "We have served our country honorably for the last nine months and it is time for them to return the favor. That being said, let it be known that we are not trying to get out of duties, but we feel that we should be at home with our families doing what we were supposed to do."

"We are not trying to weasel our way home, we just need to help our loved ones," another member of the 155th wrote in an e-mail to a reporter.

Out of Touch

How Bush Blew It
Bureaucratic timidity. Bad phone lines. And a failure of imagination. Why the government was so slow to respond to catastrophe.

By Evan Thomas
Newsweek

Sept. 19, 2005 issue - It's a standing joke among the president's top aides: who gets to deliver the bad news? Warm and hearty in public, Bush can be cold and snappish in private, and aides sometimes cringe before the displeasure of the president of the United States, or, as he is known in West Wing jargon, POTUS. The bad news on this early morning, Tuesday, Aug. 30, some 24 hours after Hurricane Katrina had ripped through New Orleans, was that the president would have to cut short his five-week vacation by a couple of days and return to Washington. The president's chief of staff, Andrew Card; his deputy chief of staff, Joe Hagin; his counselor, Dan Bartlett, and his spokesman, Scott McClellan, held a conference call to discuss the question of the president's early return and the delicate task of telling him. Hagin, it was decided, as senior aide on the ground, would do the deed.

The president did not growl this time. He had already decided to return to Washington and hold a meeting of his top advisers on the following day, Wednesday. This would give them a day to get back from their vacations and their staffs to work up some ideas about what to do in the aftermath of the storm. President Bush knew the storm and its consequences had been bad; but he didn't quite realize how bad.

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

President George W. Bush has always trusted his gut. He prides himself in ignoring the distracting chatter, the caterwauling of the media elites, the Washington political buzz machine. He has boasted that he doesn't read the papers. His doggedness is often admirable. It is easy for presidents to overreact to the noise around them.

But it is not clear what President Bush does read or watch, aside from the occasional biography and an hour or two of ESPN here and there. Bush can be petulant about dissent; he equates disagreement with disloyalty. After five years in office, he is surrounded largely by people who agree with him. Bush can ask tough questions, but it's mostly a one-way street. Most presidents keep a devil's advocate around. Lyndon Johnson had George Ball on Vietnam; President Ronald Reagan and Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, grudgingly listened to the arguments of Budget Director Richard Darman, who told them what they didn't wish to hear: that they would have to raise taxes. When Hurricane Katrina struck, it appears there was no one to tell President Bush the plain truth: that the state and local governments had been overwhelmed, that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was not up to the job and that the military, the only institution with the resources to cope, couldn't act without a declaration from the president overriding all other authority.

He really is a Bubble Boy. Mike Allen tells the same story in TIME.

Crappy Reporting

There is a boatload of bad data in this Businessweek story, but the US media are finally starting to notice the real risk of avian influenza.

A Hot Zone In The Heartland
Little could be done to contain a deadly avian flu outbreak

By Catherine Arnst, with Arlene Weintraub in New York, Joseph Weber and Michael Arndt in Chicago, and Stan Crock in Washington

There's a fast-spreading avian flu virus killing millions of chickens in Asia, and it has mutated into one that is transmitted among humans. People start falling ill in Southeast Asia, but it takes weeks to recognize what is happening. An American businessman from Chicago completes a deal in Hanoi and flies back to O'Hare, the busiest airport in the world. O'Hare has one of only 11 stations in the U.S. capable of quarantining sick international travelers, but everyone on this flight seems fine. In any case, there have been no reports of a flu outbreak in Vietnam.

The businessman heads first to the office and then home. Meanwhile, one of his seatmates on the plane has flown on to Denver, another to New York. In a few days the businessman develops a high fever that drugs can't quell and is admitted to a hospital. Within a week, his lungs fail and he dies. Doctors assume a severe case of flu. Only after the pathologist's report comes back a week later do they learn he was infected with H5N1, the deadly virus that causes avian flu. It's easily spread through the air, and currently there's no vaccine.

One week later, Chicago has thousands of avian flu cases and the city is drawing down the nation's supplies of Tamiflu, a drug made in Switzerland by Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. that's the only antidote. The U.S. has enough Tamiflu for only a few million patients -- none of it stored in Chicago. By now there are outbreaks in New York, in Denver, and dozens of other regions across the nation. Fear of contagion has slowed the nation's transportation network to a crawl, and health-care workers in particular are rapidly succumbing.

As many as 50% of those stricken are dying, and half are ages 18 to 40. The U.S. can't turn to other nations for help -- the disease is speeding around the globe, and the media is comparing it to the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed up to 40 million worldwide.

The comparison would be on target. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention estimates that 25% of the U.S. population, 67 million victims, might fall ill in an avian flu pandemic. Even if a vaccine is developed, it would take six months to produce one tailored to the viral strain causing the pandemic, and the world's extremely limited vaccine production capacity means only 14% of the global population could be inoculated within a year of the outbreak. "The difference between this and a hurricane is that all 50 states will be affected at the same time," says Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota. "And this crisis will last a year or more. It will utterly change the world."

The change would spread far beyond the number of deaths. Most experts predict that an avian flu outbreak in the U.S. would overwhelm hospitals, decimate workforces, and throw transportation and supply chains into chaos. Because of the wide use of just-in-time inventory control and dependence on medical supplies made overseas, drug and food shortages would arise almost instantly. The nonprofit Trust for America's Health estimates that the economic impact of a moderate-size flu pandemic on the U.S. could reach $166.5 billion from death and lost productivity alone. That figure excludes "other disruptions to commerce and society."

It isn't clear to me if the authors are experienced science reporters, since there is so much wrong in this article. The lethality (pathogenicity) of H5N1 in humans once it has evolved to the point where it acheives efficient transmisibility between humans is very much up for grabs. I'm all for letting people know that this is a horrible bug, but let's be accurate about it.

Agenda

I'm not going to spend a lot of time today on 9-11, 2001. Yes, it left a big impression. I'm in DC, after all. But Katrina left a bigger one, and it is clear that we are no safer today than we were four years ago. Bush has utterly failed and it is clear to all. How we move on from here is not clear, and I'm in the potential path of the remnents of Hurricane Ophelia, headed for the Outer Banks of North Carolina later this week. Yes, I've been through Cat 1 hurricanes before. It's not a lot of fun, but what it means around here is a lot of trees down and power out for a while. If that's what happens, expect updates to this site to be sparse. My local utility is utterly unreliable in mild weather.

How We Lost New Orleans

Courtesy of Kevin Drum, we have links to the major dailies' Sunday chronologies of how it all went wrong in New Orleans.

New York Times: "Breakdowns Marked Path From Hurricane to Anarchy"

Washington Post: "The Steady Buildup to a City's Chaos"

Los Angeles Times: "Confusion at Crunch Time"

I've been reading the WaPo's version of the saga, in the print edition. (Easier to read while sitting on the back deck with a cup of coffee.) Some excerpts:

Sunday:

Many state officials on the call feared there simply wouldn't be enough help to go around once the storm cleared, and peppered FEMA with questions about resources. "We were concerned about making sure there were enough commodities to cover all three states, water, ice, MREs," recalled Bruce Baughman, Alabama's top emergency adviser.

At that point, FEMA had already stockpiled for immediate distribution 2.7 million liters of water, 1.3 million meals ready to eat and 17 million pounds of ice, a Department of Homeland Security official said. But Louisiana received a relatively small portion of the supplies; for example, Alabama got more than five times as much water for distribution. "It was what they would move for a normal hurricane -- business as usual versus a superstorm," concluded Mark Ghilarducci, a former FEMA official now working as a consultant for Blanco.

By late Sunday, as millions of people in the Gulf region sought a safe place to hunker down, hundreds of shelter beds upstate lay empty. "We could have taken a lot more," said Joe Becker, senior vice president for preparedness and response at the Red Cross. "The problem was transportation." The New Orleans plan for public buses that would take people upstate was never implemented, and while many residents did manage to get out of town -- about 80 percent, the mayor said -- tens of thousands did not.

"Once a mandatory evacuation was ordered, those buses should have been leaving those parishes with those people on them," said Chip Johnson, chief of emergency operations in Avoyelles Parish, who helped put together the plan. In Avoyelles alone, there was room for at least 200 or 300 more on Sunday night before the storm, and more shelters could have opened if necessary. "I don't know why that didn't happen."

At the Superdome, city officials reckoned that 9,000 people had arrived by evening to ride out the storm. FEMA had sent seven trailers full of food and water -- enough, it estimated, to supply two days of food for as many as 22,000 people and three days of water for 30,000. Ebbert said he knew conditions in the Superdome would be "horrible," but Hurricane Pam had predicted a massive federal response within two days, and Ebbert said the city's plan was to "hang in there for 48 hours and wait for the cavalry."

Around midnight, at the last of the day's many conference calls, local officials ticked off their final requests for FEMA and the state. Maestri specifically asked for medical units, mortuary units, ice, water, power and National Guard troops.

"We laid it all out," he recalled. "And then we sat here for five days waiting. Nothing!"

Monday:

The federal interagency team seemed to recognize the urgency of the crisis at a meeting that morning, discussing the potential for six months of flooding in New Orleans, and a preliminary Department of Energy conclusion that as many as 2,000 of 6,500 oil and gas platforms in the Gulf could be affected. But before noon, FEMA's Brown sent a remarkably mild memo to Chertoff, politely requesting 1,000 employees to be ready to head south "within 48 hours." Brown's memo suggested that recruits bring mosquito repellent, sunscreen and cash, because "ATMs may not be working."

"Thank you for your consideration in helping us meet our responsibilities in this near catastrophic event," Brown concluded.

At the U.S. military's Northern Command, officers had been watching the storm since early in the week and had started sending Army brigade commanders and their staffs to the three affected Gulf states by Thursday. "We were all watching the evacuation," Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe, Northcom's top operations officer, recalled. "We knew that it would be among the worst storms ever to hit the United States." But on Monday, the only request the U.S. military received from FEMA was for a half-dozen helicopters.

...

Around 6 p.m., as Governor Blanco was about to hold a news conference in Baton Rouge to discuss the damage, Blanco's communications director whispered that the president was on the line. The governor returned to a windowless office in her situation room and pleaded with the president for assistance.

"We need your help," she said. "We need everything you've got."

Tuesday:

Over the weekend, Texas emergency chief Jack Colley had continued to fret that the forecasts would turn out wrong and Katrina would pummel his state. "Don't worry," the hurricane center's Mayfield had assured him, "Texas is going to sit this one out." But now, it turned out, the storm was coming to Texas in another form. At 2:45 a.m., Louisiana's secretary of state for social services woke up Colley at home.

"Can you accept 25,000 people?" she asked.

Colley thought of his state's designated refuge: the Astrodome. Yes, he said. By 6 a.m., Colley's team was preparing to send Texas state troopers to escort the fleet of buses they had been assured would come soon. But they didn't know how many buses, or when, "and there were no answers that anyone could provide," said Steve McCraw, the homeland security adviser to Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R). Blanco ordered the Superdome evacuated, but Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana's emergency preparedness chief, grew frustrated at FEMA's inability to send buses to move people out. "We'd call and say: 'Where are the buses?' " he recalled, shaking his head. "They have a tracking system and they'd say: 'We sent 349.' But we didn't see them."

By 5 a.m., Bush had already been briefed about New Orleans's rising waters, and decided that he would cut short his vacation the next day. Later that morning, the interagency group urgently commissioned new damage assessments, and local officials warned that the scale of the coastal damage could be "too extensive to calculate or summarize." Nagin declared that 80 percent of his city was underwater; after flying over New Orleans with FEMA's Brown and witnessing the widespread flooding, Blanco announced that "the devastation is greater than our worst fears."

But in public, Brown and Chertoff gave no such indication of the cataclysm, later saying they were not told until midday that the levee breaches were irreparable and would flood the city. William Lokey, FEMA's coordinator on the ground, declared that morning: "I don't want to alarm everybody that New Orleans is filling up like a bowl. That is just not happening."

That was exactly what was happening, and many state and local officials quickly concluded that the federal bureaucracy was spinning its wheels.

At the noon videoconference, several participants said, Louisiana's Smith heatedly demanded federal help. Where were the buses? At first, Smith recalled, he had asked for 450 buses, then 150 more, then an additional 500; by the end of the day, none had arrived. The first evacuees did not arrive at the Astrodome until 10 p.m. Wednesday -- on a school bus commandeered by a resourceful 20-year-old.

In Jefferson Parish, Maestri sent out an urgent call that morning for power packs in hopes of rescuing his county's faltering sewage system. "In Pam, they had said they'd have those ready on pallets so they could airlift them in, no problem," he later recalled. "It's 11 days later, and I still don't have them. I've got a sewage problem that's going to be a medical disaster like we've never seen in this country. Where's the cavalry?"

Wednesday:

Bush, winging his way back from vacation, paused to swoop low over the prostrate city on Air Force One. Back in Washington, he convened a stunned Cabinet.

Bush came in with a "sense of urgency in his tone" after his aerial tour, recalled Mike Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services. "It was, 'Has anybody thought of that, who's doing this? I want you to do this and this and this.' " But the scale of the problem seemed inexplicably massive, and the plans they drew up that day would take agonizing days to carry out. Leavitt, for example, declared a federal health emergency throughout the Gulf Coast, calling for 2,500 additional hospital beds in the region by Friday, and another 2,500 in the 72 hours after that. "We had to scramble the jets," he said.

At the interagency coordination meetings, gargantuan new proposals were being discussed, such as housing the estimated million-plus newly homeless in tent cities, mobile home parks and even federalized cruise ships. At Northcom, officials were still waiting for a call requesting active-duty troops. The Navy dispatched three aid ships from Norfolk; they were due to arrive Sept. 4.

But assistance that was available was often blocked. In the Gulf, not 100 miles away from New Orleans, sat the 844-foot USS Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms and beds for 600 patients. Starting Wednesday, Amtrak offered to run a twice-a-day shuttle for as many as 600 evacuees from a rail yard west of New Orleans to Lafayette, La. The first run was not organized until Saturday. Officials then told Amtrak they would not require any more trains.

And it goes on and on like this. But the main thing is, by Wednesday, the cavalry should have already arrived. Wednesday was way too late for the planning to, in effect, commence at the Cabinet level.

Sunday Chatters

The Talk Shows

Sunday, September 11, 2005; Page A05

Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows:

FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and David Vitter (R-La.), and Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen .

THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA), 9 a.m.: Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the Dalai Lama and Allen .

FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Landrieu , and Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore .

MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 10:30 a.m.: Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.); New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin ; Ivor van Heerden , director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, and historian John M. Barry .

LATE EDITION (CNN), 11 a.m.: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); New York Gov. George E. Pataki (R); Baton Rouge, La., Mayor Melvin Holden (D); American Red Cross President Marty Evans ; Iraqi President Jalal Talabani ; former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.); 9/11 Commission co-chairmen Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton ; Vitter and Honore .

Document the outrages in comments.

The Photo Op Administration

Storm Stretches Refiners Past a Perilous Point

By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: September 11, 2005

For the nation's oil refiners, Hurricane Katrina was a disaster long in the making.

Analysts and industry executives had for years feared the consequences of a storm ramming into the country's largest energy hub - a complex infrastructure that spans most of the coastline between Texas and Alabama, where nearly half of the nation's refineries are located.

Hurricane Katrina confirmed the worst predictions. Wreaking havoc along the coastal states, drowning New Orleans and leaving many dead, the storm shut down nearly all the gulf's offshore oil and gas production for over a week. Racing to restore operations, the industry has brought about 60 percent of that back.

But even more crucially, it knocked off a dozen refineries at the peak of summer demand, sending oil prices higher and gasoline prices to inflation-adjusted records.

The events of the last two weeks have demonstrated how close to the edge the country's refining system had been operating, even before the storm. Because the last American refinery was built nearly 30 years ago - with only a single new one now in the works - the problem is unlikely to disappear quickly.

As a consequence, even though crude oil prices have fallen back to pre-Katrina levels, prices for gasoline, heating oil, diesel and jet fuel are expected to remain higher than they were before the storm for a much longer period of time.

"There is now a greater realization that we don't have much extra capacity," said Edward H. Murphy, a refining specialist at the American Petroleum Institute, a trade and lobbying group. "It doesn't take a Katrina, but even a smaller event can create a dislocation in the market. Disasters like this can give you a billboard on the need to address this. We need more capacity."

The rapid run-up in oil prices over the last two years has translated into a boon for refiners after many years of meager returns. This year, the refining margin - the difference between the cost of buying crude oil and selling refined end products - has exceeded $20 a barrel, far above the long-term average of $6. That has meant record profits for oil companies and refiners and above-average stock performance on Wall Street.

Bush could do something about price gouging. You'll notice that he's catching photo ops in the Gulf, instead.

Clueless

No Fixed Address

By JAMES DAO
Published: September 11, 2005

WASHINGTON — The images of starving, exhausted, flood-bedraggled people fleeing New Orleans and southern Mississippi over the last two weeks have scandalized many Americans long accustomed to seeing such scenes only in faraway storm-tossed or war-ravaged places like Kosovo, Sudan or Banda Aceh.

But Hurricane Katrina delivered America its own refugee crisis, arguably the worst since Sherman's army burned its way across the South. And though the word "refugee" is offensive to some, and not accurate according to international law, it conveys a fundamental truth: these are people who will be unable to return home for months, possibly years. Many almost certainly will make new homes in new places.

It is not the first time the United States has faced a mass internal migration: think of the "Okies" who fled the drought-ravaged Dust Bowl for fertile California in the 1930's, or Southern blacks who took the Delta blues to Chicago in the first half of the last century.

But the wreckage wrought by Katrina across the Gulf Coast is probably unprecedented in American history. No storm has matched the depth and breadth of its devastation. And the two disasters that demolished major cities - the Chicago fire of 1871 and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 - occurred when the federal government lacked the resources and agencies to help the displaced. They offer few clues about how to aid and comfort Katrina's victims.

For that reason, many experts say, the federal government should look for long-term strategies among the groups that have resettled millions of refugees from those faraway storm-tossed or war-ravaged places - two million of them here in the United States since 1975.

"These groups have a different way of seeing the problem: that it's not just short-term emergency relief," said Roberta Cohen, an expert on refugees at the Brookings Institution who helped write guidelines on aiding internally displaced people for the United Nations.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has welcomed some help from agencies that specialize in disaster relief overseas, including the United Nations and the United States Agency for International Development.

But despite Katrina's magnitude, FEMA officials say their approach to resettling evacuees is not likely to differ significantly from the approach here to past disasters. They have ordered 100,000 trailers and mobile homes that will be placed in "trailer cities" in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. They have begun finding short-term apartments in Houston and Baton Rouge. And the Red Cross and other aid groups plan to provide psychological counseling and housing assistance at its temporary shelters.

"This is larger, but the process is the same," said James McIntyre, a FEMA spokesman.

Experts in refugee resettlement say the old ways might not be enough. Thousands of the New Orleans evacuees were poor or elderly; many were on welfare or have limited job skills. Many have been sent far from family and friends. Meeting their needs, and rebuilding the shattered Gulf Coast cities, will take a far more long-term and comprehensive plan, those experts say.

"The approach now is very ad hoc," said Mark Franken, executive director of migration and refugee services for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. "They are moving people from one temporary environment to another."

Mr. Franken said nine resettlement organizations had proposed re-creating their refugee services for evacuees: finding jobs and long-term independent housing, acclimating people to new communities and providing careful case management that lasts months. The Bush administration is still reviewing that proposal, he said. The administration, he added, said groups should be prepared to care for half a million evacuees.

We've known for decades, DECADES, that what happened in the Gulf Coast was going to happen. And there is NO PLAN. As of this morning, Michael Brown is still paying for his Margaritas on your dime. I want to see some heads rolling, right now. "The Bush administration is still reviewing that proposal." The fucking Bush administration wouldn't know how to read a proposal if it were My Pet Goat. We are run by idiots, and nothing makes that clearer than Hurricane Katrina.

The hurricane season has another 6 weeks to run.

A Little History Music, Maestro

Sunday's WaPo has a fascinating article on that most unusual part of the bar: the advocates who practice before the Supreme Court. This tiny super-specialty now includes no more than a couple of dozen attorneys. The picture painted of John Roberts as he plies his trade is of a man at the top of his profession, not an ideologue and well liked by other lawyers of whatever their political views. Since I have never seen a case argued before the Supremes (but lots of others: I live in a small jurisdiction and serve on juries regularly), this article is very educational for me. And interesting enough that I'm going to wander down to the building on Maryland Ave. this fall and take in an argument.

I am one of those who are of the opinion that Supreme Court sessions ought to be broadcast on C-Span. It isn't, or shouldn't be, some sort of arcane religion. This is also The People's Business, and you shouldn't have to be a DC resident or tourist to see it.

When I worked for Morton Halperin (father of The Note's Mark) at the ACLU 20 years ago, the office was across the street from the Court. But I worked there one summer when the court wasn't in session, it was 1986 and Reagan was trying to ram that year's odious Omnibus Drug Bill, with its cancellation of the posse comitatus rule (which is back to haunt us again) through Congress and we were putting in scary hours at the office. I'd get there at 7:30 in the morning and Mort would already be giving interviews in his office to the morning shows.

Yes, I've had plenty of Genuine Washington Experiences. When I was at the ACLU, I took the subway into work. Every morning on my walk from the Metro station to the office, I ran into George McGovern, then a Hill resident, out for his morning constitutional. It got to be such a regular thing that we stopped to talk each morning. Later, when I went to work in the Kennedy Center Orchestra, I'd run into Teddy Kennedy in the labyrinth of tunnels underneath the Center's stages. He had a pass for free parking in the service tunnel behind the stages at his brother's national memorial. I've sat across a bargaining table from former World Bank head James D. Wolfensohn, then KenCen chairman. He's an absolute asshole, by the way. A brilliant, charming asshole. Back in those days, I was running the Orchestra's negotiations and grievance arbitrations, which took me frequently to the office of Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in Foggy Bottom. The parking garage I used (a block over from FMCS, they have no garage) was next to the ABC bureau. I ran into Sam Donaldson on every visit. We were in arbitration so often that it got to the point where he approached me one day at the valet's stand and asked me, "Excuse me. Should I know you?" By that time, I'd led the orchestra through so many strikes and lockouts which had gotten national coverage that I could honestly answer "Yes." My photo has been on the front page of the WaPo and I even got paid to submit an opinion piece on one of our many labor actions. We were either on strike or locked four times while I was in the orchestra. We took the longest lock out in the orchestra industry while I was there. Asking people who don't make very much money to take a long job action is the hardest thing I've ever had to do (and I was in the middle of a divorce at the time.) This was the bravest group of people that I've ever had the pleasure to be associated with.

When I joined the Orchestra in 1986, they were a group of scared rabbits who accepted every piece of shit that came down from on high. Organizing them was not easy, and I'm proud of the job that I and my committee did to bring them along. Today, they are making a salary, which while not anywhere what the major orchestras are making, is a living wage in DC. And they have the credibility now to walk into the bargaining room and get their increases without a strike. To get that credible threat, you have to take a strike or two.

I've done media from both sides of the pencil and the microphone, as a reporter and as the subject of a story. I can tell you that most of what passes for "coverage" in the media actually stinks. The"press" doesn't have any higher percentage of competent employees than any other enterprise. 80% of the people who work for other people, whether in the press or anywhere else, are mediocre. ( People who work for themselves are another matter. In this economy, you can't survive as a self-employed person without being excellent. All of the self-employed people I know are excellent and exhausted, usually working on the last 5% of their capabilities.) The WashPo never understood the story. The NYT's Alan Cooperman did. Christian Science Monitor got it, but CBS news did not. The Washington Times ran the literal Kennedy Center and Washington Opera press releases, verbatim, as front page news stories. There is a reason I won't link to the Wash Times, and that's it.

This long and winding post doesn't do a very good job of staying on topic, but I had a lot of things on my mind today, and I'm a blogger. I work things out by writing about them. And I wanted to let you know where some of my thinking and interests come from. What makes a blog is communication. Yours is welcomed in comments below. Guest bloggers, the front page is yours. I'm off for the rest of the night, this Roberts confirmation fight is keeping me blogging two sites and I'm about out of gas.

Major thanks for all that I learned in the labor movement go to Lenny Leibowitz, who remains a good friend.

Epic of the Reconstruction

Rebuilding the Gulf and Goodwill

By Colbert I. King

Saturday, September 10, 2005; Page A23

"George Bush doesn't care about black people."

-- Kanye West, rapper and producer

Bush should put someone on the ground who can marshal and oversee the deployment of all available federal resources, including the new relief money. That someone must also have the president's full backing, the authority to say yes or no, and the courage to send foot-dragging bureaucrats packing, as well as the guts to stand up to the hustlers already packed up and headed to the scene.

Moreover, the federal government's reconstruction and resettlement czar must not be afraid to be in the company of frustrated and angry black people. Let me repeat: must not be afraid to be in the company of frustrated and angry black people. That requirement alone eliminates most of Bush's political appointees.

If Bush is serious about changing the hurricane disaster zone into a place of hope and opportunity with materials to build and sustain a new infrastructure, he should look beyond his administration's weak bench and select someone with the management and political skills -- and the cultural sensitivity -- to work with the Gulf Coast's economic and social strata.

What better person than Marc Morial, the former two-term mayor of New Orleans and current president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League? My saying this may be the kiss of death, but I shall plow on.

Morial was one of New Orleans's best and most popular mayors. He helped build much of the city and left a cleaned-up police department in his wake. He knows state legislatures, having served in the Louisiana state senate for two terms. He practiced law in one of the region's top firms. He also knows Washington, having earned a law degree from Georgetown University.

On top of everything else, Morial runs America's oldest and largest community-based movement aimed at getting African Americans ready to enter the mainstream. Economic self-sufficiency through jobs, training, homeownership and entrepreneurship is what Morial and the Urban League are all about. Morial is the kind of leader who can work with a Republican governor, Haley Barbour of Mississippi, and a Democratic governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana. He also knows how to work both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill and he has good lines into America's corporate and nonprofit sectors.

A smart White House would ask the league's board to give Morial a leave of absence for a few years. It would equip him with a sharp Office of Management and Budget deputy who knows federal programs and a Joint Chiefs of Staff senior officer who knows which buttons to push at the Pentagon. It would back him up with an executive order and turn him loose on the job. That's what a smart White House that "cares about" closing the chasms, wiping away the angry tears, and rebuilding the Gulf Coast would do.

We'll see.

Colby's suggestion is a terrific one, but neglects the fact that the Bushies don't do competence.

The Week Ahead

The New York Times' terrific Supreme Court reporter, Linda Greenhouse, today offers a viewer's guide to the Roberts' hearings on television and radio next week.

Read it here.

Shared World

Web Proves Its Capacity to Help in Time of Need
By Chris Gaither and Matea Gold, Times Staff Writers

Thirty years after the Internet was created as a communications system of last resort, the network fulfilled its mission during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — but in ways more sweeping than its founders could have imagined.

It reunited families and connected them with shelter. It turned amateur photographers into chroniclers of history and ordinary people into pundits. It allowed television stations to keep broadcasting and newspapers to keep publishing. It relayed heartbreaking tales of loss and intimate moments of triumph.

In the process, the Internet cemented itself further into the American mainstream, demonstrating the flexibility that its designers envisioned and a vibrancy they did not.

"The Web has become the media of public service, of communication, of original content," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the USC Annenberg School for Communication's Center for the Digital Future. "I think this will be viewed as the first event that demonstrates what the Web has become in terms of being transformational in people's lives."

The Net was designed as a decentralized military network that could keep commanders in contact even if most of the nation's infrastructure was wiped out in a nuclear war. But the commercial and social applications of the last 10 years have outstripped that original vision.

Indeed, even as government agencies struggled to respond to Katrina, millions of regular people mobilized themselves online.

The postings at online bulletin board Craigslist have been jammed with offers of shelter from across the country. More than half of the $503 million in donations that have poured into the American Red Cross have been made online. In the nearly two weeks since Katrina came ashore, Yahoo News posted the four busiest days in its history.

In Houston, a room in the Astrodome that formerly held baseball souvenirs is now a makeshift computer lab, where some victims of the hurricane saw their first photos of the devastation. They could also contact relatives, find housing and start filling out forms for government assistance.

"I lost everything: no ID, no Social Security. Everything," said 41-year-old New Orleans resident Lule Youngblood, now living at the Astrodome. "But this nice young man showed me how to use this computer to try to get help. I never thought that I would be using something like this."

The Internet has played a larger and larger role in every major news event of the last 10 years. During most, though, it served as little more than a digital wire service or TV network that allowed news junkies to get a quick fix. In the aftermath of Katrina, use of the Internet is more vital and varied than ever.

Conscious of that, traditional broadcast and cable news outlets have been beefing up their online offerings, hoping to keep viewers tuned in to their content, no matter where it is located. That strategy paid off after the hurricane, as traffic on ABCNews.com, CBS.com, CNN.com, FoxNews.com and MSNBC.com rose to record levels.

At MSNBC.com, for instance, visitors played a total of nearly 50 million video clips in the week after the storm — three times more than the previous record, set in the week after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Many media and Internet companies created space reserved for "citizen journalists" to post their own photos and accounts of the disaster, as well as comment on others' contributions. CNN received more than 30,000 personal accounts and 1,500 videos or photos.

"The kids are picking up on the stress in the house from everyone, but how do you tell your children that they can't go home because it's a possibility we don't have a home?" said one woman who gave her name as Michele M. from Slidell, La., who posted blog entries on FoxNews.com throughout the week. "There are no more toys, no more swing set, and I don't know when they will see daddy again."

Said AOL Vice President Lewis D'Vorkin: "Can't do it in TV, can't do it in newspapers. That personal involvement is what the whole online news space is all about."

Without the Internet, news outlets in areas hard hit by the storm wouldn't have been able to reach anyone.

Journalists at the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper fled their offices shortly after the hurricane struck. They relocated to Baton Rouge, La., about 75 miles away, and published electronic-only editions for three days after the storm. Hundreds of thousands of people visited the website, Nola.com, and viewed more than 72 million pages, according to the Southern Newspaper Publishers Assn. The newspaper has since begun publishing on borrowed printing presses, but reporters continue to post breaking-news updates online.

And, in the process of finding and delivering information to each other, we are creating a new kind of interdependent community.

Doing Good

Red Cross Paying Hotel Bills for Thousands

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 10, 2005; Page A01

LAFAYETTE, La., Sept. 9 -- In a massive, costly and little-noticed effort to calm a housing catastrophe that reaches from Florida to Texas, the American Red Cross has quietly created a program that it says is now picking up hotel bills for at least 57,000 people who fled Hurricane Katrina. Room charges are being paid out of the $503 million that the Red Cross has collected so far for hurricane relief.

The program began early this week, when several thousand hotels and motels in and around the Gulf Coast area were notified by the Red Cross that registered guests who can show that they lived in 256 storm-affected Zip codes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would be eligible to have their unpaid room charges covered by the Red Cross.

The program does not require guests to prove financial need, although it does ask hotel managers to "please be judicious as you participate with us in this program."

Though the free lodging is available to anyone who had fled Katrina, including the more than 180,000 people who the federal government says are in shelters, most of those who have taken advantage of the program are "those who had the resources and transportation to evacuate themselves," said Stacey Grissom, a spokeswoman in Washington for the Red Cross.

The fax that went to the hotels said 14 days would be covered, but the Red Cross said Friday that the two-week limit will probably not be enforced because tens of thousands of people in hotels and motels are unlikely to have other housing options for weeks or perhaps months.

"It is not going to be 14 days, and they are not going to be kicked out of the hotels," said Grissom. "Our priority is to make sure these people have a shelter over their heads."

She said the "analytical details" about how long it will last and how much it will cost will be worked out in the coming weeks as the Red Cross gets a better handle on managing the largest single disaster in the organization's 125-year history.

The hotel program appears to guarantee that Gulf Coast hotels, which are jammed with evacuees from Pensacola, Fla., to Jackson, Miss., to Lake Charles, La., will remain full for the indefinite future.

"For our area, it is very good hotel business," said James Thackston, general manager of the Hilton Lafayette, the largest hotel in this city. With a pre-hurricane population of 110,000, Lafayette has absorbed about 40,000 evacuees. Most of them are in relatives' homes or in hotels.

The Truth

Judge supports CNN request to cover Katrina's toll

Saturday, September 10, 2005; Posted: 1:33 a.m. EDT (05:33 GMT)

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- At the request of CNN, a federal judge in Texas Friday night blocked emergency officials in New Orleans from preventing the media from covering the recovery of bodies from Hurricane Katrina.

Attorneys for the network argued that the ban was an unconstitutional prior restraint on news gathering.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order against a "zero access" policy announced earlier Friday by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.

A hearing was scheduled for Saturday morning to determine if the order should be made permanent.

In explaining the ban, Ebbert said, "we don't think that's proper" to let media view the bodies.

In an e-mail to CNN staff, CNN News Group President Jim Walton said the network filed the the lawsuit to "prohibit any agency from restricting its ability to fully and fairly cover" the hurricane victim recovery process.

Blitzer announced this yesterday on The Situation Room.

Paper Trail

Gonzales allies trumpet conservative views
Allies say attorney general is a suitable pick for the Supreme Court
By Jo Becker and Dan Eggen
The Washington Post
Updated: 3:48 a.m. ET Sept. 10, 2005

WASHINGTON - Supporters of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales have launched a campaign to rebut criticism that he is not reliably conservative enough to serve on the Supreme Court, a move likely to intensify a rift within Republican circles over one of President Bush's closest confidants.

The group of former Gonzales aides and other Republicans still in the Bush administration -- most of whom are close to top White House officials -- are coordinating with one another, sharpening common lines of argument, then circulating these points on Capitol Hill, in conservative circles and with reporters, according to several people involved.

With President Bush confronting a second high court vacancy, the maneuvering suggests a determination to preserve Gonzales's viability as a potential nominee. The heart of their case is that conservative groups -- many of whom have drawn bright public lines warning Bush not to promote Gonzales to the court -- have fundamentally misread a man whose record shows he is committed to their aim of moving the judiciary to the right.

"A lot of us who worked with him in the White House counsel's office feel strongly that the opposition is misguided and rather ill-informed," said David Leitch, a former Gonzales deputy who is now general counsel for Ford Motor Co. "We're not out lobbying for the attorney general to be nominated to the Supreme Court; that's up to the president. . . . But we don't want to see a good man who has been a very solid conservative besmirched by fear and rumor."

A likely nominee?
Republican operatives close to the White House have long believed that President Bush would like to nominate Gonzales, not only because of their friendship but also because of the historic opportunity it would afford him to appoint the first Hispanic justice -- a potential major boost in his long-running campaign to build Republican support among the growing Hispanic population.

But it is a measure of the importance that conservative leaders place on definitively shifting the Supreme Court's balance that Bush cannot do so without prompting an outcry -- confronting him with a test of how willing he is to let political allies impose litmus tests on him.

Bush came to Gonzales's defense this summer and made plain he was irritated by the conservative criticism. Earlier this week, bantering with reporters at a photo opportunity, he made clear Gonzales remains on his list for the vacancy created by the imminent retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

But the anti-Gonzales drumbeat on the right has not quieted. Haunted by Republican presidential court picks who have proved more moderate than they would like once on the bench, conservatives argue that Gonzales has not shown himself devoted to their cause on such hot-button issues as abortion and affirmative action. In the face of such concern, William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said that for Bush to pick Gonzales would be the equivalent of Bush's father's decision to break his "no new taxes" pledge.

"You finally get a Republican president, a real Republican majority in the Senate and then you don't move the court to the right?" he asked. "It would be totally demoralizing to the president's supporters."

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who has conducted telephone focus groups on the pending nomination of John G. Roberts Jr., Bush's choice to replace the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, said it is too early to tell how a Gonzales choice would be perceived among rank-and-file Republicans or key swing voters. But, he said, "the more dangerous choice is to do something to lose your own base."
....
Brad Berenson, an associate White House counsel from 2001 to 2003, said that "a lot of the objections are based on fear and doubt rather than facts and data."

"The conservatives who know Judge Gonzales the best are, to a person, strong supporters of his," Berenson said. The conservatives who know him the least are the ones in opposition. That should tell you something."

Gonzales supporters say skeptics should look at the judges he has vetted and helped onto the bench, many of them darlings of the conservative movement, including Roberts. They also note that at Gonzales's urging the American Bar Association has been excluded from the judicial selection process. (Many conservatives believe the ABA is liberally biased.) And as attorney general, Gonzales steered a rightward course set by his predecessor, John D. Ashcroft, on issues ranging from terrorism to pornography, his backers argue.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who said his kind words for Gonzales earlier this week prompted a slew of angry phone calls, asserted that the arguments against the attorney general "just don't hold water."

But Kay Daly, president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, does not want to take a chance -- and believes that in the end Bush will not either. "We expect President Bush to keep his promise" to appoint a conservative justice in the mold of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, she said, "and there are others who fit that mold more closely."

Let's see: a SCOTUS judge whose written memos justifying the overturning of international treaties and promoting torture? I don't think so.

Equal Rights

Coach speaks against Supreme Court nominee

The Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM -- An Alabama high school basketball coach who won a Supreme Court ruling strengthening protections against gender bias plans to testify before Congress on President Bush's nomination of John Roberts as Supreme Court chief justice.

Roderick Jackson, girls basketball coach at Ensley High School, said he is worried that Roberts' views are "locked in cement."

Jackson said he isn't testifying against Roberts so much as he is testifying in favor of a nominee who would be open to civil rights concerns.

"I feel like this is just my civic duty to go before the committee and answer their questions," Jackson said. "I'm very honored they would consider a lay person like myself."

A divided Supreme Court sided with Jackson earlier this year in deciding a federal law against gender discrimination extended legal protection to male employees who complain about mistreatment of female athletes.

Jackson, who also teaches, was fired in 2001 from his secondary job as the girls' basketball coach at Ensley after repeatedly complaining that his team didn't get a cut of ticket sales or concessions, a bus to travel to games or enough practice time in the school gym.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee invited Jackson to be one of their 10 witnesses. The others include Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., an Alabama native beaten during the "Bloody Sunday" voting rights march in Selma.

The hearings start Monday, but Jackson won't testify until Thursday or Friday, after the senators' questioning of Roberts is concluded.

Jackson's case, which gained national attention, showed him the importance of the Supreme Court. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom Roberts was to replace before the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, wrote the majority opinion.

"I'm just a teaching coach from Birmingham who had a case that ultimately was decided by the highest court in the land, and if it had not been for that vote by a judge who was a conservative, my girls would have been locked out of an important educational benefit," Jackson said.

This is what the real world, the outside-the-beltway world beyond the protected world of the marble pile on Maryland Ave. SE, looks like. John Roberts has never lived there.

Stupidity

Security Contractors in Iraq Under Scrutiny After Shootings

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 10, 2005; Page A01

IRBIL, Iraq -- The pop of a single rifle shot broke the relative calm of Ali Ismael's morning commute here in one of Iraq's safest cities.

Ismael, his older brother Bayez and their driver had just pulled into traffic behind a convoy of four Chevrolet Suburbans, which police believe belonged to an American security contractor stationed nearby. The back door of the last vehicle swung open, the brothers said in interviews, and a man wearing sunglasses and a tan flak jacket leaned out and leveled his rifle.

"I thought he was just trying to scare us, like they usually do, to keep us back. But then he fired," said Ismael, 20. His scalp was still marked by a bald patch and four-inch purple scar from a bullet that grazed his head and left him bleeding in the back seat of his Toyota Land Cruiser.

"Everything is cloudy after that," he said.

A U.S. investigation of the July 14 incident concluded that no American contractors were responsible, a finding disputed by the Ismaels, other witnesses, local politicians and the city's top security official, who termed it a coverup. No one has yet been held responsible.

Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of U.S., British and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians.

Insurgencies are broken by political changes. This isn't going to cut it. Americans still think they are cowboys and that swinging dicks actually matter.

Posted by Melanie at 08:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

National Guard Protecting US Contractor in Saudi Arabia

Members of Guard unit weary of role in Iraq
Short supplies, lack of manpower affect Minnesota group

BY JANNA GOERDT
Duluth News Tribune

When the 216th Air Defense Artillery Echo Battery left Cloquet, Minn., in August 2004, it left as one unit ready to join Operation Iraqi Freedom.

What the National Guard unit couldn't know is that they would soon be split — with half the soldiers sent to guard an American contractor's compound in Saudi Arabia and the other half sent "to hell," according to soldiers now guarding the Daura oil refinery near Baghdad.

There, soldiers describe pulling 48- to 72-hour shifts and being out on patrol or guarding the base when sleep deprivation clouds their judgment. They describe equipment shortages — of everything from flashlights to laser-sighted scopes to medicine for insect bites. And they describe a frenetic pace coupled with shifting missions that they believe has needlessly endangered their lives and left them soured on the military.

"I'm just tired of letting my troops get pushed around," wrote Staff Sgt. Doug Heller of Duluth in a series of e-mail interviews. He corresponded with the Duluth News Tribune despite recent orders not to speak to the media. His messages provide a look at the ordeals of serving in Iraq and its impact on one unit.

"All I'm asking for is the people to realize that their friends, families and loved ones have been through hell," Heller wrote. "If there is a way for me to prevent this from happening in the future, I will try anything, at the cost of my rank."

It's an unusual move for active-duty soldiers to speak out about their mission, said John Marshall, combined Honor Guard Commander in Duluth. Marshall served in the Army and was injured in the Persian Gulf War.

"The situation must be pretty bad for them to talk," Marshall said. "By doing this, they are sticking their necks out."

Via Juan Cole.

First thing, Marshall's right: it really must be pretty bad for them to speak out.

The other thing is, WTF is half a National Guard unit doing, guarding some contractor's facility in Saudi Arabia? ISTM that if the Saudis can't provide security, this is where you hire Blackwater or Custer Battles.

I've got a low opinion of these private paramilitary security firms and how they've been used - I think they have speeded the destabilization of Iraq by acting as if they own the place, and being accountable to no one. I really don't think they should be allowed to operate in a war zone, unless they are made subject to the rules and discipline of the U.S. armed forces in the theatre. And if contractors (regular contractors working on power plants and the like, not private security firms) must operate in a war zone to serve our war aims, I figure it's legit to use our troops to protect them.

But IMHO, they've got no business using a National Guard unit - let alone chopping it in two - to protect a contractor that's operating well outside the war zone. They can use private contractors for their security. I don't see where they have a right to ask for the protection of the U.S. military.

Da Sola

Debit card plan scrubbed
FEMA official vows aid will be delivered
By ANNE MARIE KILDAY, SALATHEIA BRYANT and MÓNICA GUZMÁN

Hurricane evacuees hoping to jump-start their recovery by getting debit cards this weekend will instead have to turn to the telephone to apply for financial assistance.

Saying they had run out of cards, federal officials and the American Red Cross told evacuees who are registered at Houston's largest shelters that they are changing the process for disbursing the money.

However, they assured the Louisiana evacuees here and in large shelters in San Antonio and Dallas that the money will still be available.

Emma Burnett, of New Orleans, was one of those in line for a FEMA card about 5 p.m. Friday when she was told to return today.

Burnett, a 52-year-old nursing assistant, said she does not have a bank account and will have to wait for a check to arrive at her post office box at the Astrodome.

"I was not planning on spending that money," she said. "I was going to use it to find a place to live."

FEMA and the Red Cross, which began issuing the cards on Thursday at Reliant Park and the George R. Brown Convention Center downtown, had planned to continue distributing them through this weekend.

"This is a national issue," Tom Costello, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said. "The physical card stock is in short supply."

Now, he said, the only way for storm survivors to receive $2,000 in FEMA assistance is through a check or direct deposit to their bank accounts.

"We regret the late announcement," Costello said, "and we hope we reach those families that are planning to come here.

"This does not mean anyone is being denied the assistance they are eligible for," he said. "We will get the assistance to the families."

At the convention center, Red Cross officials said they exhausted their supply of cards after issuing about 4,000 on Friday. They directed evacuees to go to Western Union locations, where they can apply for the emergency aid of up to about $1,500.

"We don't want people to come (to the convention center)," Red Cross spokeswoman Harriet Halkyard said. "We don't want people to stand in line like they did today."

No one has their shit together, not the Feds, not the Red Cross.

We are on our own.

A Small Glimmer

Scorned FEMA chief is sent back to Washington

By Bruce Nolan
Staff writer

Eleven days after Hurricane Katrina plunged New Orleans into agonies of flood, panic and chaotic evacuation, authorities finally began searching house-to-house in once-flooded neighborhoods Friday for those who did not escape.

Early results retrieved far fewer bodies than officials expected.

That led one key official to hope the death toll might be much less than 10,000, Mayor Ray Nagin’s early estimate that quickly became an unchallenged benchmark.

That figure was based on the speed with which Hurricane Katrina flooded the Lower 9th Ward and other poor, densely populated neighborhoods as the storm roared past on Aug. 29 with winds of at least 105 mph.

The estimate became more credible as thousands of traumatized refugees slogged into the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center during the next two days, bearing nightmarish tales of pushing bloated bodies out of the way or passing them sprawled on rooftops.
But in the first day of organized searching, there seemed some reason for hope.

“I think there’s some encouragement in what we found in the initial sweeps that some of the catastrophic death that some people predicted may not, in fact, have occurred,” said Terry Ebbert, chief of homeland security for the city.

“The numbers so far are relatively minor as compared to the dire predictions of 10,000,” he said.

At least in the Lower 9th Ward, federal, state and local teams along with officers from all over the country broke open doors and entered homes, calling out for survivors and looking for corpses.

Where they found neither, they scrawled “0-0” on the house and moved on.

As they worked, Katrina claimed a victim of a different sort: Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown was relieved of his onsite command Friday.

Brown was the focus of scorching criticism from state and local officials, as well as evacuees who cursed his relief agency’s ineffectiveness.

They charged that his agency arrived too late with too little, as tens of thousands suffered on rooftops, highway overpasses and squalid evacuation centers in the first days after Katrina flooded the city.

Brown was replaced by Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, who was overseeing New Orleans relief, recovery and rescue efforts, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced.

Chertoff said Brown will return to Washington and resume his duties as head of FEMA, where he will concentrate on making sure the agency is prepared to deal with other potential disasters.

Asked if he was being made a scapegoat for a federal relief effort that has drawn widespread and sharp criticism, Brown told The Associated Press after a long pause: "By the press, yes. By the president, no."

But a source close to Brown, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the FEMA director had been considering leaving after the hurricane season ended in November and that Friday's action virtually assures his departure.

While Brown prepares to return to Washington, Bush will make his third visit to Louisiana and Mississippi on Sunday, the White House announced.

While some searched for bodies Friday, other soldiers and police continued to urge holdout residents to leave the city. But after two days of warning they would judiciously employ force to move people, if necessary, officials appeared to be delaying that.

“At this time, force is not being used,” said City Attorney Sherry Landry. “Rather, our offices and troops continue to strongly encourage those not assisting with the recovery effort to leave.”

Landry said crews are working to clear glass from the streets of the Central Business District, where power should be restored by the end of next week.

All of this is good news, especially the removal of Brown. Now let's see if Bushco can get its act together.

Cancelling 10 Amendments

I covered this briefly yesterday. Let's take a longer look today. This is the end of the Bill of Rights as we've known it.

U.S. Can Confine Citizens Without Charges, Court Rules

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 10, 2005; Page A01

A federal appeals court yesterday backed the president's power to indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil without any criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital during wartime to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.

The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, came in the case of Jose Padilla, a former gang member and U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago in 2002 and a month later designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. The government contends that Padilla trained at al Qaeda camps and was planning to blow up apartment buildings in the United States. Padilla has been held without trial in a U.S. naval brig for more than three years, and his case has ignited a fierce battle over the balance between civil liberties and the government's power to fight terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A host of civil liberties groups and former attorney general Janet Reno weighed in on Padilla's behalf, calling his detention illegal and arguing that the president does not have unchecked power to lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely.

Federal prosecutors asserted that Bush not only had the authority to detain Padilla but also that such power is essential to preventing terrorist strikes. In its ruling yesterday, the three-judge panel overturned a lower court.

A congressional resolution passed after Sept. 11 "provided the President all powers necessary and appropriate to protect American citizens from terrorist attacks," the decision said. "Those powers include the power to detain identified and committed enemies such as Padilla, who associated with al Qaeda . . . who took up arms against this Nation in its war against these enemies, and who entered the United States for the avowed purpose of further prosecuting that war by attacking American citizens."

Padilla is one of two U.S. citizens held as enemy combatants since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The other, Yaser Esam Hamdi, was released and flown to Saudi Arabia last year after the Supreme Court upheld the government's power to detain him but said he could challenge that detention in U.S. courts.

Legal experts were closely watching the Padilla case because of a key difference between the two: Hamdi was captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan with forces loyal to that country's former Taliban rulers, and Padilla was arrested in the United States.

Legal experts said the debate is likely to reach the Supreme Court. Andrew Patel, an attorney for Padilla, said he might appeal directly to the Supreme Court or first ask the entire 4th Circuit to review the decision. "We're very disappointed," he said.

The ruling limits the president's power to detain Padilla to the duration of hostilities against al Qaeda, but the Bush administration has said that war could go on indefinitely.

Since the Congress deferred to to the President the right to declare war, and Bush has said we are in a perpetual state of war on terror, the President, by executive power, can suspend the right of habeas corpus indefinitely. You can be imprisoned without charges. You.

Anything which can be done to Jose Padilla can be done to you.

And remember that our new Chief Justice just added his assent to an appeals court decision on Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in which a non-citizen is imprisoned without having charges brought or being given a lawyer.

Orwell must be spinning in his grave.

Do No Harm

Doctors came, then went from unused Camp Ripley
Maura Lerner, Star Tribune
September 10, 2005 RIPLEYMED0910

CAMP RIPLEY, MINN. -- After a frantic week, the clinic for hurricane victims is just about ready.

But the medical staff is gone.

The last bus to Rochester rolled out of Camp Ripley at noon on Friday, ferrying home some of the 100 doctors, nurses and other medical personnel who had rushed to the military base near Little Falls last week to prepare for thousands of patients who never came.

The volunteers, from the Twin Cities, Rochester and elsewhere, had scrambled for days to transform the camp's recreation center and an aging infirmary into a state-of-the-art medical facility for up to 5,000 people.

But the effort came to a screeching halt after state officials sent word Thursday that only a few hundred hurricane survivors might be coming here after all, and not till next week.

"This is a disappointment at some level for all of us," said Dr. Tom Schrupp, a pediatrician at CentraCare in St. Cloud, who helped coordinate the medical plan.

The volunteers were sent home Friday, and organizers said they would call back only about a third of them next week -- if needed.

Kathy Briggs, a registered nurse from Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis, was clearly disappointed. "I wanted to help," she said. "I helped in some way, but I didn't help the people of New Orleans or Biloxi."

Siegel Howard, a mental health worker at HCMC, felt the same way. "I don't think we played as big a role as we wanted to."

Most of the volunteers had signed up to go to the Gulf Coast, in response to a call for health care workers last week by state and federal officials. But last weekend, they were reassigned to Ripley, which was designated as a temporary home for people fleeing the crowded centers in the South.

The Mayo Clinic alone sent 59 employees, along with teams from some of the state's largest hospitals. They brought truckloads of supplies, stacked neatly beside colorful signs saying "Welcome to Minnesota."

The group even ran through practice drills, with volunteers playing patients in various states of distress. By Thursday night, nearly everything was ready.

Everything but the patients.

It was an "emotional roller coaster," said Dr. Milagros Santiago, a pediatrician from Children's Hospital of Minneapolis. "Are they coming? Are they not?" They never knew, from one day to the next.

Do you have any idea how large a fuck up this is?

After the terrible tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia last winter, all of the bodies had been collected and buried before the end of the second week. The clinics had been set up and the survivors treated and vaccinated.

In Louisiana and Mississippi, the bodies are still lying in the streets and there are no public health clinics.

We are not even a third world country.

A Faint Glimmer of Hope

Let the People Rebuild New Orleans

The Nation
lookout | posted September 8, 2005 (September 26, 2005 issue)

Naomi Klein

On September 4, six days after Katrina hit, I saw the first glimmer of hope. "The people of New Orleans will not go quietly into the night, scattering across this country to become homeless in countless other cities while federal relief funds are funneled into rebuilding casinos, hotels, chemical plants.... We will not stand idly by while this disaster is used as an opportunity to replace our homes with newly built mansions and condos in a gentrified New Orleans."

The statement came from Community Labor United, a coalition of low-income groups in New Orleans. It went on to demand that a committee made up of evacuees "oversee FEMA, the Red Cross and other organizations collecting resources on behalf of our people.... We are calling for evacuees from our community to actively participate in the rebuilding of New Orleans."

It's a radical concept: The $10.5 billion released by Congress and the $500 million raised by private charities doesn't actually belong to the relief agencies or the government; it belongs to the victims. The agencies entrusted with the money should be accountable to them. Put another way, the people Barbara Bush tactfully described as "underprivileged anyway" just got very rich.

Except relief and reconstruction never seem to work like that. When I was in Sri Lanka six months after the tsunami, many survivors told me that the reconstruction was victimizing them all over again. A council of the country's most prominent businesspeople had been put in charge of the process, and they were handing the coast over to tourist developers at a frantic pace. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of poor fishing people were still stuck in sweltering inland camps, patrolled by soldiers with machine guns and entirely dependent on relief agencies for food and water. They called reconstruction "the second tsunami."

There are already signs that New Orleans evacuees could face a similarly brutal second storm. Jimmy Reiss, chairman of the New Orleans Business Council, told Newsweek that he has been brainstorming about how "to use this catastrophe as a once-in-an-eon opportunity to change the dynamic." The Business Council's wish list is well-known: low wages, low taxes, more luxury condos and hotels. Before the flood, this highly profitable vision was already displacing thousands of poor African-Americans: While their music and culture was for sale in an increasingly corporatized French Quarter (where only 4.3 percent of residents are black), their housing developments were being torn down. "For white tourists and businesspeople, New Orleans' reputation is 'a great place to have a vacation but don't leave the French Quarter or you'll get shot,'" Jordan Flaherty, a New Orleans-based labor organizer told me the day after he left the city by boat. "Now the developers have their big chance to disperse the obstacle to gentrification--poor people."

Here's a better idea: New Orleans could be reconstructed by and for the very people most victimized by the flood. Schools and hospitals that were falling apart before could finally have adequate resources; the rebuilding could create thousands of local jobs and provide massive skills training in decent paying industries. Rather than handing over the reconstruction to the same corrupt elite that failed the city so spectacularly, the effort could be led by groups like Douglass Community Coalition. Before the hurricane this remarkable assembly of parents, teachers, students and artists was trying to reconstruct the city from the ravages of poverty by transforming Frederick Douglass Senior High School into a model of community learning. They have already done the painstaking work of building consensus around education reform. Now that the funds are flowing, shouldn't they have the tools to rebuild every ailing public school in the city?

For a people's reconstruction process to become a reality (and to keep more contracts from going to Halliburton), the evacuees must be at the center of all decision-making. According to Curtis Muhammad of Community Labor United, the disaster's starkest lesson is that African-Americans cannot count on any level of government to protect them. "We had no caretakers," he says. That means the community groups that do represent African-Americans in Louisiana and Mississippi -- many of which lost staff, office space and equipment in the flood -- need our support now. Only a massive injection of cash and volunteers will enable them to do the crucial work of organizing evacuees -- currently scattered through forty-one states--into a powerful political constituency. The most pressing question is where evacuees will live over the next few months. A dangerous consensus is building that they should collect a little charity, apply for a job at the Houston Wal-Mart and move on. Muhammad and CLU, however, are calling for the right to return: they know that if evacuees are going to have houses and schools to come back to, many will need to return to their home states and fight for them.

Keep hope alive.

The Perfect Economic Storm

Katrina, an Economic Tipping Point

By Steven Pearlstein

Friday, September 9, 2005; Page D01

Allow me to dissent from the sanguine view of the economic impact of Hurricane Katrina embraced by the Wall Street herd, policymakers and most forecasters.

By any measure, Katrina is a shock to an economic ecosystem already seriously out of balance. It has reduced national wealth by several hundred billion dollars, displaced hundreds of thousands of citizens, aggravated bloated budget and trade deficits and reduced the political odds for permanent tax cuts on capital. And with so much still unknown, the risks, as they say at the Fed, are on the downside.

Today's crisis is the price of gasoline; next week it could be jet fuel. Higher fuel prices have begun to show up in taxi cab surcharges and freight rates.

As always happens with disasters and financial crises, the early forecasts are based on tweaks to the standard forecasting models. These macro-analyses are invariably arithmetic and linear in nature (as in "a $100 billion loss is the equivalent of only a 0.6 percent drop in the S&P; 500"). They assume rational behavior by consumers, investors and executives, and timely and effective intervention by the Fed.

But economic crises are by nature unpredictable. They are about the interplay of micro-events that have macroeconomic consequences. They involve irrational, herdlike behavior and tipping points in which the effects are nonlinear and geometric. And the Fed can rarely prevent them.

Pre-Katrina, the unpleasant scenarios all ended in the same place: stagflation, that '70s-era combo of inflation and stagnant economic growth, two conditions that were not supposed to coexist. Post-Katrina, the stagflation odds have greatly increased.

First, consider energy prices, which were up sharply before the hurricane and are likely to settle even higher because of storm-related damage. Today's crisis is gasoline; next week it could be jet fuel; and you can be fairly sure that a heating oil and natural gas spike will follow in the winter.

Higher fuel prices have begun to show up in taxicab surcharges, freight rates and airline tickets. Now that pricing power has been restored in much of the economy, prices across a range of manufactured goods are likely to jump, as well. And with barge traffic backed up, the extra cost of getting this fall's harvest to market translates into higher food costs.

Sharp price increases are also likely in the cost of construction materials and workers as the massive rebuilding begins on the Gulf Coast.

If you thought it difficult or expensive to get a roofing contractor or mason last month, you ain't seen nothing yet.

All of these increases might be relatively benign as long as they don't result in higher wages. But with labor markets tightening, productivity slowing and health benefit costs rising at double-digit rates, inflationary wage and benefits increases are a real possibility for the first time in years.

That's the "flation" part. Now let's consider the "stag."

Start with the lost output from an estimated 400,000 workers whose jobs or companies no longer exist. Add the drag on other consumption as households and firms pay higher prices for energy, transport, food and construction.

The auto industry, already on fumes, now warns of further troubles as higher gas prices drive down sales of gas guzzlers. Insurers can only guess the magnitude of the hit they will take. Airlines will take it on the chin once again. And farm income is almost sure to decline.

Some of that, of course, will be offset by federal spending for relief and reconstruction. But the fiscal stimulus could prove insufficient if many consumers respond to higher prices and pictures of destruction by saving more and consuming less.

Even before Katrina, U.S. economic growth was overly dependent on debt-driven consumption and the housing bubble that was so much a part of it. Now the hurricane could prove to be the long-expected shock that finally forces the economy onto a slower but more sustainable path. The transition would be a rocky one for households and businesses, but rockier still for financial and real estate markets that have overpriced assets and underpriced risk.

Pay off all your debt, get out of equities and into cash. This is not going to be pretty. If you are really alarmed by the housing bubble (I'm thinking about this) sell it and go rent until the crash comes.

Yes, avian flu, if and when it comes, is going to have a major effect on housing prices if the crash hasn't come first.

Toxic Everywhere

Fair use be damned.

Simulation Predicted Storm's Havoc

(AP) WASHINGTON As Katrina roared into the Gulf of Mexico, emergency planners pored over maps and charts of a hurricane simulation that projected 61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a catastrophic flood that would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year.

These planners were not involved in the frantic preparations for Katrina. By coincidence, they were working on a yearlong project to prepare federal and state officials for a Category 3 hurricane striking New Orleans.

Their fictitious storm eerily foreshadowed the havoc wrought by Category 4 Katrina a few days later, raising questions about whether government leaders did everything possible - as early as possible - to protect New Orleans residents from a well-documented threat.

After watching many of their predictions prove grimly accurate, "Hurricane Pam" planners now hope they were wrong about one detail - the death toll. The 61,290 estimate is six times what New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has warned people to expect.

"I pray to God we don't see those numbers," Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "My gut is ... we don't. But we just don't know."

The known Katrina death toll was less than 400 on Friday, but officials expect it to skyrocket once emergency teams comb through 90,000 square miles of Gulf Coast debris. Fears are particularly acute in New Orleans, where countless corpses lie submerged beneath a toxic gumbo that engulfed the city after levees gave way.

The death toll is just one of the many chilling details in a 412-page report obtained by the AP from a government official involved in the Hurricane Pam project. Written in ominous present-tense language, the report predicts that:

* Flood waters would surge over levees, creating "a catastrophic mass casualty/mass evacuation" and leaving drainage pumps crippled for up to six months. "It will take over one year to re-enter areas most heavily impacted," the report estimated.

* More than 600,000 houses and 6,000 businesses would be affected, more than two-thirds of them destroyed. Nearly a quarter-million children would be out of school. "All 40 medical facilities in the impacted area (are) isolated and useless," it says.

* Local officials would be quickly overwhelmed with the five-digit death toll, 187,862 people injured and 196,395 falling ill. A half million people would be homeless.

The report calls evacuees "refugees" - a term now derided by the Bush administration - and says they could be housed at college campuses, military barracks, hotels, travel trailers, recreational vehicles, private homes, cottages, churches, Boy Scout camps and cruise ships.

"Federal support must be provided in a timely manner to save lives, prevent human suffering and mitigate severe damage," the report says. "This may require mobilizing and deploying assets before they are requested via normal (National Response Plan) protocols."

On the defensive, White House officials have said Louisiana and New Orleans officials did not give FEMA full control over disaster relief. The so-called Hurricane Pam plan, which was never put into effect, envisions giving the federal government authority to act without waiting for an SOS from local officials.

Under FEMA's direction, federal and state officials began working on the $1 million Hurricane Pam project in July 2004, when 270 experts gathered in Baton Rouge, La., for an eight-day simulation. The so-called "tabletop" exercise focused planners on a mock hurricane that produced more than 20 inches of rain and 14 tornadoes. The drill included computer graphic simulations projected on large screens of the hurricane slamming directly into New Orleans.

"We designed this to be a worst-case but plausible storm," said Madhu Beriwal, chief executive of Innovative Emergency Management Inc. of Baton Rouge, hired by FEMA to conduct the exercise.

The experts completed their first draft report in December 2004.

A follow-up workshop on potential medical needs took place in Carville, La., on Aug. 23-24 of this year, bringing together 80 state and federal emergency planning officials as well as Beriwal's team.

They produced an update on dealing with the dead and injured, and submitted it to FEMA's headquarters in Washington on Sept. 3. By then, Katrina had hit and the Bush administration, state and city officials were under heavy criticism for a sluggish response.

The report was designed to be the first step toward producing a comprehensive hurricane response plan, jointly approved and implemented by federal, state and city officials. But a lack of funding prohibited planners from quickly following up on the 2004 simulation.

"Money was not available to do the follow-up," Brown said.

Hurricane Pam planning was prescient in many ways, predicting the flooding would exceed 10 feet and create a putrid mix of corpses, chemicals and human waste.

The report is remarkably detailed in spots. It includes diagrams for makeshift loading docks to distribute water, ice and food to storm victims - color-coded to show where pallets, traffic cones and trash bins would be placed.

In other places it's obvious that the report is a working document; it doesn't specify what hospitals or airports would be used.

The report missed the mark in some cases. Planning for a weaker but slower-moving storm than Katrina, the Hurricane Pam report did not predict that levees would break as happened in real life. However, state and federal official have long known that the levees were not built to withstand a Category 4 storm or higher.

Hurricane Pam slammed into New Orleans. Katrina's eye hit to the east.

The report did not mention looting and lawlessness, which was rampant in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. It did call for at least one security guard at each shelter.

In another burst of foresight, the planners sought creative ways to house evacuees. Among other ideas, they instructed Louisiana parishes to find large vacant lots that could house makeshift trailer parks at a moment's notice.

The deadline for doing so: Next month.

Live in a hurricane zone? I do. Live in a pandemic zone? We all do.

In Italian there is an expression to meditate on here: da sola. It means "on your own."

The End of Habeas Corpus

Court Rules U.S. Can Indefinitely Detain Citizens in Wartime
Ruling Comes in the Case of 'Enemy Combatant' Jose Padilla

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; 5:45 PM

A federal appeals court ruled today that the president can indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen captured on U.S. soil in the absence of criminal charges, holding that such authority is vital during wartime to protect the nation from terrorist attacks.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit came in the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who was arrested in Chicago in 2002 and designated an "enemy combatant" by President Bush. The government contends that Padilla trained at al Qaeda camps and was planning to blow up apartment buildings in the United States.

Padilla, a U.S. citizen, has been held without trial in a U.S. naval brig for more than three years, and his case triggered a legal battle with vast implications for civil liberties and the fight against terrorism.

Attorneys for Padilla and a host of civil liberties organizations blasted the detention as illegal and said it could lead to the military being allowed to hold anyone, from protesters to people who check out what the government considers the wrong books from the library.

Federal prosecutors asserted that Bush not only had the authority to order Padilla's detention but that such power is essential to preventing attacks. In its ruling today, the 4th Circuit overturned a lower court and came down squarely on the government's side.

A congressional resolution after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "provided the President all powers necessary and appropriate to protect American citizens from terrorist attacks by those who attacked the United States on Sept. 11," the decision said. "Those powers include the power to detain identified and committed enemies such as Padilla, who associated with al Qaeda and the Taliban regime, who took up arms against this Nation in its war against these enemies, and who entered the United States for the avowed purpose of further prosecuting that war by attacking American citizens."

The ruling by a three-judge panel limits the president's power to detain Padilla to the duration of hostilities against al Qaeda, but the Bush administration has said that war could go on indefinitely.

The decision was written by Judge J. Michael Luttig, who is one of a number of people under consideration by President Bush for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

There goes the Bill of Rights. Judge Roberts ruled the same way in a case brought by a non-citizen, so don't expect relief from the SCOTUS.

Ben Franklin said, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." Gone now.

Thuggery in a Good Suit

Just in time for the weekend, a colleague sends me a link to a very interesting, long and detailed article on John Roberts from the New York Review of Books. I'll excerpt the introduction, but read the whole thing. The author makes the case against Roberts as pursuasively as anything I've read.

John Roberts: The Nominee
By William L. Taylor

The most intriguing question about John Roberts is what led him as a young person whose success in life was virtually assured by family wealth and academic achievement to enlist in a political campaign designed to deny opportunities for success to those who lacked his advantages. It is a question of great relevance to Roberts's candidacy for the Supreme Court. As the late Charles Black has written, no serious person is under the illusion that "a judge's judicial work is not influenced...by his sense, sharp or vague, of where justice lies in respect to the great issues of his time."

After a privileged upbringing in an Indiana suburb, attendance at an exclusive, expensive private school, high ranking at the undergraduate and law schools of Harvard, and clerkships with Federal Appeals Judge Henry Friendly and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, John Roberts took a job in the Reagan administration. There he joined in its efforts to dismantle the civil rights gains of the 1960s and 1970s. His work as a young man in the 1980s established the pattern of his later public career.

Roberts was first employed in 1981 and 1982 as a special assistant to the attorney general, William French Smith. He went from there to the Reagan White House in November 1982, where he served as associate counsel to the President for three and a half years. During this period, Roberts played an important part in the administration's efforts to curtail the rights of African-Americans, to deny assistance to children with disabilities, and to prevent redress for women and girls who had suffered sex discrimination. He also justified attempts by the state of Texas to cut off opportunities for the children of poor Latino aliens to obtain an education. Roberts was in favor of limiting the progress of African-Americans in participating in the political process and of making far-reaching changes in the constitutional role of the courts in protecting rights.

In all of these efforts, which halted temporarily when Roberts left government for private practice in 1986, he was no mere functionary. Indeed, he often was prepared to go beyond his conservative superiors in the Reagan administration in mounting a counter-revolution in civil rights, expressing frustration with his conservative superior at the Justice Department, Theodore Olson, differing on a key constitutional issue with Robert Bork, and disagreeing on voting rights with Senator Strom Thurmond.

Roberts is a right-wing thug very much like other Bush functionaries. He just has a better pedigree.

UPDATE: Just a reminder. I'll be blogging the Roberts hearings live next week at Judging the Future, with additional behind the scenes information from my partners, the Coalition for a Free and Independent Judiciary.

Black and White and Read All Over

We need a little good news. The WaPo has some very cute pictures.

Panda Cub Issues His First Bark, Placidly Endures a Vaccination

By Karlyn Barker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page B01

The National Zoo's giant panda cub is now nearly two feet long, weighs about 7 1/2 pounds and calmly submitted to his first vaccination yesterday. And, in a banner week of development, the baby panda has started to bark.

The 2-month-old cub, barely the size of a stick of butter at his birth July 9, has grown more than nine inches and gained more than five pounds since zoo veterinarians first examined him early last month. He is 21 1/4 inches long and has a tummy girth of a robust 15 inches.

Members of the zoo's animal care staff say the cub appears healthy and continues to get stronger and more confident every day. He can raise himself on his front legs and continues attempting to crawl. At one point Wednesday, according to a report from the Panda House, the cub "pulled himself onto his fore legs and barked, one loud sharp bark. We were amazed at the intensity of it. What a little bear!"

Yesterday's exam, his fifth, lasted 16 minutes and included a vaccination against the canine distemper virus. He will receive his remaining distemper and rabies vaccines during the next two months, zoo officials said.

"He was pretty placid during the whole exam," said zoo spokesman John Gibbons. "He didn't even react to the injection. You can see in the exam picture, he's not even looking back to see what's going on."

Making It Work

The Party of Performance

By David Ignatius

Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A25

The immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has looked like politics as usual. The Democrats are in a paroxysm of righteous indignation -- much of it justified but in the long run counterproductive. When Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid proposes that the Senate investigate whether President's Bush's vacation contributed to the disaster, the public response is likely to be: Give me a break! When the Democrats focus all their criticism on the GOP-led federal government and ignore the appalling lapses of Democratic administrations in New Orleans and Louisiana, they lose credibility.

The Bush administration, meanwhile, remains in its hunkered-down defensive crouch, with White House spokesman Scott McClellan treating any demand for accountability as a partisan "blame game." It's outrageous to read that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has been telling members of Congress that media reports are overstating the problems for storm survivors -- this from a man who was denying on National Public Radio last Thursday that there was any crisis at the New Orleans convention center at the very hour reporters were finding dead bodies and abandoned, starving people there. If the administration maintains that tone, it will self-destruct.

Now listen to what Gingrich has to say about "changing the playbook" after Katrina. His comments are drawn from two memos he has circulated to Republican leaders since the storm hit and from a conversation we had this week exploring some of his ideas.

Gingrich argues that the values debate that has divided America so sharply during the past decade is over. There's a broad consensus about most issues, and anyway people realize that the country's big problems aren't about morality but performance. "We're not in a values fight now but over whether the system is working," Gingrich told me. "The issue is delivery." And that's true at every level -- city, state and federal.

Gingrich's critique of the federal response is as devastating as that of any Democrat. "For the last week the federal government and its state and local counterparts have consistently been behind the curve," he wrote fellow Republicans this week. "The American people overwhelmingly know that the current situation is totally unacceptable," and for that reason, "it is a mistake to get trapped into defending the systems and processes which clearly failed." He observes in another memo, "While the destruction was unprecedented, it was entirely predictable."

What's needed is a creative government response as big as the disaster itself. Gingrich urges in one of his memos that Bush appoint a super-manager who can oversee the rebuilding and suggests Rudy Giuliani for the job. "The former mayor has enough management toughness to force the federal agencies to actually change their behavior," he writes.

The former speaker has some classic Gingrich zingers for how to rev up the rebuilding effort. He wants to turn the Gulf Coast into a "Zone of Recovery, Reconstruction and Prosperity," by offering a 25 percent tax credit for all job-creating investment in the region over the next three years. And he wants to create a cadre of "entrepreneurial public managers" who can replace the leaden public bureaucracy and get things done on Internet time, with the reliability of FedEx or UPS.

This is the moment for the Party of Performance to take center stage. The breakdown in public life was obvious before Katrina. We have a government that can't control its borders, can't find a viable strategy for its war in Iraq, can't organize the key agencies to address the terrorism problems it has been trumpeting. The yearning in the country for something different has been palpable this year.

The political conundrum, of course, is that we don't want to pay for a government that works.

Down, Down, Down

Bush Losing Support From His Base

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, September 9, 2005; 1:36 PM

Through thick and thin, President Bush has always maintained the ferocious backing of his Republican base.

Until now?

As I wrote in yesterday's column , partisan squabbles are something the Bush White House has found it can handle just fine, because the base hangs tough. But public outrage over the Hurricane Katrina debacle has the potential to transcend politics as usual.

And quite possibly, something is up.

According to the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press , Bush's overall job approval rating has dropped to 40 percent -- an all-time low for this/that poll -- and his disapproval rating has climbed to an all-time high of 52 percent. That's a four-point shift in both numbers from July.

But look at the detailed results for the story behind the story.

That four percentage point shift from just two months ago isn't fueled by any significant change of mind among Democrats and independents. Instead, it's all a reflection of a shift in Bush's base.

Republicans polled in July said they approved of Bush by an 88 to 9 percent margin. In September, that margin was 79 to 18, reflecting a 9 percent shift from approvers to disapprovers. That's a very significant change.

Pollsters, in fact, often look at the gap between two answers as the more telling number. By that reckoning, the gap between Republican approval and disapproval has dropped from 79 to 61 -- or 18 points.

Among conservative Republicans, there was an eight-point shift, from 91-6 to 84-14. (That's a 15-point change in the gap.)

Among moderate and liberal Republicans, there was an 11-point shift, from 81-15 to 70-26. (That's a 22-point change in the gap.)

Pew asked specifically about Bush's handling of Katrina relief efforts and found: "Two-in-three Americans (67 percent) believe he could have done more to speed up relief efforts, while just 28 percent think he did all he could to get them going quickly. . . .

"Fully 85 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of independents think the president could have done more to get aid to hurricane victims flowing more quickly. Republicans, on balance, feel the president did all he could to get relief efforts going, but even among his own partisans 40 percent say he could have done more."

Will Lester of the Associated Press has word of the latest AP-Ipsos poll, just out this morning: "Almost two-thirds, 65 percent, say the country is headed in the wrong direction -- up from 59 percent last month.

"President Bush's job approval was at 39 percent, the lowest point since AP-Ipsos began measuring public approval of Bush in December 2003."

And don't forget the two polls I mentioned yesterday -- from CBS and Zogby -- which showed disapproval with Bush's response to the hurricane at 58 percent and 60 percent, respectively.

Could the Bubble Be the Trouble?

Steven Thomma writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers: "As President Bush flew this week to the Gulf Coast for his second post-Katrina visit, an aide said the trip reflected Bush's usual routine of 'seeing as much as possible and getting information from different places.'

"Not quite.

"Bush did not visit with any angry evacuees in New Orleans. As Katrina approached, Bush and his top aides spent days apparently unaware that New Orleans might be flooded - despite many warnings, some from inside his own administration. Afterwards, he heaped praise on officials responsible for the slow and initially disorganized disaster-relief efforts. . . .

"None of this should be a surprise. Bush has a long record of avoiding critics, rewarding loyalty even in the face of failure and shunning - even punishing - those who disagree with him. . . .

"His style of isolating himself from unwelcome voices pleases his core supporters, who don't want him to compromise, but it sacrifices the broader public appeal that helped Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton weather second-term setbacks. One new poll, from the independent Pew Research Center, suggests he is losing support even from Republicans and conservatives."

It's all good.

The Storm After

Katrina: political row grows

· Relief officials accused of being political placemen
· Colin Powell criticises US government response

David Fickling and agencies
Friday September 9, 2005

The political row blown up by Hurricane Katrina was today growing as police officers in New Orleans prepared to make the first forcible removals of residents refusing to leave.

Arguments about the conduct of the relief effort and preparations for the long-expected disaster focused on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where several senior officials were accused of being political placemen and director Michael Brown was charged with having overstated his experience.

In Louisiana, governor Kathleen Blanco wrote to the US president, George Bush, to protest that requests to the federal government for radio equipment and generators had still not been met after a week of waiting.

Even the former secretary of state Colin Powell criticised the US government's response.

"There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans," Mr Powell told ABC news. "Not enough was done. I don't think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don't know why." He denied racism was to blame for foot-dragging.

Congress today approved a $52bn (£28bn) budget for additional emergency aid on top of $10.5bn already provided, and officials admitted the total bill was likely to exceed $100bn, but senior Democrats questioned whether the sum should be directed via Fema.

"After what we all have witnessed the past week or so, is there anyone in America who feels we should continue to rely exclusively on Fema to head the federal government's response to this tragedy?" the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, asked.

The Washington Post reported that five of the top eight officials in Fema had no previous experience in disaster management - but they had extensive backgrounds within Republican politics when they were appointed to their posts by the Bush administration.

Time magazine claimed the official biography of Mr Brown - which stated that he had worked as an "assistant city manager with emergency services oversight" in the Edmond, Oklahoma - exaggerated his record.

Officials said he had been an assistant to the city manager, not assistant city manager. "The assistant is more like an intern," Time was told.

Democrat leaders in congress also threatened to boycott the selection process for a committee that Republican leaders plan to establish to investigate the government's response to the disaster.

In New Orleans, there was still no clear picture of how many had died but authorities said a sweep of the city had found far fewer bodies than expected. This suggested that the death toll may not be in the region of the most catastrophic predictions of 10,000.

The official death toll across the Gulf states is still only just over 300 but more corpses are expected to be discovered as the floodwaters recede. Emergency teams have 25,000 body bags at hand.

A final sweep of New Orleans for voluntary refugees was under way last night, but some locals were already being taken away by force. National Guard officers led at least three people away in plastic handcuffs.

Others were already giving up their attempts to hold out as water supplies ran out and floodwaters, clogged with sewage and toxic waste, failed to recede.

"Some are finally saying 'I've had enough'," Michael Keegan, a US immigration and customs enforcement spokesman said. "They are getting dehydrated. They are running out of food. There are human remains in different houses. The smells mess with your psyche."

Gregg Silverman, a volunteer rescuer, said he had expected to find many more survivors in the city's flooded streets. Instead, he found mostly bodies.

Posted by Melanie at 01:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Clusterfsck

Just go read revere. Do it now.

Mandate

Point Those Fingers

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 9, 2005

In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.

The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.

In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development.

The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a "turkey farm," a source of patronage jobs.

As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's "upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management." By now everyone knows FEMA's current head went from overseeing horse shows to overseeing the nation's response to disaster, with no obvious qualifications other than the fact that he was Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate.

All that's missing from the Katrina story is an expensive reconstruction effort, with lucrative deals for politically connected companies, that fails to deliver essential services. But give it time - they're working on that, too.

Why did the administration make the same mistakes twice? Because it paid no political price the first time.

Can the administration escape accountability again? Some of the tactics it has used to obscure its failure in Iraq won't be available this time. The reality of the catastrophe was right there on our TV's, although FEMA is now trying to prevent the media from showing pictures of the dead. And people who ask hard questions can't be accused of undermining the troops.

But the other factors that allowed the administration to evade responsibility for the mess in Iraq are still in place. The media will be tempted to revert to he-said-she-said stories rather than damning factual accounts. The effort to shift blame to state and local officials is under way. Smear campaigns against critics will start soon, if they haven't already. And raw political power will be used to block any independent investigation.

Will this be enough to let the administration get away with another failure? Let's hope not: if the administration isn't held accountable for what just happened, it will keep repeating its mistakes. Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff will receive presidential medals, and the next disaster will be even worse.

Posted by Melanie at 11:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Shifting the Blame

UN speech on Iraq's WMDs "a blot" on my record: Powell

Thu Sep 8, 7:59 PM ET

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell said in a television interview to broadcast Friday that his UN speech making the case for the US-led war on Iraq was "a blot" on his record.

In the February 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council, Powell forcefully made the case for war on the regime of Saddam Hussein, offering 'proof' that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

The presentation included satellite photos of trucks that Powell identified as mobile bioweapons laboratories.

After the invasion US weapons inspectors reported finding no Iraqi nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

"It's a blot" on my record, Powell said in an interview with ABC News. "I'm the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It's painful now."

Powell spent five days at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters ahead of the speech studying intelligence reports, many of which turned out to be false. He said he felt "terrible" at being misinformed.

He did not, however, blame CIA director George Tenet. Tenet "did not sit there for five days with me misleading me," he said. "He believed what he was giving to me was accurate."

However some members of the US intelligence community "knew at that time that some of these sources were not good, and shouldn't be relied upon, and they didn't speak up," Powell said.

"These are not senior people, but these are people who were aware that some of these resources should not be considered reliable," he said. "I was enormously disappointed," he added.

Powell also said that he had "never seen evidence to suggest" a connection between the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States and the Saddam regime.

If the man had any honor, he would have resigned.

Cut-throat Capitalism

Bush lifts wage rules for Katrina
President signs executive order allowing contractors to pay below prevailing wage in affected areas.
September 8, 2005: 9:42 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.

In a notice to Congress, Bush said the hurricane had caused "a national emergency" that permits him to take such action under the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act in ravaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Bush's action came as the federal government moved to provide billions of dollars in aid, and drew rebukes from two of organized labor's biggest friends in Congress, Rep. George Miller of California and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats.

"The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities," Miller said.

"President Bush should immediately realize the colossal mistake he has made in signing this order and rescind it and ensure that America puts its people back to work in the wake of Katrina at wages that will get them and their families back on their feet," Miller said.

"I regret the president's decision," said Kennedy.

"One of the things the American people are very concerned about is shabby work and that certainly is true about the families whose houses are going to be rebuilt and buildings that are going to be restored," Kennedy said.

The Davis-Bacon law requires federal contractors to pay workers at least the prevailing wages in the area where the work is conducted. It applies to federally funded construction projects such as highways and bridges.

Katrina represents nothing more than an improved profitability opportunity for Halliburton. Disgusting. Just when I think I've seen the ne plus ultra in venality, Bushco manages to go even lower.

Seeing

Waking from a sound sleep
# Raw images of Katrina's devastation blew away TV's business-as-usual gloss and showed us what is really happening in the U.S.

By Nora Gallagher, NORA GALLAGHER'S latest book is "Practicing Resurrection," (Knopf, 2003, and Vintage Books, 2004).

One of the reasons that last week was memorable, to say the least, was how the story of New Orleans broke through the gloss of business as usual on television. I don't think we are fully aware, no matter how many times it is said, of how television (and print) news creates a bubble in which stories are not actually reported as they are, but to fit a proscribed idea of what news should be. I am not saying that reporters lie or make up stories. It's subtler than that.

When I was a cub reporter for Time magazine, the San Francisco police went on strike one night, and I was sent out to get the news of what was happening on the streets. I drove and walked all over. The streets were empty. Nothing was happening. Two guys were smoking marijuana in a square downtown. End of story.

I went back to the bureau and filed. Two minutes later, I got a call. Go back out. There must be violence somewhere. The story had to fit a world view or it wasn't a story.

Katrina blew that away. We got the story of what is really happening in the United States right between the eyes. We got the story of how poor people live and are treated in this country by watching them suffer and die. We got the story because it happened so fast, and right in front of our faces, and no one could put a spin on it quickly enough. We got the story because television reporters were openly outraged on camera. We got the story because reporters asked real questions and demanded real answers, rather than throwing softballs and settling for the fluff and the spin that pass for news. It was raw, it was awful, and it slid under the skin of our sleepy, numb, feel-good lives.

Midweek, a guy working out next to me (yes, I was still going to the gym) leaned over and said, "Can you believe this?" I only shook my head, but what I wanted to say was, yes, I can. Because here, finally, was the truth. Unavoidable. On TV. Later, I felt so anxious and miserable, I started to cry on the street.

At first, I said to myself that I was feeling crisis fatigue. But then I thought, no, there's a better word for it. It's grief. It's grief for how bad it really is, and how sound asleep I've been.

Maybe the LAT just discovered poverty. Some of the rest of us have up close and personal experience with it. Who has been asleep at the switch is the media, not the American people.

Finger-Pointing

Inescapable Accountability

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A25

The following is brought to you by the word "accountability."

Keep that word in mind whenever you hear defenders of President Bush accusing his political opponents of playing the "blame game" by daring to pose pointed questions about why so many people in New Orleans, most of them very poor, had to wait so long for relief from their suffering.

The Bush White House must have run the phrases "blame game" and "finger-pointing" through its focus groups. In his Wednesday briefing, White House press secretary Scott McClellan used variations on those formulations eight times each.

McClellan neatly rolled them into a single sentence when he told off a reporter who had the nerve to ask whether the president had confidence in those who oversaw the federal relief effort. "If you want to continue to engage in finger-pointing and blame-gaming, that's fine," McClellan harrumphed. Nice job, Scott.

McClellan must have been unaware that the White House had been organizing a finger-pointing, blame-gaming project of its own. "In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political style," Adam Nagourney and Anne E. Kornblut reported in Monday's New York Times, "the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats."

The fruits of that project were quickly visible when White House apologists went to town against New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Grover Norquist, one of Washington's most important conservative activists and a close Rove ally, blamed the chaos on "looting in a Democratic city run by a Democratic mayor and a Democratic governor." Surely McClellan will call Norquist to reprimand him about that awful finger-pointing.

Fox's Bill O'Reilly devoted one of his "Talking Points Memos" to denouncing Nagin and Blanco. True, he was "fair and balanced" in devoting a single sentence in his speech of roughly 500 words to Bush's role: "the Homeland Security office and President Bush were 24 hours late in taking decisive action." Thanks for that, Bill.

The White House is aghast because it is pulling levers that once worked, and nothing is happening.

To borrow one of O'Reilly's favorite phrases, New Orleans was a "No Spin Zone." Good, smart, tough and compassionate reporters gave Americans a direct view of the disaster and kept asking, with increasing urgency, why New Orleans was such a mess.

You can tell the White House knows how much trouble it is in -- that's no doubt why Bush had another news conference yesterday -- by following the Frank Theorem. "It's a rule in American politics," said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), "that whichever side denounces the other for politicizing the issue is losing the argument." Bingo.

Let's see, who appointed the inept FEMA managers? George W. Bush?

The Most Needy

Bankrupting the victims

GOVERNMENT AID IS FINALLY flowing to the most helpless victims of Hurricane Katrina, but a broader category of the dispossessed will test the government over a longer period of time. They are families with the means to flee the hurricane, perhaps even with insurance to cover some losses, but without the resources to make a living immediately. In other contexts, they would be referred to simply as the middle class.

They have lost their homes but are living off their credit cards and maybe a little savings. As those savings dwindle, however, the mortgage keeps coming due and their credit card nears its limit. Soon the paycheck may stop, and with it their health insurance.

How many of these victims exist is anyone's guess; the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the hurricane will cost 400,000 jobs nationally, and some private estimates are double that. Congress will no doubt take some steps to help victims rebuild their lives, but it also should take this opportunity to revisit the new bankruptcy law, which goes into effect Oct. 17. As the Times' Peter Gosselin reported Wednesday, the new bankruptcy law treats those affected by a natural disaster the same as the deadbeat who spent it all on luxury cars, jewelry and cocaine.

As of Oct. 17, individuals filing for bankruptcy who have income at or above their state's family median (in Louisiana, it is $51,402 for a family of four) will largely be forced to repay some or all of their debts for up to five years. Normally, such debtors would have the option of declaring Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which allows people to emerge from debt relatively quickly.

What's more, the new law calculates income by taking a six-month average, so even if someone is jobless, his income statement may not reflect it. And small businesses face a tighter 10-month deadline for coming to agreement with creditors on a repayment plan, even if snack shops and shoe stores drowned by Katrina may take years to recover. And strict deadlines and demands for stacks of documentation remain, even if the documents dissolved in a toxic stew or floated into the Gulf of Mexico.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.) are leading efforts to delay the bankruptcy law's application to Katrina victims and grant broader exceptions to survivors of all severe disasters.

Write to your senators and rep supporting these bills. Please.

Raining Pork

Cost of Recovery Surges, as Do Bids to Join in Effort

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and CARL HULSE
Published: September 9, 2005

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - With Congress primed to spend billions of dollars on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, lawmakers and industry groups are lining up to bring home their share of the cascade of money for rebuilding and relief.

White House officials and Congressional budget experts now assume that federal costs for the hurricane will shoot past $100 billion, which itself is more than twice the entire annual federal budget for domestic security. Congress on Thursday approved $51.8 billion in spending, bringing the total so far to more than $62 billion.

The demand for money comes from many directions. Louisiana lawmakers plan to push for billions of dollars to upgrade the levees around New Orleans, rebuild highways, lure back business and shore up the city's sinking foundation. The devastated areas of Mississippi and Alabama will need similar infusions of cash.

Communities will want compensation for taking in evacuees. And there will be future costs of health care, debris removal, temporary housing, clothing, vehicle replacement. Farmers from the Midwest, meanwhile, are beginning to press for emergency relief as a result of their difficulties in shipping grain through the Port of New Orleans.

Other ideas circulating through Congress that could entail significant costs include these notions:

¶Turning New Orleans and other cities affected by the storm into big new tax-free zones.

¶Providing reconstruction money for tens of thousands of homeowners and small businesses that did not have federal flood insurance on their houses or buildings.

¶Making most hurricane victims eligible for health care under Medicaid and having the federal government pay the full cost rather than the current practice of splitting costs with states.

The torrent of money - more than $2 billion a day over the weekend, and expected to remain above $500 million a day for the foreseeable future - prompted several lawmakers to warn about the perils of an open checkbook.

Pork from the sky. It hardly gets any better than this.

Letting the Big Boys Play

Leaders Lacking Disaster Experience
'Brain Drain' At Agency Cited

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A01

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska anda U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.

Meannwhile, veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials.

Because of the turnover, three of the five FEMA chiefs for natural-disaster-related operations and nine of 10 regional directors are working in an acting capacity, agency officials said.

Patronage appointments to the crisis-response agency are nothing new to Washington administrations. But inexperience in FEMA's top ranks is emerging as a key concern of local, state and federal leaders as investigators begin to sift through what the government has admitted was a bungled response to Hurricane Katrina.

"FEMA requires strong leadership and experience because state and local governments rely on them," said Trina Sheets, executive director of the National Emergency Management Association. "When you don't have trained, qualified people in those positions, the program suffers as a whole."

Last week's greatest foe was, of course, a storm of such magnitude that it "overwhelmed" all levels of government, according to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). And several top FEMA officials are well-regarded by state and private counterparts in disaster preparedness and response.

They include Edward G. Buikema, acting director of response since February, and Kenneth O. Burris, acting chief of operations, a career firefighter and former Marietta, Ga., fire chief.

We are led by idiiots.

That is working out well, isn't it?

Common Sense, Minus the Code Words

Dan Froomkin's article in "The Red and the Blue" points out a vital need for Blue State America in the wake of Katrina: appeal to common sense in any public discussions about the Federal Government's response to this disaster.

If, indeed, the government's post-Katrina performance is to be roundly and unanimously viewed as substandard and unacceptable by the entirety of the American public, the case against the Bush Administration needs to be made in terms that are simple and effective.

That one statement carries a lot of meanings, but to distill its essence, it comes down to this: those naturally inclined to carry the debate with particular anger and outrage--namely, Democrats, liberals, poor people and minorities--must frame their arguments and offer evidence in common sense terms (and images) that plain folks will not only understand, but appreciate.

Let's not duck from this reality: we progressives are in a position to potentially create a new wave of old-time progressivist muckraking, to do for infrastructure programs what Upton Sinclair and his ilk did for urban meat-packing factories and food processing centers 100 years earlier. The energies of the social activism and journalistic agitations that Teddy Roosevelt harnessed at the beginning of the 20th Century could become the energies we harness to great political effect at the beginning of the 21st Century.

But we have to make sure that this perfect political storm stays that way, and that Katrina's victims do not wind up dying without the establishment of considerable change... change in our laws, our government's priorities, our culture, and our social fabric of community.

Part of the way the political heat will stay on Bush is if, as Mr. Froomkin wisely notes, the whole country is mad at him. Anger must persist among many more people than the Blue Staters who are getting sucked into a shouting match with the Red Staters who defend Mr. Bush.

Talking about the failures of FEMA, the government as a whole, and President Bush in particular need to be framed with care. Some images/rhetorical tacks I can think of are as follows:

* It all starts at the top. This is especially true when the person at the top hires the heads of FEMA and other crucial organizations. Michael Brown, safe to say, was not qualified to run FEMA. Whose responsibility was it for hiring an unqualified person? The president, of course.

* Emergency preparedness applies to natural disasters as well as terrorist attacks.

* 9/11 was supposed to have made our government more effective and our country safer. President Bush pledged to defend us and be there for us, to protect the safety and security of the American people. Did he live up to his pledge? Let the results tell the story.

* The views of the hometown paper closest to the disaster ought to carry more than a little weight, given their intimate familiarity with this issue. The New Orleans Times-Picayune is to be trusted in its collective knowledge of the issues that faced its community before, during and after Katrina. If those at the Times-Picayune think the federal government and FEMA were horrible, that's a dependable indicator. Had the paper felt that FEMA did a good job, it would be just as dependable an indicator. But in the end, New Orleans' major newspaper felt FEMA blew it big-time. Therefore, the paper's command of facts and realities about the Gulf Coast gives it a particular place of authority and credibility in this disaster that no one else has. We can and should be predisposed to acknowledge and accept the legitimacy and authenticity of what the Times-Picayune has reported and editorialized about over the past few weeks. As a result, leaders and decision-makers need to be held accountable.

* What was experienced in the aftermath of Katrina should never, ever happen in the United States of America. We deserve a government that can alleviate suffering in one day instead of the readily acknowledged four days it took for meaningful relief to finally arrive and (begin to) calm people's fears.

* $71 million in cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers? Significant cuts to FEMA? Important needs were simply not given their appropriate level of priority before Katrina. Smart, effective and forward-thinking leaders are supposed to make good, long-term decisions that protect all of their citizens. This did not happen--period.

It's speaking like that, without dressing up the language or adding peripheral details, that can get the whole country mad about this sorry episode... and keep it mad in the long run. We need to succeed in doing that, because if enough people have their sense of outrage aroused, the change we've hoped for over a long period of time might finally come. We need to keep the heat on, but in ways that bring conservatives with us instead of repelling them with familiarly coded turns of phrase.

One could sum up the entirety of this post by simply saying, "Competence must never be a matter of ideology or partisan political affiliations. It should stand on its own and be seen merely for what it is, not for what political advantage wants it to sound like."

They See Your Every Move

While I'm generally not a fan of the Washington Times, I'll make an exception in this case.

Mom's cigarettes, Dad's beer can affect toddlers

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
September 6, 2005

Toddlers as young as 2 are influenced by whether their parents smoke and drink alcohol, according to a new study in a journal affiliated with the American Medical Association.
The findings by Dartmouth College researchers, published in the September issue of Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, are significant because pre-adolescents and adolescents are the age groups targeted by most tobacco- and alcohol-prevention programs.
"The results from this study suggest that alcohol and tobacco prevention efforts may need to be targeted toward younger children and their parents," wrote the authors, led by Madeline A. Dalton, associate professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School.
The study found that when pretending to shop for a social event with friends, in controlled play-acting involving fake "cigarettes" and "alcohol," children ages 2 to 6 were nearly four times more likely to choose cigarettes if their parents smoked.
The study also found that they were three times more likely to select wine or beer if their parents drank alcohol at least once a month.
What's more, young children who viewed movies rated PG-13 or R were five times more likely to get beer or wine for the get-together, suggesting the media might also influence attitudes about tobacco and alcohol long before children ever consider using these products themselves.
The researchers used role-playing scenarios to evaluate pre-schoolers' attitudes toward alcohol and tobacco use. They compared those findings to data from surveys of the children's parents on their tobacco and alcohol use and their children's movie-viewing habits.
In an interview yesterday, Mrs. Dalton, the mother of two teenage sons, said she was particularly surprised at some of the comments the children made while "shopping" at a miniature grocery store and hosting guests at the doll parties for which they bought the goods.
"As a parent, these were real eye-openers," she said.
She cited an example of a 4-year-old girl who bought cigarettes for a party with four dolls.
"She bought three packs, but then said, 'We need some more,'?" Mrs. Dalton recalled.
Included in the Archives report was another vignette involving a 6-year-old boy, who purchased only cereal and cigarettes. Mrs. Dalton said the boy bought his favorite cereal, Lucky Charms, but he could not recall the name at checkout time. However, he did know that he had Marlboro cigarettes.

Holy #@$&^! Gosh, this is just astonishing. Granted, if you are around children this young then you are probably aware that they like to mimic you and your activities. I am shocked that they notice this much detail so early. I really hoped that I had another year or so before I had to start to "act" like a Daddy.

Seriously though, the social implications are numerous. Here is a better explaination on the study with a link to it. It really makes me wonder how much Panthers football I'm going to let me son or daughter watch with me since the beer ads are ubiqutious. Ok, so they don't see Daddy drink that much (or smoke at all), but do I really want them internalzating all of the other messages within those ads? And what about the childcare givers that are paid oh so well, yet are one of the defining forces in a child's life? I don't think that $9 an hour will attract the cream of the crop.

Along that same track, what do we need to do as a society to get someone's attention to limit advertising to younger children for public health reasons? I'm as strong of an advocate of the 1st Amendment as you'll ever find outside of the ACLU, but don't you think this is akin someone shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre? It won't solve all of the problems, but isn't something wrong in our society when a 6 year old can identify a brand of cereal and cigarettes before he can really read well?

When will we stop paying lip service to our children and start to force the majority to deal with the problems presented by the 21st Century workforce and society?

Under the Summer Sun

By Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune

Up to date New Orleans Info

There are some great blogs and websites out there that are collecting and covering the situation in New Orleans. I just wanted to point out a couple that I've had open constantly since last week.

nola.com is a place I visited even before the crisis to find out what was taking place in my old home. They have set up separate forums for each of the neighborhoods so you can get a better idea what kind of damage took place in what neigborhood. Likewise, this forum was one of the first places I looked for one of our friends that we had heard nothing from. On there, I was lucky enough to find the contact infomation for her niece who was gracious enough to give us updates on Joan's condition (latest report is that she is fine and should have left the city with her husband).

Nola.com is also one of the main sources for the articles and pictures of the Times-Picayune. Here is the shot from the front of the page yesterday:

This is a shot of the Desire area which, among other things, had one of the most imfamous housing projects in New Orleans. The photos that Nola.com has had are some of the best I have seen from any media regarding this disaster.

The Katrina05 blog was set up as a centralized clearing house for comments, pictures, and information on the Hurricane and its aftermath. A recent article on the conditions in the Astrodome is very disturbing to say the least. I hope that it isn't true and that these reports, like many from the Superdome, turn out to be exagerated.

Another great website is the blog done by the local TV station WWL . It has a running blog on the events of the day that are connected to the hurricane. I know there are many people putting together online timelines and this is an excellent resource for anyone trying to track down information.

Finally, there is this blog from a person who has remained in New Orleans through out the Hurricane and aftermath. His pictures and stories are astonishing and an interesting counterpoint to much of the mainstream media that is out there.

Wow. Maybe moreso than the 2004 elections, this event is sign of the power of blogs and the extreme decentralization of the media. I wonder what impact it will have if the powers that be really do try to hide the bodycount from the world.

Our companions

I'm probably going to cry a lot while I write this. Scratch that. I will cry a lot. I have two real weaknesses: hurt to animals or children. I cannot tolerate these things. I could not watch "The Lion King." And that's a cartoon. People's abandoned pets are dying in the hurricane zone. Thinking about this--well, I can't think about it. It's like thinking about my own pets. My cats are my immediate family and I've planned for them in my will, if anything happens to me. Yes, I've provided for my neices, but I have responsibilities for my animals, as well. As you know if you've been around the Bump for a while, I'm going through quite the vet experience with Eddie (and we aren't done yet, older pets are a financial trial, just as older family members are.)

I've asked you for money for the Hurricane Zone before. The pictures of dying animals in the Times-Picayune have been killing me. If you can scrape together a couple of bucks, please give them to The Humane Society of the United States.

Pets can't evacuate, they were left out of that by design. Hungry packs of dogs are hunting in the streets. Help the brave volunteers of the HSUS save their lives. As I rolled over to wake up this morning, Rosa left her nightly perch on my shoulder and inquired about breakfast. Every night, I'm lulled to sleep by drowsy and purring cats. I consider myself privileged in this. Eddie sleeps at the foot of the bed, but Rosa has always slept on top of me. Eight feet welcome me home at the end of the day. I wouldn't have it any other way. If I had more space, I'd have a Golden Retreiver, too, the most noble of dogs. I get to hang out with Sadie and Darby when I'm at my brother and sis in law's place and they are the biggest sweethearts. Golden Retriever love is a good thing. There is a picture of Jenny. She left us earlier this year. I know all the human staff, but none of them have ever licked my face. Sadie and Darby do. Yes, this is Leigh and Anne's website, you've seen it before at holidays.

When I got single ten years ago, I made the deliberate decision to get animals so that I'd have to be responsible for something beyond myself and not wallow in my own misery. It didn't work perfectly, but it helped a lot to have to enter the lives of my little strangers and learn about their lives and experiences and not be consumed by my own issues. There were days when the only thing that got me up in the morning were the meows. We all have a better quality of life now, but their claws in my shoulder at 6 AM haven't gone away.

If you've never heard a full-throated Maine Coon kick up a fuss, you really haven't lived.

Ghengis Khan never needed to have invaded Mongolia. He could have just sent Maine Coons. A compliant population would have followed.

Here is the standard history.

Here are the kitty photos which just guaranteed me a bazillion hits from the pussy porn sites. The server can handle it. I think.

Post your pet stories in comments.

Mainers and Canadians vacation with their cats. What's that like?

The last time I camped in Maine and the Maritimes, I met cats in the campgrounds. What do you think?http://images.google.com/images?q=maine+coon+cats&hl;=en&lr;=&sa;=N&tab;=ii&oi;=imagest

The Red and the Blue

Partisan Squabble or Dereliction of Duty?

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, September 8, 2005; 2:51 PM

White House officials must be breathing a sigh of relief about the news coverage this morning that increasingly depicts the controversy over the government's response to the Gulf Coast disaster as a largely -- or even purely -- partisan issue.

If the initial sense of public outrage really becomes just another red vs. blue battle, then President Bush is likely to emerge no better or worse off than he was before.

By contrast, the nightmare scenario for the White House is if it becomes generally agreed upon that the public sense of horror -- from red states and blue states alike -- requires an immediate accounting of what went wrong. Because there is plenty of blame to go around and some -- if not a lot -- will inevitably land at Bush's feet.

Is holding those accountable a partisan issue? To some degree, evidently so. The leading voices demanding answers from the federal government have mostly been Democratic, while Republican leaders are pointing fingers at local officials. And polls show that party affiliation has an enormous effect on people's initial opinion on whether Bush has conducted himself admirably or not.

But the heartfelt disappointment and poignant questions about the rescue efforts may in fact be spilling forth from a wider, nonpartisan American vein. For example, many rank and file Congressional Republicans remain publicly aghast at the federal government's response.

Polarizing the electorate has been a successful strategy for this White House. That's not what they fear. But if the poll numbers start to shift precipitously -- and if even a chunk of Bush's core supporters come to the conclusion that he dropped the ball -- then Katrina could be something new for the White House. And something very dangerous indeed.

The poll numbers are continuing to drop.

White Shoe Life

Too Perfect to Know the People?

By Richard Cohen

Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page A29

I sometimes think the best thing that ever happened to me was, at the time, the worst: I flunked out of college. I did so for the usual reasons -- painfully bored with school and distracted by life itself -- and so I went to work for an insurance company while I plowed ahead at night school. From there I went into the Army, emerging with a storehouse of anecdotes. In retrospect, I learned more by failing than I ever would have by succeeding. I wish that John Roberts had a touch of my incompetence.

Instead, the nominee for chief justice of the United States punched every career ticket right on schedule. He was raised in affluence, educated in private schools, dispatched to Harvard and then to Harvard Law School. He clerked for a U.S. appellate judge (the storied Henry J. Friendly) and later for William H. Rehnquist, then an associate justice. Roberts worked in the Justice Department and then in the White House until moving on to Hogan & Hartson, one of Washington's most prestigious law firms; then he was principal deputy solicitor general, before moving to the bench, where he has served for only two years. His record is appallingly free of failure.

I envy him for it and admire him as well. He has the sort of first-class intellect, not to mention an impish sense of humor, that commends itself to the high court. We would not want a dunce or a mediocrity to decide the sort of matters that come before the court. Unlike, say, the presidency, the Supreme Court is no place for a sluggish thinker who thinks -- if that is the word -- that in the schools the non-theory of "intelligent design" ought to be taught along with the theory of evolution. (What next, alchemy and chemistry?) But when Sandra Day O'Connor leaves the Supreme Court, it will be without any member who has spent so much as a day as an elected official. Roberts will not change that. He, too, never worked the beach on Labor Day. If he has a politician's talent -- not weakness -- for compromise, we don't know it. If he has great leadership qualities -- or any at all -- we don't know it. If he can bring unanimity where it matters -- as Earl Warren did in 1954 with the school desegregation decision -- we don't know it. All we really know is that he is young (50), smart and makes, as they say, a nice appearance.

But it is not only the lack of political experience that I rue today, it is also the lack of life experiences that makes me wonder. Just before writing this column, I came across an obituary for Theodore Sarbin, a social psychologist who died Aug. 31 at the nice age of 94. Sarbin's claim to newspaper space was his 1988 report recommending that the military stop discriminating against gays and lesbians. This is the sentence that caught my attention: "As a young man, he rode the rails as a hobo, an experience he would later say helped him identify with people on the margins of society." The best Roberts could do in this respect was to work summers in a steel mill. He shared the work -- but not the plight.

Cohen echos my own reservation about Judge Roberts. I had to work three jobs to put myself through undergraduate school at a state university. I'm the first and only member of my family with a college degree. The kind of life I've lead is pretty remote from his experience, but he may have a big effect on my life.

Watching CNN

I figured out the reason for the existence of Kyra Phillips. She's there to make Wolf Blitzer look competent.

Looking On

Governors watch, worry over Katrina fiasco
9/7/2005, 2:33 p.m. CT
By RON FOURNIER
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — No strangers to bureaucratic bungling and turf wars, the nation's governors watched in horror as government agencies handled Hurricane Katrina with glaring incompetence — and now worry that the next disaster could deal their states the same ugly fate.

The fear is bipartisan. Republican and Democratic governors agree that the response to Katrina was deplorable, and many ordered reviews of their own state emergency strategies to root out problems they're witnessing in the Gulf Coast.

Their top priority: Avoid the bureaucratic red tape that tripped up state, local and federal authorities at every step of the Gulf Coast crisis. Thousands of lives may be at stake after the next natural disaster or terrorist strike.

"Every one of those government levels could have done better," said Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican. "The great thing about this country is we usually learn from these tragedies. There is some accountability. Some heads will roll."

"This certainly gives me great pause," said Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. "We have to look at emergency response in a new light with the lapses down there."

A dozen governors were interviewed for this story, and most had a bureaucratic horror story about Hurricane Katrina.

In Arkansas, state officials were first told to expect 300 evacuees. Nobody came. Then the state was told to prepare 4,000 meals for a fleet of buses. No buses arrived. Suddenly, in the wee hours of Sunday, more than 9,000 refugees showed up at a National Guard post. "It rained people on us," said Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican.

In West Virginia, Gov. Joe Manchin dispatched several planes to the South to ferry refugees to his state. Most of the aircraft sat empty until he ordered them back home in frustration. "The waste that goes on because of a lack of coordination ... ," he said. Too angry to finish that sentence, Manchin spit out a new one: "To bring five planes back empty is a crying shame."

In New Mexico, Gov. Bill Richardson said he authorized National Guard troops to leave for New Orleans early last week, but paperwork delayed their departure for days.

I think we're do for an accountability moment any day now.

Surprise, Surprise

Man, the pundits are loving these "questions for the nominee" columns. But this one is from a very surprising source.

Some Questions For the Nominee

By George F. Will

Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page A29

Although John Roberts says, "I don't have an overarching, uniform philosophy," the man who may sit as chief justice for more than a generation surely has jurisprudential inclinations. These merit strict scrutiny, perhaps beginning with the following questions for him:

The Congress that in 1866 drafted the 14th Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" clearly thought the amendment was compatible with programs -- e.g., the Freedmen's Bureau, created in 1865 -- tailored to benefit African Americans. And in 1866 Congress rejected a bill that would have ended segregation of schools in the District of Columbia. Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School says, "On historical grounds, it would not be at all implausible to say that the ratifiers of the [Equal Protection] Clause understood it to permit racial segregation as well as affirmative action." So what help are "historical grounds" when construing the Constitution?

Construing the Eighth Amendment's proscription of "cruel and unusual punishments," the court has said the meaning of that clause changes with "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." But Justice Antonin Scalia, citing "the whole antievolutionary purpose of a constitution," says:

"It certainly cannot be said that a constitution naturally suggests changeability; to the contrary, its whole purpose is to prevent change -- to embed certain rights in such a manner that future generations cannot readily take them away. A society that adopts a bill of rights is skeptical that 'evolving standards of decency' always 'mark progress,' and that societies always 'mature,' as opposed to rot."

Is Scalia wrong?

The doctrine of stare decisis -- respect for precedent -- gives the law predictability and has given citizens due notice of what is probably required or permitted. There are, however, occasions -- for example, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson and the constitutionality of racial segregation -- for abandoning precedent. What characterizes such occasions?

Legislators produce much "legislative history" -- committee hearings and reports, floor debates. Should judges study those to discover the "legislative intent" behind a law? Or does this lead to what Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School calls substituting "unenacted thoughts for whatever text actually passed through the fires of bicameral approval and presentment to the president for signature or veto"?

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "I don't care what their intention was. I only want to know what the words mean." However, the First Amendment's words guarantee freedom of "speech" and "press," but surely the amendment's authors intended to also protect, for example, handwritten notes. So, is discerning intent -- what the Framers of the Constitution or the enactors of legislation expected would be the consequences of what they did -- one way of deciding meaning?

Tribe says justices must respect the ways in which the Constitution "is a work in process, a body of law that 'We the People' do not in fact 'ordain and establish' all at once, in the originalist's equivalent of the physicist's big bang." But "originalists" strive to promote judicial restraint by stressing that the Constitution must be construed to mean only what the Framers and ratifiers of the text thought it meant.

One problem, however, is that what was originally thought can be unclear. Another problem is that what arguably was thought by an original majority is now simply unacceptable. For example:

In 1798, just seven years after the First Amendment was added to the Constitution, Federalists, then a congressional majority, said the Sedition Act was compatible with the amendment because freedom of speech meant only freedom from prior restraint -- from prohibitions on speaking -- not freedom from subsequent punishment for what was said. However, Republicans such as Albert Gallatin said it is "preposterous to say that to punish a certain act was not an abridgement of the liberty of doing that act." Is the fact that Gallatin's view has prevailed a defeat for "originalism"? If so, aren't you glad?

With its Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court sought to solve the sectional crisis by ruling that under the Constitution slaves and their descendants could never count as U.S. "citizens." Is it not arguable that this decision was (a) originalism and (b) activism?

Holmes, advocating judicial restraint in the name of majoritarianism, said: "If my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I'll help them. It's my job." In the past decade alone, the Rehnquist Court, in an unprecedented flurry of activism, has struck down more than three dozen enactments by the people's representatives in Congress. Are you for such judicial activism, or are you for helping us go to Hell? Or is this the fallacy of the false alternatives?

Living Together

Margaret Carlson usually needs some editing. Not today.

Noblesse oblige? Not our president

AS PART OF HIS political damage control over the weekend, President Bush sent his staff to the Sunday talk shows and his parents to visit evacuees bused to Houston from New Orleans.

The administration officials fared poorly. On "Meet the Press," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff tried to spin a headline few saw — "New Orleans Dodges a Bullet" — into an explanation of why his department stood by for days as thousands sent to the city's convention center were trapped in their own filth, without food, water or medicine. He looked silly.

But Chertoff gave a boffo performance compared with the president's mother, who left her comfortable house in the West Oaks section of Houston to tour the emergency facility at the Astrodome.

While I saw a teeming mass of displaced people standing in hourlong lines to wash encrusted grime off their children in a tiny restroom sink, Barbara Bush found a bunch of happy campers experiencing a step up in their living conditions. She saw visitors "overwhelmed with the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working [she chuckles here] very well for them."

Oh really? The Bushes have always made fun of Bill Clinton's lip-biting, hands-on governing, but who wouldn't prefer it to this president's upbeat platitudes. Tanned and rested from a vacation so long it would embarrass the French, Bush initially flew over the devastation in Air Force One, promising his prayers on his way someplace else. When he actually arrived in Louisiana a few days later, he reminisced about going to New Orleans "to enjoy myself, occasionally too much," apparently thinking he was at a fundraiser. He topped that in Mississippi: "Out of the rubble of Trent Lott's house … there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

Even to his detractors, the callous, puerile attitude and sheer ineptitude of Bush this past week is shocking. He got off to a slow start on 9/11 but quickly found his bullhorn and Rudy Giuliani. He's got neither here.

One reason for the dismal federal performance is Bush's disdain for government. To him, it's bloated and for chumps who can't provide for themselves — with some exceptions. Bush signed spending bills filled with pork, finding $454 million for his Alaskan Republicans to build two bridges to nowhere in Alaska but not for the levees everyone but him knew were cracking. His administration intervenes but only when there are a lot of cameras and potential political gain, such as in the Terri Schiavo case, when Bush rushed back from his ranch in March to do so. And saying "it's your money, not the government's," he cut taxes for the wealthy, which means less money for boring projects like disaster relief.

If Bush cared about governing, he would have never appointed Michael Brown, the failed director of a trade association that ran horse shows, to run FEMA, which the president folded into the Homeland Security Department. That agency has little to show for itself other than an ineffective color chart and long lines at the airport as arthritic old ladies remove their shoes.

If Bush's first priority were managing the real crisis and not the political one, he'd fire Brown, who ignored the pleas for help from the thousands of people herded like cattle into the Superdome and the convention center. On the contrary, Bush praised his point man for the recovery that hadn't happened: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." If he keeps up the good work, he may end up like those other great officials — Paul Bremer and George Tenet — with a Medal of Freedom around his neck instead of a noose.

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we went to New Orleans with the government we have — replete with its Chertoffs, Brownies, Cheneys and assorted other ideologues, cronies and schemers who gorge on patronage, revel in politics and brush off the mundane responsibilities of the offices they hold. They're Big Picture guys who have brought the same management skills to the Gulf states that they brought to that other gulf.

The worrisome question is how much like them are the rest of us? In 2000, even his supporters found Al Gore and his 10-point plans long-winded compared with the affable frat boy rescued from a checkered career by family and connections until he was running the Texas Rangers and then Texas itself. For three years, we watched as Bush created and compounded the tragedy in Iraq, and rehired him anyway. Perhaps now we see that you better treat government with respect. You never know when your life — political and otherwise — might depend on it.

It's not just respecting government, it is respecting that we have a common life that conservatives have failed to notice. We literally cannot live without each other, as inconvenient as that fact is sometimes.

It Doesn't Take Much

The thin veneer of civilization

By Timothy Garton Ash, TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is a professor of European studies at Oxford University and a Hoover Institution senior fellow.

THE BIG LESSON of Katrina is not about the incompetence of the Bush administration, the scandalous neglect of poor black people in the United States or our unpreparedness for major natural disasters, though all of those apply. Katrina's big lesson is that the crust of civilization on which we tread is always wafer thin. One tremor and you've fallen through, scratching and gouging for your life like a wild dog.

You think the looting, rape and armed terror that emerged within hours in New Orleans couldn't happen elsewhere? Think again. It happened here in Europe only 60 years ago. Read the memoirs of Holocaust and Gulag survivors, Norman Lewis' account of Naples in 1944 or the recently republished anonymous diary of a German woman in Berlin in 1945. It happened in Bosnia just 10 years ago. And that wasn't even the force majeure of a natural disaster. Those were man-made hurricanes.

The basic point is the same: Remove the elementary staples of organized, civilized life — food, shelter, drinkable water, minimal personal security — and we go back within hours to a Hobbesian state of nature, a war of all against all. Some people, some of the time, behave with heroic solidarity; most people, most of the time, engage in a ruthless fight for individual and genetic survival. A few become temporary angels; most revert to being apes.

The word "civilization," in one of its earliest senses, referred to the process of human animals being civilized — by which we mean, I suppose, achieving a mutual recognition of human dignity, or at least accepting in principle the desirability of such a recognition. Reading Jack London the other day, I came across an unusual word: decivilization. The opposite process, that is — the one by which people cease to be civilized and become barbaric. Katrina tells us about the ever-present possibility of decivilization.

There are intimations of this even in normal, everyday life. Road rage is a good example. Or think what it's like waiting for a late-night flight that is delayed or canceled. At first, those carefully guarded cocoons of personal space we carry around with us in airport waiting areas break down into flickerings of solidarity. The glance of mutual sympathy over the newspaper or laptop screen. A few words of shared frustration or irony. Often this grows into a stronger manifestation of group solidarity, perhaps directed against the hapless check-in staff. (To find a common enemy is the only sure way to human solidarity.) But then a rumor creeps out that there are a few seats left on another flight at Gate 37. Instant collapse of solidarity. Angels become apes. The sick, infirm, elderly, women and children are left behind in the stampede. Dark-suited men, with advanced degrees and impeccable table manners, elbow aside the competition, get their boarding passes and then retreat into a corner, avoiding other people's gaze — the gorilla who got the banana. All this just to avoid a night at the Holiday Inn in Des Moines.

Obviously, the decivilization in New Orleans was 1,000 times worse. I can't avoid the feeling that there will be more of this, much more of it, as we go deeper into the 21st century. There are just too many big problems looming that could push humanity back. The most obvious threat is more natural disasters as a result of climate change. If this cataclysm is interpreted by politicians as — to use the hackneyed phrase that they will themselves undoubtedly use — a "wake-up call" to alert Americans to the consequences of the United States continuing to pump out carbon dioxide as if there were no tomorrow, then the Katrina hurricane cloud will have a silver lining. But it may already be too late. We may be launched on an unstoppable downward spiral. If so, if large parts of the world were tormented by unpredictable storms, flooding and temperature changes, then what happened in New Orleans would seem like a tea party.

I always take the things Tim Garton Ash writes very seriously. I'm taking this piece more seriously than most. Why? Avian influenza. I said much the same a couple of days ago. "Radical discontinuity" owns a part of our future.

Ninth Ward

Once More, a Neighborhood Sees the Worst

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 8, 2005; Page A18

NEW ORLEANS -- The Lower Ninth Ward crouches behind a pile of dirt, separated by a big bend in America's biggest river and a thick canal and eons of tradition from the "high-class people" up on the high ground over in the French Quarter. They keep piling the dirt higher, pushing the levee up and up over the years, but the water keeps coming into the Lower 9.

This place -- an archetype of New Orleans African American culture dotted by tiny corner groceries called "superettes" and laundromats called "washaterias" -- is still now, eerily still. This poorest of neighborhoods, which gave the world Fats Domino and hosts during Carnival season the "second-line" parades, with their high-stepping funk groove, is almost completely under the water that Hurricane Katrina pushed into the city.

What isn't underwater is coated with a mud so thick and gloppy and black that it could have been produced only on the banks of the Mississippi. New Orleans is a counterintuitive place, and so is the Ninth Ward: The streets closest to the river stay driest and drain fastest because the ground is higher there, and the ruined houses have the small consolation of being glazed now by caked dry mud instead of the wet stuff.

The dead, and many of the living, are elusive. The dead because they are underwater, or tucked silently into flooded homes; the living because they are willing to hide in order to stay.

They sit in mildewing living rooms, curtains drawn, breathing the foulest of air and distrusting the people sent to help them. Theirs is a place of persistent poverty -- 36 percent of Lower Ninth Ward residents live below the poverty line, nearly twice the statewide poverty rate -- even though parts of the neighborhood have been upgraded. Before the storm, new money was trickling in to fix up the old shotgun houses -- so narrow that it's said a shotgun blast could travel unabated from front to back through the doors in the center of each room.

The young Navy boys are trying to talk the most stubborn out of the area, offering hot meals and showers on the ship that pulled up to the levee. But it's a tough sell. The storm that wrecked the Lower Ninth Ward only worsened the class divide, the mistrust that was here before. The people who live here do not need a demographer to tell them that much of the deepest flooding wrought by Katrina rose in places where black people live, or that almost all the faces in the evacuee lines are black.

Patricia Alexis, a pretty 57-year-old with flashing eyes, as well as a bum knee and a host of ailments that keep her from working, tried it "da man's way." She went to the Superdome and sat in unspeakable filth with tens of thousands of people -- almost all black, she points out. She saw gunfights and vandalism and corridors turned into open sewers.

As soon as she had a chance, she got out of there, "waded through the water," to get back to the Lower Ninth Ward -- flooded and foul, but home. She poked around her little brick rental this week, exhausted from piling sopping clothes but, somehow, smiling.

"This is better than the Superdome," she said. "I was in danger there."

Alexis bathes with a bucket of suspect water. Dinner is an MRE handed out by the sailors who come by every once in a while, calling out on loudspeakers that everyone should leave. She ignores them.

On her street, dogs and cats scavenge as furiously as the people. Scrawny kittens follow anyone who passes by, mewling weakly.

One of them followed Milton "Cat" Crawford up out of the stinking, flooded streets and up on to the bridge over the Industrial Canal, crying persuasively until he finally gave in and put the shivering white thing into a box to take with him. Crawford grew up in the Lower Ninth Ward, prowling faded streets with the same names as the fancy streets in the French Quarter -- Dauphine, Burgundy, Royal. His side of those streets ended at the levee, though, before picking up on the other side, a world away.

It's the poor people who pay first. The rest of us get in line later.

Time to call BS on "Blame Game" talk

It's ten days since Katrina swept through Louisiana and Mississippi. By now, pretty much everyone in the afflicted areas is either safe or dead. Sure, much work remains to be done, but the urgent work of saving lives is over.

There never really was much of an excuse for the "let's not play the blame game in the middle of a crisis" line, especially given that a principal reason for the scope of the crisis was the Federal government's initial unwillingness to react to Katrina as if it was a crisis. But we're past the crisis stage, a surfeit of troops controls New Orleans, and now there isn't the remotest chance that pointing out the manifold Administration f*ckups, along with its willingness to use Katrina as a big Bush-promoting photo-op, could possibly interfere with the rescue of a single survivor.

So it's over now. Let's state the obvious: with four years' time for general preparations, billions of dollars spent, and a few days' time to prepare specifically for Katrina, the Bush Administration flat out blew it. They showed up three days too late, and weren't particularly effective even then. Hundreds or thousands died because they were asleep at the switch: hundreds or thousands who would have lived if they'd gotten food, water, medicine, help in time. No one in their right mind would expect them to do better in the wake of a terrorist attack, which would happen with no warning at all. And it would be a fool's game to expect them to know what to do about a completely different sort of emergency, like a pandemic.

Beyond the Phish

The Scams After the Storm

By TOM ZELLER Jr.
Published: September 8, 2005

Even as millions of Americans rally to make donations to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Internet is brimming with swindles, come-ons and opportunistic pandering related to the relief effort in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And the frauds are more varied and more numerous than in past disasters, according to law enforcement officials and online watchdog groups.

Florida's attorney general has already filed a fraud lawsuit against a man who started one of the earliest networks of Web sites - katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com and others - that stated they were collecting donations for victims of the storm.

In Missouri, a much wider constellation of Internet sites - with names like parishdonations.com and katrinafamilies.com - displayed pictures of the flood-ravaged South and drove traffic to a single site, InternetDonations.org, a nonprofit entity with apparent links to white separatist groups.

The registrant of those Web sites was sued by the state of Missouri yesterday for violating state fund-raising law and for "omitting the material fact that the ultimate company behind the defendants' Web sites supports white supremacy."

Late yesterday afternoon, the F.B.I. put the number of Web sites claiming to deal in Katrina information and relief - some legitimate, others not - at "2,300 and rising." Dozens of suspicious sites claiming links to legitimate charities are being investigated by state and federal authorities. Also under investigation are e-mail spam campaigns using the hurricane as a hook to lure victims to reveal credit card numbers to thieves, as well as phony hurricane news sites and e-mail "updates" that carry malicious code designed to hijack a victim's computer.

"The numbers are still going up," said Dan Larkin, the chief of the F.B.I.'s Internet Crime Complaint Center in West Virginia. Mr. Larkin said that the amount of suspicious, disaster-related Web activity is higher than the number of swindles seen online after last year's tsunami in Southeast Asia. "We've got a much higher volume of sites popping up," he said.

The earliest online frauds began to appear within hours of Katrina's passing. "It was so fast it was amazing," said Audri Lanford, co-director of ScamBusters.org, an Internet clearinghouse for information on various forms of online fraud. "The most interesting thing is the scope," she said. "We do get a very good feel for the quantity of scams that are out there, and there's no question that this is huge compared to the tsunami."

By the end of last week, Ms. Landford's group had logged dozens of Katrina-related scams and spam schemes. The frauds ranged from opportunistic marketing (one spam message offered updates on the post-hurricane situation, with a link that led to a site peddling Viagra) to messages purporting to be from victims, or families of victims.

"This letter is in request for any help that you can give," reads one crude message that was widely distributed online. "My brother and his family have lost everything they have and come to live with me while they looks for a new job."

Several antivirus software companies have warned of e-mail "hurricane news updates" that lure users to Web sites capable of infecting computers with a virus that allow hackers to gain control of their machines. And numerous scammers have seeded the Internet with e-mail "phishing" messages that purport to be from real relief agencies, taking recipients to what appear to be legitimate Web sites, where credit card information is collected from unwitting victims who think they are donating to hurricane relief.

On Sunday, the Internet security company Websense issued an alert regarding a phishing campaign that lured users to a Web site hosted in Brazil and was designed to look like a page operated by the Red Cross. Users who submitted their credit card numbers, expiration dates, and PIN numbers via the Web form were then redirected to the legitimate Red Cross Web site, making the ruse difficult to detect. The security company Sophos warned of a similar phishing campaign on Monday.

"They're tugging at people's heartstrings," said Tom Mazur, a spokesman for the United States Secret Service. Mr. Mazur said there were "a number of instances that we're looking into with this type of fraud, both domestically and overseas," but he would not provide specifics.

1-800-Help-Now for the Red Cross or here.

The Salvation Army.

You can help. Really.

Flu Pandemic Preparation – Emergencies, Evacuation, Protection

Given the situation in New Orleans, this topic probably has a greater urgency for many of you, and provides more grist for the mill of fear and uncertainty, than anything short of you or a loved one suffering directly from an H5N1-based flu attack.

So, take some deep, cleansing breaths, calm down a sec, and let’s talk through this.

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Introduction and Framework

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Food

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Water

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Medication and CAM

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Emergencies, Evacuation, Protection

Flu Pandemic Preparation - Entertainment & Acceptance

UPDATE:
Sigh....

As if President Bush couldn’t make life hard enough for us by gutting FEMA of all intelligence (and much of its funding, at least until Katrina came along), destroying the concept of public health at the Federal level, and turning the CDC into a bunch of secretive cowards, now the guy talks about using the military to quarantine areas where the pandemic will first break out.

This is idiocy of the highest order, but we have to discuss this for reasons that won’t be immediately clear, so bear with me for a bit.

First, there will simply not be enough troops to prevent people from running away from an area where H5N1 is declared in existence if they want to do so. Too many roads, too easy to grease palms (and you know the wealthy, frightened and cash-enabled just aren’t going to be stopped if determined to leave). And why turn a crowd situation on an Interstate, for example, into a mob action?

Second, where are most of these troops that President Bush would use? Let’s be honest here – the last group of people you want to use to enforce security are folks that have served at least two tours of duty in a very stressful place with a high incidence of exposure to various nasties that our bodies aren’t used to, thus reducing the effectiveness of their immuno-suppression systems. (Not to mention that some of these soldiers may actually be bringing H5N1 with them when they return home, since indications are that H5N1 will strike Africa and the Middle East from Southeastern Europe.) Guys that get sick potentially easier than you or I, well-armed, and told to do not only the impossible, but things that go against common sense. Not good.

Even with all police on full 24-hour duty (two shifts on, one shift rest but ready to go if necessary), there won’t be enough people to stop people form leaving an area. However, there are two factors to consider that make this a worse option than what we worry about now.

The first is that there will probably be a call for volunteers, and you can expect more than a few to become available from Bush’s allies. And frankly, the only thing that makes me more nervous than a well-armed, potentially sick soldier with a snarly attitude from being told to do the impossible is a former precinct officer or a “true believer” in a Pharisee-based church being given firearms and/or the right to use them as seen fit. Add potential first dibs on any meds that Bush can make available beforehand for volunteers and their families, and you have a bad situation.

Second, even Bush should realize that control of the roads won’t be how they control the pandemic in a given locale. Unfortunately, what I think this will result in is the logic of the concentration camp – that people considered sick or at high risk of becoming sick will be isolated from the community at large in a handful or less of facilities. Given the Bush administration’s low regard for human life after Iraq, Katrina and Rita, I suspect this would be simply “murder of the few for the sake of the many.” Would it be deliberate? I don’t think so, but I also think it would, as is this administration’s penchant, be not planned or poorly planned, and disaster would result.

This means that you should well and truly plan on self-isolation as much as possible, especially if a member of your family falls ill. This also means no quarantine signs, as I had previously recommended, and being a bit more careful with your neighbors. This last recommendation angers me more than just about anything else, as together we stand a better chance of getting through this pandemic, and President Bush is threatening action that would almost certainly reduce our chances of both individual and mutual survival through mistrust and, once again, as is their wont, fear.

The only thing I can think of, unless you are such a salesman or have such presence that you can force your local neighborhood to be loyal to it more than to their fears that those with flu stand a risk of causing trouble in their locale, is to consider making sure a small number of friends or relatives that are willing to observe the self-isolation rules move in with you once the pandemic appears to have made “landfall” in North America. Yes, you’ll need to buy more stuff, but you’ll also have a fair number of people that can and will want to help, relying less on your neighbors if you cannot “make the sale” with them regarding H5N1, so it’s a good tradeoff.

ORIGINAL POST:
Now. New Orleans after hurricane Katrina is not, repeat, not, a template for how urban America will most likely react to a flu pandemic.

If a flu pandemic were to occur, society would slow down over time, perhaps even grind to a very low ebb (though not a halt, I suspect), but most of society would stay in place. It wouldn’t always work, and there might be some desperation as people realize that access to food, other necessities and cash were drastically reduced over time, but civil society would try to function as best it could. In New Orleans at present, civil society is gone, the area is isolated, and most that were left were the desperately poor and the vultures. Those that try to restore order under such circumstances have a very hard job to do.

Further, there would probably be a huge amount of denial, at least at first, that a pandemic was occurring. Many would accept the lie readily, since this is not an easy thing to wrap your mind around. The trick is whether the media would try to whip things into a frenzy, or be told in no uncertain terms to keep a lid on the story – I suspect the latter.

In summary, then, there would be a struggle to keep things going, but there would also be at least half-hearted attempts to maintain civil order and aid those in need. And it would happen in the midst of denial and a desire to at least keep discussion of the pandemic sotto voce.

Would crime increase? Maybe. What kind of crime? Property crime, most likely, but I suspect it would be desperation crimes for the most part – food, medication thought to help against the flu, and other necessities. And where would they most likely go? The grocery and drug/convenience stores, because they would be perceived to have lots of each item. In fact, if things do get grim, I wouldn’t be half surprised if many store owners bow to the inevitable over time and either create “tabs” or in-store credit lines for items “today” that would get stolen instead, without them, “tomorrow”. After all, were they to use private security guards, one violent incident could cause a riot the same day, or sink their business after the pandemic passed. (An alternative is that local or county governments mandate that stores ration/distribute supplies as they are able to those in need of help from whatever is in stock, and the government picks up the tab once the crisis is considered over.)

Would crimes of violence increase? Maybe – if a decreased police presence meant a perception that potential criminals could get away with more than usual, definitely. But these would, again, most likely have to be targets of opportunity – people out very late at night alone, or a vehicle obscured from being easily seen in public, for example. And you also have to realize that H5N1 won’t spare potential or real criminals any more than you or I. So the potential for crime may increase, but possibly not the amount of crime.

Let us assume the flu pandemic comes in two waves. In the first, I would expect stores and warehouses in at least some areas to be raided for food and other necessities as supplies run low and distribution falters. Houses don’t have as effective a payoff unless you are known as someone who has hoarded food and medical supplies, or if you are ostentatious in the midst of the worst of the pandemic. Most people are also going to avoid houses as places to raid simply because they aren’t going to want to run into dead bodies or sick people, either of which they may find. (Again, acquire an official looking quarantine sign as soon as possible when things begin to happen, and place it at the front door.)

In the second wave, a lot will come down to whether or not local government and civil society, or some substitute/compliment of them, can accomplish effective preparations during the interim period. (I expect minimal help from the Feds unless you have a strong local Federal presence – and one should expect the possibility that such a presence may, for example, be still stuck in Iraq or called to a “hot spot” come the arrival of H5N1 in force.) The odds that this country will have more than enough staple foods available to distribute during the interim period is probably somewhat better than 50-50, and I suspect that, even if a fair chunk of the country is still in utter denial after the first wave of the pandemic, the food processors will do their utmost to provide products necessary to get through the second wave.

If the second wave comes with inadequate food supplies available to the public in your locale, then all bets are off. More people may die or be incapacitated, more desperate acts may happen in a struggle for survival, or little or nothing at all may happen because the H5N1 virus burned itself out and didn’t adapt quickly enough to keep its human hosts alive.

So, what to do? Reread the points I made in the mindset article, for starters. Only display enough of a presence that you are around (and perhaps under quarantine, to minimize curiosity). Cultivate relationships with your neighbors. Help when and if you can, but don’t appear too comfortable in the midst of all this.

And if things get grim? Will a firearm really help?

Well, there are three emergency circumstances to consider, in my mind.

1) Your house is damaged during the pandemic in some way such that it’s uninhabitable. In that event, you should have a 72-hour emergency pack or packs, as needed, ready to go and the only things you grab, other than your loved ones, once you run out the door to safety. (If you’re really ambitious and can deal with the load, let’s say one-week packs.)

You should plan on a course of action that results in your being in a safe place within three to seven days, depending on the size of your emergency pack. It may be to an airport that will allow you to fly home to family members that will take you in, it maybe to local friends or relatives, but however you accomplish this, have a plan and make sure it will happen when the worst happens.

Nitro-Pack has some OK “survival kits” here, but I prefer the Red Cross first aid and disaster preparation supplies myself. Just remember that ten of the Red Cross' foil pouches of water and a single food packet (basically carbohydrates) is good for three days. (Some local Red Cross locations will also have these items available for immediate purchase.) Combine them with a few key items from Campmor or Nitro-Pak, and you’ll have a much better emergency pack.

Fire is the usual reason for the need to evacuate. If you want to minimize the potential for a fire from causing you to evacuate in the first place, here is a site regarding fire extinguishers.
Here is a company that sells them (though I suspect you can get similar prices from a local dealer). I would recommend at least an ABC type, and if you have cash to spare, a CO2 type to supplement it.

2) Your locale has prepared poorly or not at all between the first and second waves of a pandemic, and a lot of people become desperate. In such an event, homes are much more likely targets.

In this event, as in the first wave, the quarantine sign should be out, and make sure people know you are there, though quietly so. But do realize something – any home can be broken into. You cannot stop people from accomplishing this if they are determined, but you can make it appear so painful that they will stop at a certain point where to go further invites real harm, possibly death. To that end, a shotgun loaded with rock salt or a few six-foot, inch-plus diameter hemlock dowels (easy to get at a hardware store – often used in closets) to be used as quick quarterstaffs might provide enough presence or nuisance to make a point, allowing your intruder(s) to think twice or leave with their lives intact in return for a slight bruising of their egos.

If things are uglier than that, a shotgun and buckshot provide a wide-area defense against a group of people, but if your attacker has brains, they will attempt to break into your home from two directions or from one direction in large numbers. Unless you’re loaded for bear, or worse yet, because you are known to be loaded for bear (and thus have a potential armory someone wants badly), a coordinated attack will eventually succeed.

An alternative is to hide the majority of your survival food and medication, but leave in plain sight a certain amount of goods that won’t hurt to have taken from you. A variation of this is to declare that you’ll leave a portion of your food and/or meds outside in return for being left alone, if you have ample warning of their intent. Be honest and give them a fair bit of the stash if you do this – being seen as miserly will only whet their frustration over the state their lives are in, and they’ll take all that frustration out on you. It might be better to lose 30% of your goods safely instead of having your house damaged and lives lost, whether yours or theirs.

A final option is to consider the situation as untenable and, as in the first situation, plan on making use of your emergency pack(s) to leave the area and reach a new place of safety, or combine forces with local friends and/or family and determine which of the homes among you make the best place to live together. (Obviously, if you have the most gear in place among potential bunkmates, you should be preparing for company.)

3) Martial law is applied at some point and is used as a means of silencing critics of the government or specific local officials in the midst of a panic caused by the pandemic.

So far, for all the tough talk one can hear from some folks on the right, the story here would be one of intimidation. There won’t be much of a “taste for killing” after dealing with the casualties of the flu pandemic. The odds are that once the pandemic was considered over, the existing Federal and lesser administrations would be blamed for a lack of preparation and have their political power reduced and martial law ended whether the powers that be liked it or not, though police would probably remain with extraordinary powers for a time, regardless of who was in charge. Any attempt at a series of assassinations of political and/or social critics would lead to, most likely, an American version of the present-day civil unrest that has taken place in Columbia since 1948, with a multitude of responses, many violent, leaving a less vital but nominally functioning society. And frankly, you would want much more than a firearm if such circumstances came to pass.

In all three cases, you must thoroughly think through the question – how will a firearm help me?

My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that unless you are an adult female that would live through the pandemic completely alone but with periodic travel outside your home, are physically handicapped in some way as to reduce your response time to an attack on your home (in which case the best thing to do is to stay with friends or relatives during the pandemic) or unless you live in an area with an already-high crime rate, there are alternatives to firearms - it may not be worth it.

And if you decide you need a firearm, consider the shotgun above, and learn how to use it. A handgun, frankly, won’t cut it against a group assault, the most dangerous option. And an individual attacker would most likely turn tail in the face of a shotgun pointed at them without you needing to open fire.

Last but not least, we come to volunteering during the pandemic. Do you or don’t you? For myself, I haven’t come up with an answer, but I lean towards no if it’s just myself and my daughter in our home. There will be a strong desire to avoid catching the flu at any cost, but on the other side there will be a stong urge to help. And as civil society and the basic functions of local government start to fray, you might be asked to help directly.

Consider this an open discussion – I would like to hear valid alternatives to my opinions stated here if you think I’m off track to any extent.

Iraq: Destroying Another City to Save It

With Death at Their Door, Few Leave Iraqi City
Civilians Urged to Flee Before U.S. Assault

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A20

TALL AFAR, Iraq, Sept. 6 -- On one side of the concertina wire lining an avenue stood 100 U.S. troops, five Bradley Fighting Vehicles and two M1-A1 Abrams tanks. Across the street were about 1,000 men, women and children of this embattled northwestern city.

The military had warned in leaflets dropped by helicopter and messages played over loudspeaker Tuesday morning that it would soon raid the insurgent-controlled neighborhood of Sarai, east of the city center, and asked civilians to evacuate through checkpoints in the southern part of town. But the Sarai residents, most of them Sunni Turkmens, insisted they would either flee northward or remain in their homes, come what may.

...

The Iraqi government has asked the military commanders to minimize civilian casualties in this highly volatile region. A U.S.-led invasion of Tall Afar one year ago this month outraged the Turkish government, which argued that the assault victimized Turkmens, who share ethnic ties with Turks. When the U.S. withdrew, insurgents returned, capitalizing on anger over the offensive to consolidate control over the city, which has also been marred by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite tribes.

"Steps are being taken to ensure that this is done with the least possible amount of harm done to civilians," McMaster said.

But several Sarai residents said they had been warned that Shiite residents or policemen, who are concentrated in southern Tall Afar, would attack if they left in that direction.

"I would rather die from American bombs in my home with my family than walk south," a man in a gray dishdasha , or robe, and white head scarf explained to soldiers. "People are saying the Shiites will kill you or kidnap you. That is a disgrace."

We did this with Fallujah nearly a year ago, and the insurgency continues unabated. Does the U.S. Army think a repeat, only in Tall Afar, will turn the tide? If so, they're living in a fantasy world. And if not, just how many towns are they going to destroy in order to save them? And how exactly is this part of a coherent plan to 'win' this war, whatever that can possibly mean these days?

Our government doesn't appear to have two brain cells to rub together anymore. But even worse than having no brain, this Administration has no heart, no compassion. It will blow as many people up in Iraq as it feels it has to do, in order to...in order to what??? I give up. And in New Orleans, it let thousands die, and seemingly only cares about the political fallout.

I think I'll close with a bit of Moody Blues:

I woke up today, I was crying, lost in a lost world
Because so many people are dying, lost in a lost world
some of them are living an illusion, bounded by the darkness of their mind
in their eyes it's nation against nation against nation...

Bilge

Infections kill 3 after Katrina; others at risk
07 Sep 2005 19:58:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Three people have died from bacterial infections in Gulf states after Hurricane Katrina, and tests confirm that the water flooding New Orleans is a stew of sewage-borne bacteria, federal officials said on Wednesday.

A fourth person in the Gulf region is suspected to be infected with Vibrio vulnificus, a common marine bacteria, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told reporters, citing reports from state health officials in Mississippi and Texas.

"This does not represent an outbreak," Gerberding told a news conference. "It does not spread from person to person," she said.

"People who are compromised in immunity can sometimes develop very severe infections from these bacteria. We see cases of this from time to time along the coast," she added.

And tests of the waters flooding New Orleans show it is, as expected, loaded with raw sewage.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson said all the tests of waters in flooded residential areas of New Orleans exceeded by at least 10 times the safe levels of E. coli and other so-called coliform bacteria, found in the human gut and used as an indicator of sewage contamination.

They also have high levels of lead, Johnson said.

"Human contact with the floodwaters should be avoided as much as possible," Johnson told the news conference.

Think the population of NOLA might be a little immuno-comprimised?

THE VALUE OF OUTRAGE

The number of insights gained from the Katrina aftermath is, sadly, as large as the number of lives destroyed. As grim as that sentence is, however, we must at least learn and retain what we need to learn and retain for this tragedy to have any lasting value whatsoever.

Today's lesson is that outrage matters. (It's refreshing to know it still exists in America.)

Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans caught some flak from People Biologically Inclined to Defend George Bush when he unleashed his verbal tirade last Thursday at the federal government and its leader, the President of the United States.

Funny thing, though: after those surreal, ridiculous and ultimately fatal three days--Tuesday... drip, drip... Wednesday... drip, drip.... Thursday... drip, drip--in which many people died, many others declined, still others were severely endangered, and others just plain suffered longer than they should have, Mayor Nagin's outrage--broadcast far and wide--got the sleepwalking feds off their dime and into action.

By Friday, President Bush finally got to New Orleans to at least show up for a little bit. Resources were finally mobilized, troops finally activated, and crisis situations were at least responded to if not solved. By Saturday, action was seen and felt; people know what help looks like, and on Friday and Saturday, help finally arrived.

Yet, it was with extreme disgust that I watched 60 Minutes on Sunday, as Mayor Nagin told Scott Pelley that when he met President Bush on Friday, he apologized to him.

In reality, Mayor Nagin--for all that he didn't do to address evacuations before Katrina struck--nevertheless had nothing to be sorry about. His tirade was a plea of a desperate man watching lives being lost. It wasn't even about a mayor pleading for his city; it was a primal cry of despair that came from a soul under siege, a heart being crushed like none other. Any sane human being should be able to understand the place where Mayor Nagin's cry came from.

But aside of the emotions behind Nagin's tirade, there's this one other minor little detail about it: it saved lives. If the Mayor doesn't yell, the Feds wouldn't have been awakened.

In the context of the delicate emotional and professional transactions that are part of the give-and-take between the press and elected officials, or between elected officials at different ends of the spectrum (different levels of jurisdiction, different party affiliations, different job descriptions, or all of the above), people apologize way too much.

Granted, President Bush apologizes way too little, but by and large, there are way too many journalists and politicians in this country who make a profound, bold and necessary public stand of some sort--asking a tough question, doing something unpopular, or standing alone against conventional wisdom--that comes from a place of deep moral outrage, only to later apologize.

Sometimes, this apology is made not for what was said or done, but how it was done. This is a somewhat tolerable apology, given that the author of a comment or action does not step back from the content of what s/he advanced in the public square. But many other times, a journalist or elected official will cave in and apologize for both methodology AND content.

Mayor Nagin is a polite man to have apologized to President Bush, and goodness knows, there's a place for politeness in public life. Moreover, the key point is not that President Bush shouldn't have been apologized to; the President is actually irrelevant to this one particular discussion.

The point is that Mayor Nagin's tirade saved lives and achieved its purpose; there was nothing to step back from at all. Outrage--when pure and, even more importantly, life-saving--must be offered and defended unapologetically to retain its force, in the present moment and for the long term.

Hopefully, the Katrina aftermath will show our soft, lazy, complacent, distracted, divided, materialistic, politically disengaged nation that outrage--non-partisan, non-ideological, and simply rooted in plain common sense and human decency--needs to make a big, roaring comeback in everyday life. That means expressing it, as Mayor Nagin did last Thursday, but it also means not backing away from it afterward--especially in terms of content, but even in terms of manner or method as well.

Contamination

Infections kill 3 after Katrina; others at risk
07 Sep 2005 19:58:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Three people have died from bacterial infections in Gulf states after Hurricane Katrina, and tests confirm that the water flooding New Orleans is a stew of sewage-borne bacteria, federal officials said on Wednesday.

A fourth person in the Gulf region is suspected to be infected with Vibrio vulnificus, a common marine bacteria, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Julie Gerberding told reporters, citing reports from state health officials in Mississippi and Texas.

"This does not represent an outbreak," Gerberding told a news conference. "It does not spread from person to person," she said.

"People who are compromised in immunity can sometimes develop very severe infections from these bacteria. We see cases of this from time to time along the coast," she added.

And tests of the waters flooding New Orleans show it is, as expected, loaded with raw sewage.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson said all the tests of waters in flooded residential areas of New Orleans exceeded by at least 10 times the safe levels of E. coli and other so-called coliform bacteria, found in the human gut and used as an indicator of sewage contamination.

They also have high levels of lead, Johnson said.

"Human contact with the floodwaters should be avoided as much as possible," Johnson told the news conference.

Think the population of NOLA might be a little immuno-comprimised?

Reality Community

Haunted by Hesitation

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 7, 2005

WASHINGTON

The water that breached the New Orleans levees and left a million people homeless and jobless has also breached the White House defenses. Reality has come flooding in. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been remarkably successful at blowing off "the reality-based community," as it derisively calls the press.

But now, when W., Mr. Cheney, Laura, Rummy, Gen. Richard Myers, Michael Chertoff and the rest of the gang tell us everything's under control, our cities are safe, stay the course - who believes them?

This time we can actually see the bodies.

As the water recedes, more and more decaying bodies will testify to the callous and stumblebum administration response to Katrina's rout of 90,000 square miles of the South.

The Bush administration bungled the Iraq occupation, arrogantly throwing away State Department occupation plans and C.I.A. insurgency warnings. But the human toll of those mistakes has not been as viscerally evident because the White House pulled a curtain over the bodies: the president has avoided the funerals of soldiers, and the Pentagon has censored the coffins of the dead coming home and never acknowledges the number of Iraqi civilians killed.

But this time, the bodies of those who might have been saved between Monday and Friday, when the president failed to rush the necessary resources to a disaster that his own general describes as "biblical," or even send in the 82nd Airborne, are floating up in front of our eyes.

New Orleans's literary lore and tourist lure was its fascination with the dead and undead, its lavish annual Halloween party, its famous above-ground cemeteries, its love of vampires and voodoo and zombies. But now that the city is decimated, reeking with unnecessary death and destruction, the restless spirits of New Orleans will haunt the White House.

The administration's foreign policy is entirely constructed around American self-love - the idea that the U.S. is superior, that we are the model everyone looks up to, that everyone in the world wants what we have.

But when people around the world look at Iraq, they don't see freedom. They see chaos and sectarian hatred. And when they look at New Orleans, they see glaring incompetence and racial injustice, where the rich white people were saved and the poor black people were left to die hideous deaths. They see some conservatives blaming the poor for not saving themselves. So much for W.'s "culture of life."

The president won re-election because he said that the war in Iraq and the Homeland Security Department would make us safer. Hogwash.

W.'s 2004 convention was staged like "The Magnificent Seven" with the Republicans' swaggering tough guys - from Rudy Giuliani to Arnold Schwarzenegger to John McCain - riding in to save an embattled town.

These were the steely-eyed gunslingers we needed to protect us, they said, not those sissified girlie-men Democrats. But now it turns out that W. can't save the town, not even from hurricane damage that everyone has been predicting for years, much less from unpredictable terrorists.

His campaigns presented the arc of his life story as that of a man who stumbled around until he was 40, then found himself and developed a laserlike focus.

But now that the people of New Orleans need an ark, we have to question the president's arc. He's stumbling in Iraq and he's stumbling on Katrina.

Let's play the blame game: the man who benefited more than anyone in history from safety nets set up by family did not bother to provide one for those who lost their families.

Outrage

Harold Meyerson sounds pretty angry.

The 'Stuff Happens' Presidency

By Harold Meyerson

Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A25

We're not number one. We're not even close.

By which measures, precisely, do we lead the world? Caring for our countrymen? You jest. A first-class physical infrastructure? Tell that to New Orleans. Throwing so much money at the rich that we've got nothing left over to promote the general welfare? Now you're talking.

The problem goes beyond the fact that we can't count on our government to be there for us in catastrophes. It's that a can't-do spirit, a shouldn't-do spirit, guides the men who run the nation. Consider the congressional testimony of Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush's 2000 campaign manager, who assumed the top position at FEMA in 2001. He characterized the organization as "an oversized entitlement program," and counseled states and cities to rely instead on "faith-based organizations . . . like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service."

Is it any surprise, then, that the administration's response to the devastation in New Orleans is of a piece with its response to the sacking of Baghdad once our troops arrived? "Stuff happens" was the way Don Rumsfeld described the destruction of Baghdad's hospitals, universities and museums while American soldiers stood around. Now stuff has happened in New Orleans, too, even as FEMA was turning away offers of assistance. This is the stuff-happens administration. And it's willing, apparently, to sacrifice any claim America may have to national greatness rather than inconvenience the rich by taxing them to build a more secure nation.

As a matter of social policy, the catastrophic lack of response in New Orleans is exceptional only in its scale and immediacy. When it comes to caring for our fellow countrymen, we all know that America has never ranked very high. We are, of course, the only democracy in the developed world that doesn't offer health care to its citizens as a matter of right. We rank 34th among nations in infant mortality rates, behind such rival superpowers as Cyprus, Andorra and Brunei.

But these are chronic conditions, and even many of us who argue for universal health coverage have grown inured to that distinctly American indifference to the common good, to our radical lack of solidarity with our fellow citizens. Besides, the poor generally have the decency to die discreetly, and discretely -- not conspicuously, not in droves. Come rain or come shine, we leave millions of beleaguered Americans to fend for themselves on a daily basis. It's just a lot more noticeable in a horrific rain, and when the ordinary lack of access to medical care is augmented by an extraordinary lack of access to emergency services.

Even if we'll never win the national-greatness sweepstakes for solidarity, though, we've long been the model of the world in matters infrastructural, in roads, bridges and dams and the like. But the America in which Eisenhower the Good decreed the construction of the interstate highway system now seems a far-off land in which even conservatives believed in public expenditures for the public good. The radical-capitalist conservatives of the past quarter-century not only haven't supported the public expenditures, they don't even believe there is such a thing as the public good. Let the Dutch build their dikes through some socialistic scheme of taxing and spending; that isn't the American way. Here, the business of government is to let the private sector create wealth -- even if that wealth doesn't circulate where it's most needed. So George W. Bush threw trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, and what did they do with it? Did the Walton family up in Bentonville raise the levees in New Orleans? Did the Bass family over in Texas write a tax-deductible check to the Mennonites for the billions of dollars they would need to rescue the elderly from inundated nursing homes?

Even now, with bedraggled rescuers pulling decomposed bodies from the muck of New Orleans, Bill Frist, the moral cretin who runs the U.S. Senate, wanted its first order of business this week to be the permanent repeal of the estate tax, until the public outcry persuaded him to change course. The Republicans profess belief in trickle-down, but what they've given us is the Flood.

The world looks on in stunned amazement, unable to understand how a once great nation has grown so indifferent not just to its poor and its blacks but even to the most rudimentary self-preservation. Some of it is institutional racism, but the primary culprit is the economic libertarianism that the president still espouses whenever he sells his Social Security snake oil. It's that libertarianism, more than anything else, that has transformed a great city into an immense morgue.

But, hey -- stuff happens.

Grim Prediction

I sure hope this is wrong.

Undertakers warned of 40,000 dead
By Gerard Wright
Los Angeles
September 8, 2005

HURRICANE Katrina may have claimed as many as 40,000 lives.

Officials with the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team made the grim assessment this week.

According to a report yesterday in the Shelbyville Times-Gazette in Tennessee, a local funeral director, Dan Buckner, said: "DMORT is telling us to expect up to 40,000 bodies." Mr Buckner confirmed the figure for The Age.

He said the figure, for Mississippi and Louisiana, came from his business partner Gary Hicks, who received the briefing from officials from the response team in Alabama.

The agency is part of the National Disaster Medical System, administered by the embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"When they start going through those houses, everyone was told to go to their attics (to escape the rising floodwaters), but not to take tools to chop through the roof," Mr Buckner said yesterday.

"There's going to be numerous bodies in those attics and they haven't even started going through the high-rise complexes. With as many elderly and poor people as there are in New Orleans parish, logic could only be that there's going to be a large number of fatalities."

A Little Dispute

Rove's Voting Registration Disputed

Presidential adviser Karl Rove may live and pay taxes in Washington, but he's welcome to vote back home in Texas anytime he pleases, a spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams said yesterday.

"As far as our office is concerned, we don't see any problem with his registration in Texas because he says he intends to return," spokesman Scott Haywood said. "If he intends to return, he would be fine."

Haywood's interpretation of Texas election law differs a bit from that of Elizabeth Reyes, an attorney in the secretary of state's elections division. Last week, Reyes told The Washington Post that Rove could be accused of voter fraud if he is registered at an address that is not his primary residence. Rove, who spends much of the year in a $1.1 million house in Washington, claims for voting purposes to live in a $25,000 rental cottage he owns in Kerr County, Tex.

Locals say they can't remember a time when Rove actually lived there. No matter, said Haywood. For one thing, Reyes "was not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency." And she was flat wrong, to boot, he said. Under Texas law, a residence is a "fixed place of habitation to which one intends to return after a temporary absence," he said. Doesn't matter if you ever lived there, you just have to intend to live there.

Still, a legal watchdog group yesterday filed a complaint with Williams's office, asking that Rove be prosecuted. "A man who lives in a $1.1 million mansion in Washington does not intend to move into an 814-square-foot cottage that he's rented out since 1997," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Rove lives in Palisades, one of the swankest neighborhoods in DC.

Beyond Hagiography

Alan Dershowitz speaks his mind at "The Huffington Post":

Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist

Alan Dershowitz Mon Sep 5, 1:16 AM ET

My mother always told me that when a person dies, one should not say anything bad about him. My mother was wrong. History requires truth, not puffery or silence, especially about powerful governmental figures. And obituaries are a first draft of history. So here’s the truth about Chief Justice Rehnquist you won’t hear on Fox News or from politicians. Chief Justice William Rehnquist set back liberty, equality, and human rights perhaps more than any American judge of this generation. His rise to power speaks volumes about the current state of American values.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Rehnquist bragged about being first in his class at Stanford Law School. Today Stanford is a great law school with a diverse student body, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it discriminated against Jews and other minorities, both in the admission of students and in the selection of faculty. Justice
Stephen Breyer recalled an earlier period of Stanford’s history: “When my father was at Stanford, he could not join any of the social organizations because he was Jewish, and those organizations, at that time, did not accept Jews.” Rehnquist not only benefited in his class ranking from this discrimination; he was also part of that bigotry. When he was nominated to be an associate justice in 1971, I learned from several sources who had known him as a student that he had outraged Jewish classmates by goose-stepping and heil-Hitlering with brown-shirted friends in front of a dormitory that housed the school’s few Jewish students. He also was infamous for telling racist and anti-Semitic jokes.

As a law clerk, Rehnquist wrote a memorandum for Justice Jackson while the court was considering several school desegregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Education. Rehnquist’s memo, entitled “A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases,” defended the separate-but-equal doctrine embodied in the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Rehnquist concluded the Plessy “was right and should be reaffirmed.” When questioned about the memos by the Senate Judiciary Committee in both 1971 and 1986, Rehnquist blamed his defense of segregation on the dead Justice, stating – under oath – that his memo was meant to reflect the views of Justice Jackson. But Justice Jackson voted in Brown, along with a unanimous Court, to strike down school segregation. According to historian Mark Tushnet, Justice Jackson’s longtime legal secretary called Rehnquist’s Senate testimony an attempt to “smear[] the reputation of a great justice.” Rehnquist later admitted to defending Plessy in arguments with fellow law clerks. He did not acknowledge that he committed perjury in front of the Judiciary Committee to get his job.

The young Rehnquist began his legal career as a Republican functionary by obstructing African-American and Hispanic voting at Phoenix polling locations (“Operation Eagle Eye”). As Richard Cohen of The Washington Post wrote, “[H]e helped challenge the voting qualifications of Arizona blacks and Hispanics. He was entitled to do so. But even if he did not personally harass potential voters, as witnesses allege, he clearly was a brass-knuckle partisan, someone who would deny the ballot to fellow citizens for trivial political reasons -- and who made his selection on the basis of race or ethnicity.” In a word, he started out his political career as a Republican thug.

Rehnquist later bought a home in Vermont with a restrictive covenant that barred sale of the property to ''any member of the Hebrew race.”

Rehnquist’s judicial philosophy was result-oriented, activist, and authoritarian. He sometimes moderated his views for prudential or pragmatic reasons, but his vote could almost always be predicted based on who the parties were, not what the legal issues happened to be. He generally opposed the rights of gays, women, blacks, aliens, and religious minorities. He was a friend of corporations, polluters, right wing Republicans, religious fundamentalists, homophobes, and other bigots.

Rehnquist served on the Supreme Court for thirty-three years and as chief justice for nineteen. Yet no opinion comes to mind which will be remembered as brilliant, innovative, or memorable. He will be remembered not for the quality of his opinions but rather for the outcomes decided by his votes, especially Bush v. Gore, in which he accepted an Equal Protection claim that was totally inconsistent with his prior views on that clause. He will also be remembered as a Chief Justice who fought for the independence and authority of the judiciary. This is his only positive contribution to an otherwise regressive career.

If you only get your news from CNN you won't be hearing any of this. Their reporters make him sound like the second coming of John Paul II.

Miserable Failure

It's Not a 'Blame Game'

Published: September 7, 2005

With the size and difficulty of the task of rescuing and rebuilding New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas still unfolding, it seemed early to talk about investigating how this predicted cataclysm had been allowed to occur and why the government's response was so slow and inept. Until yesterday, that is, when President Bush blithely announced at a photo-op cabinet meeting that he, personally, was going to "find out what went right and what went wrong." We can't imagine a worse idea.

No administration could credibly investigate such an immense failure on its own watch. And we have learned through bitter experience - the Abu Ghraib nightmare is just one example - that when this administration begins an internal investigation, it means a whitewash in which no one important is held accountable and no real change occurs.

Mr. Bush signaled yesterday that we are in for more of the same when he sneered and said, "One of the things that people want us to do here is to play a blame game." This is not a game. It is critical to know what "things went wrong," as Mr. Bush put it. But we also need to know which officials failed - not to humiliate them, but to replace them with competent people.

It's obvious, for instance, that Michael Brown has met the expectations of those who warned that he would be a terrible director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. This is no time to be engaging in a wholesale change of leadership, but in Mr. Brown's case there seems to be precious little leadership to lose. He should be replaced with someone who can do the huge job that remains to be done.

But the questions go way beyond Mr. Brown - starting with why federal officials ignored predictions of a disastrous flood in New Orleans - and the answers can come only from an independent commission. We agree with the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, Senator Hillary Clinton and others who say that such a panel should follow the successful formula of the 9/11 commission: bipartisan leadership and members chosen by the White House and both parties in Congress on the basis of real expertise. It should have subpoena power and a staff expert enough to find answers and offer remedies.

Mrs. Clinton has also proposed pulling FEMA out of the Homeland Security Department and restoring its cabinet-level status. That is premature. The current setup makes sense, at least in theory. The nation should not have to support two different bureaucracies for dealing with sudden disasters.

Before throwing the system into chaos again, an investigation should determine whether the problem lies in the structure or in execution. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal showed how the Bush administration had systematically stripped power and money from FEMA, which had been painfully rebuilt under President Bill Clinton but had long been a target of Republican "small government" ideologues. The Journal said state officials had been warning Washington - as recently as July 27 - that the homeland secretary, Michael Chertoff, was planning further disastrous cuts.

This page supported the creation of Mr. Chertoff's department. But it was poorly run by the first secretary, Tom Ridge, with his maddening color-wheel alerts.

It is clearly in need of a hard look and perhaps serious reorganization. Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, have plans for hearings, which is fine. But they created the department in the first place and may have more of a stake in the outcome than a panel of impartial experts.

The panel should also look at the shortcomings of local officials and governments. It was chilling, to put it mildly, to read Mayor Ray Nagin's comment in The Journal that New Orleans's hurricane plan was "get people to higher ground and have the feds and the state airlift supplies to them."

But disasters like this are not a city or a state issue. They concern the entire nation and demand a national response - certainly a better one than the White House comments that "tremendous progress" had been made in Louisiana. We're used to that dismissive formula when questions are raised about Iraq. Americans deserve better about a disaster of this magnitude in their own country.

Under the Rug

Levee Drowning The Supreme Court—Shameful Again
Reject John Roberts—Another under-experienced, Bush stealth/political appointee

by Rob Kall

http://www.opednews.com

Would you Want a Bush Appointee to Have your Life in His Hands?
Would you want a Bush appointee to have the life of the USA justice system in his hands?

First, let’s stop talking about hurricane Katrina. For New Orleans, it was a level 2 storm that should have been a minor annoyance caused by nature. Talk about the Levee Flood Disaster that was totally due to irresponsible planning, management and cut funding—human reasons that were totally preventable. The management hierarchy was rotten through the chain of command— the head of the army corps of engineers, the FEMA director, homeland security director—all incompetent, inexperienced political appointee losers put in place by the top loser, George Bush.

And now Bush wants to do to the Judicial branch of our nation what he did to the protection branch of our government. He proved in New Orleans that his approach to protecting the people of this nation has been an utter failure—that it is dangerous and deadly to appoint inexperienced political hacks to real jobs with real responsibilities. And now he wants to do the same thing with our Supreme court, appointing John Roberts as head of a court he’s not worked a day on.

There are plenty of good, honest experienced judges with years of experience and records of performance who will make far better judges than Roberts. Bush didn’t pick them because they won’t be as malleable and extreme right wing as his nominee, Roberts. Just as it was wrong to appoint all the inexperienced emergency management people, it is an outrageous shame that Bush is trying to foist this right wing extremist with zero experience on the supreme court as its chief. It is another sign of Bush’s total disrespect for good judgment, good leadership and good husbandry of the nation.

It is crazy that any responsible legislator would allow a newcomer to the supreme court to take over as the Chief Justice. Bush should chose from within. That may mean he picks either Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, two men who are profoundly offensive to any rational American. That would be better than bringing in a total unknown who has never been engaged in the Supreme court as a justice.

If the Democrats were a united party, there wouldn’t be a problem. They would filibuster and demand a will known jurist with enough experience so both sides could be happy supporting him.

Tell your senators to reject Roberts as nominee for Chief justice and as a nominee for the court. Even if they are Republican, let them know you want a jurist who has a solid track record and experience, not another incompetent Bush stealth appointment.

I disagree with Rob Kal on Katrina, it WAS devastating for NOLA. But his wider point, that she blew Roberts off the national screen, is on point. Thirty years of a hard-edged ideologue like Roberts would also have a damage quotient for this country. He's another stealth appointee so it is hard to gauge the damage, but what we know from Bush incompetence so far, I don't think we want to find out.

The Old Boys' Club

Prayers for Roberts
September 2005 Issue, The Progressive

When he went on national TV to announce his nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, President Bush was smirkier than ever. He acted like he’d just dealt himself four aces from the bottom of the deck while no one was looking.

Fox News immediately hailed the choice, with one correspondent quoting a conservative who called Roberts a “hundred percenter”—a staunch rightwinger down the line.

Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Sheldon, Tony Perkins, and Beverly LaHaye all gave Roberts their blessing.

“The nomination of Judge John G. Roberts is an answer to the prayers of millions of Americans,” announced the Reverend Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council.

Robertson also saw the hand of God at work.
“Judge Roberts worked to ensure that George Bush would become President—regardless of what the courts might decide. And now he is being rewarded for that partisan service by being appointed to the nation’s highest court.”U.S. Representative Robert Wexler
“With the likelihood of multiple vacancies on the court, you and I are witnessing the direct result of prayer and intercession,” he said, after Sandra Day O’Connor announced her resignation. “Two years ago, I felt an urgent need for people to unite and pray for change in the Supreme Court. . . . We asked our partners and viewers to pray for God to intervene and restore righteousness and justice in our land. Tens of thousands of people responded to this massive prayer offensive and cried out to the Lord to change the court. And God heard those prayers.”

There is the possibility that the Lord may be hard of hearing and that Roberts will not turn out to be as rightwing as Robertson and his brethren and sistren believe.

But they certainly have grounds for hope.

Practically from the day he left Harvard Law School, Roberts donated almost all of his brain to the Republican Party and to corporate interests.

When he was just twenty-six, he began work as a special assistant to Reagan’s Attorney General William French Smith. A year later, he moved over to the White House as associate counsel to the President, where he served until 1986.

There, at least on the busing issue, Roberts was to the right of even Theodore Olson (who led George W. Bush’s 2000 legal team). In 1984, Olson was assistant attorney general, and Olson did not believe the Reagan Administration should endorse rightwing legislation that would have prohibited judges from ordering busing to desegregate schools, according to an article in The Washington Post. But Roberts argued in favor of the legislation, saying that Congress could prohibit school busing on the claim that it “promotes segregation rather than remedying it, by precipitating white flight.”

This was typical of Roberts at the time. “He was a significant backstage player in the legal policy debates of the early Reagan Administration,” The Washington Post reported in another piece. “Roberts argued for restrictions on the rights of prisoners to litigate their grievances; depicted as ‘judicial activism’ a lower court’s order requiring a sign-language interpreter for a hearing-impaired public school student who had already been given a hearing aid and tutors; and argued for wider latitude for prosecutors and police to question suspects out of the presence of their attorneys.” He also advocated “a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the landmark law that bars sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs,” the Post reported. And he urged the Administration not to “intervene on behalf of female inmates in a sex discrimination case.”

“John Roberts was a key member of a rightwing policy team that waged a comprehensive assault on fundamental constitutional rights.”Ralph Neas, People for the American Way
From 1989 to 1993, he was Bush I’s deputy solicitor general, where he helped formulate the Administration’s legal positions and then advocated them before the Supreme Court. Here he was understudy to none other than Kenneth Starr. And it was in this capacity that Roberts argued that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, among other reactionary positions.
....
Roberts’s pronounced love of the law is providing an additional reed for some to lean on. He vows, anyway, to respect precedent and decide each case on its merits, rather than impose an overarching philosophy.

If he means that, then the hackery of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas may eventually grate on him.

Of course, some people of goodwill held out hopes for Clarence Thomas, and look where that got us.

All in all, it’s hard to believe that Bush would pick someone who would not reliably advance his rightwing agenda. Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, the triumvirate of ideological purity, personally vetted Roberts as far back as May 3, long before O’Connor’s resignation, and they huddled with him on subsequent occasions. They undoubtedly reassured themselves that he was a sturdy warrior in their cause, one who would not tire or stray, as David Souter and Anthony Kennedy and O’Connor herself did.

When it comes to ideology, these guys know what they’re doing. It’s unlikely that Roberts will ever wipe that smirk off the President’s face. .

Preznit Fratboy nominated someone just like himself, just with better grades and diction. Anyone who has studied racism and sexism will recognize the move. The old, white, rich boys club just welcomed another member.

I'm a religious liberal with a degree in theology who practices the ministry of spiritual direction. As ministers, people like Robertson are blatant frauds. "God's Will" is inscrutable. And it is written small, not large and political.

The Upper Class

Bush's about-face on Roberts

9/7/2005
By E.J. DIONNE

Why did President Bush pull such a quick switch on Monday and name Judge John Roberts to be chief justice of the United States? There are several theories, but here's the most sensible: Bush had always planned to make Roberts chief someday.

Recall that before Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement in July, official Washington was expecting Chief Justice William Rehnquist to be the first to leave. The administration's extensive vetting was organized to find a replacement for Rehnquist.

Roberts' combination of a conciliatory personality with firmly conservative convictions made him the perfect choice to lead the judicial revolution Bush would like to unleash. Successful chief justices need to be good politicians, and Roberts' political gifts were much in evidence this summer as he seemed to be charming his way toward relatively easy Senate approval. But Rehnquist's passing and Bush's decision to withdraw Roberts' nomination as associate justice and name him chief creates new political problems.

Until Monday, even Roberts' staunchest critics judged their chances of stopping him for O'Connor's seat as bleak. Discussion among Senate Democrats revolved less around a strategy for blocking Roberts than on tactics that would make the best of his likely confirmation. The debate focused on how many votes Democrats should try to muster against him - to send a message for the big fight that would come over Rehnquist' job.

"Now that he's been nominated for chief justice, he's not a test case anymore," said a Senate Democratic staffer close to his party's discussions. "There's a difference between being one of nine and Number One of nine. And if he's confirmed, he's likely to hold the job for the next generation."

Fully aware that postponing Tuesday hearings on Roberts would give his opponents more time to organize, some Senate Republicans urged against any delay. By mid-day Monday, it became clear that at least some postponement was inevitable. But the administration's allies clearly wanted them as soon as possible. They are now set for Sept. 12.

Democrats, in turn, want more time to make the case that their requests for Roberts' past writings as an executive branch official - documents the administration is holding back - are more reasonable and appropriate than ever, "given the even greater importance of this new position," as Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., put it Monday.

Moreover, now that Bush will be naming not one but two justices, it becomes clear that the argument before the Senate is not primarily about one person and his qualifications, but about the future direction of the judiciary.

By raising the stakes, Bush has given the Democratic opposition an opportunity to show some spine. He has reminded senators that this is a vote not just about a smart, affable lawyer, but also about principles that could steer the Supreme Court for 30 years.

The silver spoon justice for the silver spoon presidency. They are perfect for each other. Neither is a good match for an ordinary working girl like me.

Mug's Game

For Bush, a Deepening Divide
Katrina Crisis Brings No Repeat of 9/11 Bipartisanship

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A19

When terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001, Americans came together in grief and resolve, rallying behind President Bush in an extraordinary show of national unity. But when Hurricane Katrina hit last week, the opposite occurred, with Americans dividing along sharply partisan lines in their judgment of the president's and the federal government's response.

The starkly different verdicts on Bush's stewardship of the two biggest crises of his presidency underscore the deepening polarization of the electorate that has occurred on his watch. This gaping divide has left the president with no reservoir of good will among his political opponents at a critical moment of national need and has touched off a fresh debate about whether he could have done anything to prevent it.

To his critics, Bush is now reaping what he has sown. Their case against him goes as follows: Facing a divided nation, the president has eschewed unity in both his governing strategy and his political blueprint. These opponents argue that he has favored confrontation over conciliation with the Democrats while favoring a set of policies aimed at deepening support among his conservative base at the expense of ideas that might produce bipartisan consensus and broader approval among the voters. His allies and advisers, while acknowledging that polarization has worsened during the past five years, say the opposition party bears the brunt of responsibility. Democrats, by this reckoning, have rebuffed Bush's efforts at bipartisanship, put up a wall to ideas that once enjoyed some support on their side, and, even in the current crisis along the Gulf Coast, are seeking to score political points rather than joining hands with the president to speed the recovery and relief to the victims.

Wherever reality lies between these mutual recriminations, the path from post-9/11 unity to the rancor and finger-pointing in the aftermath of Katrina's fury charts a clear deterioration in political consensus in the United States and a growing willingness to interpret events through a partisan prism. It is a problem that now appears destined to follow Bush through the final years of his presidency -- a clear failure of his 2000 campaign promise to be a "uniter, not a divider."

A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken last Friday illustrates the point vividly. Just 17 percent of Democrats said they approved of the way Bush was handling the Katrina crisis while 74 percent of Republicans said they approved. About two in three Republicans rated the federal government's response as good or excellent, while two in three Democrats rated it not so good or poor.

"Bush is the most partisan president in modern American history," said William Galston, a professor at the University of Maryland and previously a top domestic adviser to former President Bill Clinton. "As a result, voters in both parties are focusing on him, rather than on the specifics of the policies."

In Galston's view, Bush bears principal responsibility for that condition, saying that on three occasions he passed up opportunities to govern from the center and work more constructively with the Democrats and instead chose a path designed to mobilize conservatives. The first came after the disputed election of 2000, in the early days of Bush's new administration. The second came after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Bush's approval rating rose to 90 percent. The third came after the hard-fought and polarizing election last year.

"While White House aides can provide familiar talking points on gestures of cooperation across party lines, the fact of the matter is on all three occasions, the principal thrust of Bush's policies was toward polarization rather than conciliation," Galston said. "We are now living in the shadow of nearly five years in which that has been the dominant political message coming out of the White House."

Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman offered a vigorous rebuttal to that criticism yesterday. "They've got a one-way street of unity," he said. "It's 'Do what we want, or you're not a unifier.' "

Mehlman said Bush has produced an unprecedented record of bipartisan accomplishment, citing the passage of the No Child Left Behind education act, prescription drug benefits for Medicare recipients, the USA Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, which he said was advanced initially by Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and eventually embraced by Bush. (Democrats say Bush embraced the department only when public opinion showed it to be extremely popular.) Mehlman also said Democrats are now attempting to take advantage of the politics of Katrina and pointed specifically at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who yesterday introduced legislation calling for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to be reconstituted as an independent, Cabinet-level agency, rather than a unit in the new Homeland Security Department. "You tell me who's taking what should be a moment of national unity and trying to score politically," he said. William Mayer, a political scientist at Northeastern University, said the public divide over Bush's handling of the natural disaster bears considerable resemblance to divisions over Clinton's handling of the standoff with the Branch Davidian followers of David Koresh in Waco early in his presidency, which ended in a fire that killed more than 80 people. Democrats supported Clinton did the best he could "dealing with a crazy man," Mayer said, while Republicans "said this was a massively bungled affair."

Mayer and Nolan McCarty, a professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton said that while polarization has worsened under Bush, the president bears only some of the responsibility. McCarty said Bush could try to rise above the current criticism but noted that partisans now have jumped in. "It will polarize things worse," he said.

Mark McKinnon, Bush's campaign media adviser, said Bush is still dealing with divisions that came out of the election 2000 but said the current crisis presents an opportunity for the administration "to show leadership and coordination and response and compassion of a nature that could affect the political dynamics of the country."

Showing some competency might matter, but maybe that's just me. I actually think that the man has to show up and make things better. If he can't do that, he's a mug.

The Sound of Surf

The Lure of Coastal Life Outweighs The Risks

By Michael Powell and Michael Grunwald
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A01

BILOXI, Miss. -- The hurricane that flattened parts of this coastal city and drowned New Orleans, that tossed casino boats into apartment buildings and killed perhaps thousands of Americans, was a disaster long ago foretold.

Scientists and environmentalists have cautioned for years that the nation's coastline is dangerously overbuilt. But with Americans migrating in increasing numbers to coastal counties, construction only accelerated, and local officials increasingly relied on technology and luck to forestall catastrophe. As high-rise condominiums and sprawling beach homes have proliferated, warnings have been consistently ignored.

As the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina continues to unfold, this Web log will track the ways that the Washington community is touched by the tragedy.

In Mississippi, 20 glittering casinos sprouted at the water's edge. An Army official tried to impose a moratorium on casino projects along the coast in 1998 but was outmuscled by developers and Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). All those casinos, which employed 16,000 people, now lie wrecked and broken.

The development pressure comes from one immutable fact: Americans love waterfront property. And the federal government has fueled that love through flood insurance that minimizes its risks and by paying for infrastructure such as bridges and roads that makes it more accessible.

In the process, coastal development often degrades the barrier beaches and coastal wetlands that can serve as natural buffers against hurricanes. "You just cannot justify massive building and rebuilding near the most dangerous property in the United States," said Orrin H. Pilkey Jr., a professor emeritus at Duke University and a specialist in coastal ecosystems. "It's a form of societal madness."

In Florida, more than 13 million people live in coastal counties, up from 200,000 a century ago. As a result, all four of last year's Florida hurricanes made the list of America's 10 most damaging storms ever. And federal meteorologist Stanley B. Goldenberg, who flew into the eye of Hurricane Katrina as it made landfall, forecasts a spike in hurricanes that could last a decade or more. If the next great storm rolls into Miami Beach or Charleston, S.C., or North Carolina's Outer Banks on a Labor Day weekend, he said, the impact could be almost as devastating -- albeit without New Orleans-style flooding.

"I don't like what I'm finding, but if the steering wind patterns continue, we're going to have a lot more landfalls and . . . a lot more people affected multiple times," said Goldenberg, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Miami. "I look at the buildings that have gone up, and there are a lot more targets and a lot more arrows."

Scientists and some engineers believe that Americans put too much faith in technological fixes to stave off nature's primal force. For example, the Mississippi River used to bring loads of silt down to the Mississippi Delta, building coastal marshes that helped buffer the Louisiana coast from hurricanes. But as the river was tamed by a series of dikes and dams, cutting off the flow of silt, wetlands began disappearing at the rate of 25 square miles a year -- and New Orleans began to sink even lower.

This is the human cost, made by bad choices, and the hurricane season has only begun.

Monday 8/29: Brown Gives FEMA Workers Two Days to Report

FEMA Chief Waited Until After Storm Hit

By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims.

Before then, FEMA had positioned smaller rescue and communications teams across the Gulf Coast. But officials acknowledged Tuesday the first department-wide appeal for help came only as the storm raged.

Brown's memo to Chertoff described Katrina as "this near catastrophic event" but otherwise lacked any urgent language. The memo politely ended, "Thank you for your consideration in helping us to meet our responsibilities."

The initial responses of the government and Brown came under escalating criticism as the breadth of destruction and death grew. President Bush and Congress on Tuesday pledged separate investigations into the federal response to Katrina. "Governments at all levels failed," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said Brown had positioned front-line rescue teams and Coast Guard helicopters before the storm. Brown's memo on Aug. 29 aimed to assemble the necessary federal work force to support the rescues, establish communications and coordinate with victims and community groups, Knocke said.

Instead of rescuing people or recovering bodies, these employees would focus on helping victims find the help they needed, he said.

"There will be plenty of time to assess what worked and what didn't work," Knocke said. "Clearly there will be time for blame to be assigned and to learn from some of the successful efforts."

Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public."

"FEMA response and recovery operations are a top priority of the department and as we know, one of yours," Brown wrote Chertoff. He proposed sending 1,000 Homeland Security Department employees within 48 hours and 2,000 within seven days.

Knocke said the 48-hour period suggested for the Homeland employees was to ensure they had adequate training. "They were training to help the life-savers," Knocke said.

Employees required a supervisor's approval and at least 24 hours of disaster training in Maryland, Florida or Georgia. "You must be physically able to work in a disaster area without refrigeration for medications and have the ability to work in the outdoors all day," Brown wrote.

The same day Brown wrote Chertoff, Brown also urged local fire and rescue departments outside Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi not to send trucks or emergency workers into disaster areas without an explicit request for help from state or local governments. Brown said it was vital to coordinate fire and rescue efforts.

...

Meanwhile, the airline industry said the government's request for help evacuating storm victims didn't come until late Thursday afternoon. The president of the Air Transport Association, James May, said the Homeland Security Department called then to ask if the group could participate in an airlift for refugees.

Unfuckingbelievable.

Gotta love the part about needing the 48 hours for training: doesn't FEMA, like, have people already trained? If not, what have they been doing with our tax dollars for the past four years?

Not to mention, there's this business about the first 72 hours being the crucial time with respect to disaster relief. 48 hours for 'training' burns up most of that window all by itself.

Dear NOLA

Dr. Gray Updates Hurricane Forecast
Sep 2, 2005, 10:55 AM

SEPTEMBER 2, 2005 -- Long range hurricane forecasting expert Dr. William Gray from Colorado State University has updated his monthly forecasts for the Atlantic basin. The news is not good.

According to Dr. Gray and his team of forecasters, they're anticipating five named storms, four hurricanes, and two major hurricanes in September alone. For October, it's three named storms, two hurricanes, and one major hurricane.

Dr. Gray adds that the total numbers will be higher than anticipated in the full season forecasts issued last December, early April, and early June, and that "we expect by the time the 2005 hurricane season is over, we will witness seasonal tropical cyclone activity at near record levels."

To read the full report, click here (it's very technical, and loaded with some heavy-duty science).

This is the report of Dr. Walter Gray at Colorado State, the premiere hurricane forecaster in the country. As an east coast dweller who has already been through three of these things, this is really bad news. It would take a direct hit up the Chesapeake to get a major hurricane here, but such things are not unknown. I was here for Isabel two years ago. Isabel was not a major hurricane and it still cost the Midatlantic more than $12 billion in reconstruction, economic damage and lost wages.

We've already seen the carnage a major 'cane can do to a big metropolitan area. The east coast has a boatload of those and all of them are at risk this year. This year I'm packing a jump bag and getting ready to clear out if an evacuation is called. In 20 years in DC, I've never felt the need to do that.

If you are similarly situated, keep your gas tank topped up (yeah, I know, not a lot of fun) and a couple of changes of clothes and your dop kit in an overnight case in the trunk. I'll be taking two cats, as well, so I need to buy another cat carrier (the idea of heading for the mountains with two squalling cats in the car doesn't have a lot of appeal, but...) I've got a sleeping bag and pillow in the back seat (you never know where you might have to bunk, it might be on a sofa somewhere) and I'll toss the tent in the trunk tomorrow. I have a Sun Shower (they work pretty well on a sunny day) with a cedar mat to keep my tootsies out of the dirt. Yeah, I'm a camper who uses parks that don't always provide shower facilities. As Rich Erwin noted earlier, it's the end of the camping season right now so most of this stuff is on sale. You can live really comfortably in the out of doors if you know what to look for. Hint: dress for the season and buy the stuff that will allow you to sleep well. A good sleeping bag, whether it is for a tent or a friend's sofa, is an investment. I use and recommend Therm-A-Rest pads. They pack down to nothing and give great support. I have a propane stove (which I used during the last hurricane power outage) and they are cheap insurance. Stock up on propane cylindars. These aren't "costs," they are "investments."

I have a standard Ray-o-Vac battery lantern. If the power is going to be out for a while and you want to read after dark, this is a necessity. It needs a big, honking old 9-Volt battery, but my eyes are too far gone for a candle lantern Get the reflector, too, BTW, a couple of these in the room or tent are pretty cheery. Batteries will keep nicely in the fridge--not the freezer, they will burst there--and you'll want to keep your flashlight batteries serviced, too. You should have a battery radio and/or TV and will need batteries for both of them. I have a battery of spare batteries in the fridge for all of the devices that I will need to stay informed.

Then there is the hurricane pantry. I have three days of food on my shelves for when the stores may be closed. Do you? You can live without lettuce for a few days, but you need water and protein. Is it on your shelves? If it is in your freezer, remember that it goes down within hours of a major power outage. You need food and drink that doesn't need refrigeration. Non-perishables rule. Think canned goods. Rice and beans.

Got all this in hand? Good, you are ready for a Cat 3 or larger hurricane or a devastating winter storm (Dr. Gray says we'll be getting those, too.) Rotate the stocks through your pantry so that you are eating them up and replacing them before they get to their expiry dates. That will encourage you to actually buy the stuff you like, rather than scarfing up what the disaster sites (you know you read them) think you should have.

I think you can weather this disaster. I think you can come out of it and not feel like a Holocaust victim. You may not be round and jolly but you don't have to be skinny and dining on long pig. Preparation IS everthing, and Bushco is missing in action.

Melanie

Bubble Boy

Dealing With Political Disaster

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; 1:21 PM

President Bush somehow missed the significance of what was happening on the Gulf Coast last week as he and his political guru, Karl Rove, flitted between Texas and California and, finally, Washington.

But now, facing what is clearly a full-scale political disaster, Rove and a handful of other masterful political operatives have gone into overdrive. They are back in campaign mode.

This campaign is to salvage Bush's reputation.

Like previous Rove operations, it calls for multiple appearances by the president in controlled environments in which he can appear leader-like. It calls for extensive use of Air Force One and a massive deployment of spinners.

It doesn't necessarily include any change in policy. It certainly doesn't include any admission of error.

It utilizes the classic Rovian tactic of attacking critics rather than defending against their criticism -- and of throwing up chaff to muddle the issue and throw the press off the scent.

It calls for public expressions of outrage over the politicization of the issue and of those who would play the "blame game." While at the same time, it is utterly political in nature and heavily reliant on shifting the blame elsewhere.

But in some ways, this post-Katrina campaign poses Bush's aides with unprecedented challenges.

The problem -- an achingly slow federal response to what has turned out to be one of the greatest natural disasters this country has ever faced -- can be traced at least in part to one of the Bush White House's most defining characteristics: The protective bubble within which the president operates.

Bush's aides intentionally keep him mentally and physically aloof from any ugliness -- political or otherwise. It lets them keep tight control over the presidential imagery and stay on message.

But inside his bubble, Bush first failed to recognize what was becoming clear to almost anyone watching the news: That Americans needed help. And in his two meticulously staged visits to the Gulf Coast on Friday and Monday, it is precisely because Bush was kept so far away from dissension or mess that he appeared so out of touch.

He cracked jokes on Friday, including one about his drinking days in New Orleans, but has yet to confront the true horror of the situation so widely seen on TV. He has yet to acknowledge the disgrace of a major American city being rendered uninhabitable on his watch. He has yet to come face to face with people left to suffer for days in hellish conditions and explain to them why their government failed them. And he has yet to demonstrate the strength that Americans require from their president in a time of crisis.

This crisis finds the president looking impotent at best, incompetent at worst. And there is an element of whining to Bush's refusal to shoulder his responsibility -- especially should the press continue to make it clear how intensely he and his top aides are trying to pass the buck.

The men behind Bush's bubble are clearly hoping that their tried and true methods will serve them well yet again and that over time, Bush's reputation will recover.

But with every body removed from the attics of New Orleans over the coming weeks, America will remember the colossal failure of government to protect its people.

Restore Competence

Why, Oh Why?

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; 12:00 AM

Questions. So many questions.

Why, throughout most of last week, was the most eloquent ambassador, and the only recognizable white face in New Orleans, the great and noted statesman . . . Harry Connick Jr.? The jazz musician appeared on NBC's "Today" show several times, roaming the streets of his home town, ruminating on its history, delivering food to the displaced and bemoaning the hideous lack of response to Hurricane Katrina.

Why did Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and FEMA head Michael Brown appear on television repeatedly patting themselves on the back for the federal government's effort, when it was so clear to the rest of the world that people were suffering and dying in the streets? "People are getting the help they need," Brown said Friday on the "Today" show, even though the newsreel suggested otherwise.

What in the world was President Bush talking about when he praised Brown at a news conference in Mobile, Ala., saying, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job"?

Speaking of Brownie, how did a guy with no notable experience in disaster relief get that job, anyway?

Mr. President, why did you think it was so important to deliver a political speech comparing Iraq to WWII the day after the hurricane?

Anybody seen Dick Cheney?

Why was Condoleezza Rice, the administration's highest ranking black official, grinning and guffawing at the Broadway show "Spamalot" and shopping for expensive shoes at Salvatore Ferragamo on Fifth Avenue days after the hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast and left tens of thousands of poor black folks hungry, desperate and dying?

Dear Federal Officials, what kind of message do you think your response to the hurricane must have sent the terrorists, sitting at home watching CNN?

Local and state officials, you can't escape scrutiny: Why didn't you do a better job preparing for the process of evacuating people, given that this sort of disaster has been predicted for decades, and at least one previous study has shown that as many as a third of the residents of New Orleans would be reluctant to evacuate? Did you do everything in your power to prepare the police department, state law enforcements and other emergency services for this disastrous event?

Wait a minute . . . Democrats, you can't get away scot-free. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid did issue some tough sounding press releases, and Pelosi held a press conference on Friday. But neither exactly played a high profile role earlier in the week. Is that what you call leadership?

Back to Connick for a minute . . . why is it that he had no trouble getting in and out of New Orleans, but the feds couldn't figure out a way to deliver water to people five days after the hurricane?

[Here's what the New Orleans Times-Picayune had to say on that subject in a blistering editorial on Sunday:

"Despite the city's multiple points of entry, our nation's bureaucrats spent days after last week's hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city's stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

"Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

"Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning."]

A NEW PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE... TO EACH OTHER

I'm pleased to welcome Matt Zemek to the ranks of Bump guest bloggers.--Melanie

There are obviously hundreds of lessons to be learned from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Among the biggest is a simple one: all of us as Americans—government officials and journalists, rich and poor, black and white, Christian and atheist—need to care for each other, being equally concerned about each and every life around us.

We haven’t been doing that, but now, there’s a chance to begin a new chapter in our collective national history.

What this hurricane—in all its wrath—must teach us is that we pay a very dear price as a society when we’re not invested in each other’s lives, forming and strengthening the bonds of authentic community each day. You know the final words to the pledge of allegiance, but for four surreal days in New Orleans, that pledge was turned upside-down. While Americans died in the face of an undeniably ineffective relief effort (who’s to blame is a very irrelevant discussion in the bigger realm of things, so let’s not even go there), one could very well have said that America had become “two nations, under water, divisible, with liberty and justice for some.”

Once again, a nation is left in justified outrage, looking on at another event and saying, “this should never happen in America.”

Once again, a nation is left watching a tragedy unfold in which the poorest among us get the worst of it.

Once again, the nation that brought the world the Marshall Plan and the first man on the moon is exposed as incompetent, unprepared, and—this is undeniable—disinterested in the boring but oh-so-necessary elements of good governance and leadership, such as giving long-term attention to the bread-and-butter issues of infrastructure and emergency readiness.

One must ask the most urgent question of the day: why could our federal government—four years after 9/11--get away with neglecting the most necessary elements of fortified, prepared and healthy communities?

The answer is because all of us as Americans have allowed this to happen.

Let’s not shove the Katrina aftermath off the front pages of newspapers anytime soon, allowing even this story to recede from our consciousness due to our increasingly short attention spans. This seminal moment in American history, likely to have at least three times the deaths of 9/11, has exposed and revealed all the sickening realities that—when met by Katrina, the perfect storm—caused extraordinary suffering and showed how far America has fallen since the days when accountable and honorable men such as Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower led our country.

Eisenhower in particular is reflective of a lost American ethos we need to regain. Though a military man, he warned of the emergent military-industrial complex and the enormous dangers it would pose to American society. He once famously said that “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.”

Such a quote reveals the ultimate disgrace and national shame of the Katrina aftermath: that we haven’t taken care of our weakest citizens. In our collective polarization and our pursuit of material wealth, we’ve lost touch with Americans who suffer.

Katrina has exposed the disgusting fact that we, as Americans, have not been there for each other. And just because a disaster exposed New Orleans’ weaknesses doesn’t mean that we in Seattle (where I live) are really any different.

The following four realities revealed by Katrina are now impossible to ignore in American life:

1) Government hasn’t governed for all the people.

2) Politicians haven’t spent time learning about the lives of their poor.

3) Local TV news stations, by choosing to chase ratings points instead of doing the much more necessary work of examining important social issues and vigorously questioning local public officials, have failed to honor their public trust in American cities for a long, long time.

4) We Americans—disinterested in government until a disaster comes; unwilling to pay attention to politics or call out politicians when they dodge our questions; and continuously willing to consume sex, violence, and celebrity gossip from so-called “news” outlets—have helped create a society in which the above three realities persist without resistance.

Government officials. Politicians. TV journalists. Citizens. People of every race, language, and way of life. We all need to be there for each other, and we all need to hold each other accountable. For once.

If Katrina hasn’t taught us that much, our ever-declining society simply won’t recover.

Judge Roberts and the Right to Privacy

I'm pissed and I'm going to work it out here. I'm a blogger. That's what I do.

I am so freakin' tired of the hagiographies of William Rehnquist being crafted in the press this morning. The man didn't like civil rights, women's rights or rights for anybody who wasn't a white male. There isn't anything to sanctify here. He was against Title IX, for God's sake. When I was in high school, women didn't have varsity sports. Title IX passed Congress the year I graduated. I remember sex discrimination in hiring and separate Want Ads for men and women. Sandra Day O'Connor couldn't get a job as a lawyer after she graduated from Stanford Law, and it is beyond me how she could be tearful for this man who thought those days were just fine.

When I came to DC 20 years ago, I worked for the local urban transit administration, a very male workplace. 20 years isn't a long time, but it is a generation in the understanding of how race and gender are treated in this country. Back then, one of the (male) managers could quiz me about the contents of my lingerie drawer in front of my (female) manager, and that wasn't considered out of line. Today, it would be understood as abusive. By law, for Pete's sake.

In 1973, I was a newspaper reporter. When I got a new editor who insisted that I sleep with him if I wanted decent assignments, the only choice I had was to quit. The word "choice" is really loaded for me because it is about a whole lot more things than abortion. It means being able to act like a grown-up and take a place in the world like a grown-up. White males aren't the only grown-ups any more. The bad old days infantalized both women and minorities. Jim Crow was about a lot of things, but disenfranchisement was about infantalization. The way that George W. Bush pats African Americans on the head at his "press availabilities" makes me totally nuts. That's treating adult humans like children or pets. It isn't appropriate.

I remember being treated that way. William Rehnquist thought that changing laws in order to make that kind of treatment illegal was wrong. I have a problem with that. I have a problem with people who think that the "good old days" were so good. That's not how I remember them.

In 1972, my family refused to pay for college for me because I am female and would just get married and have kids. An education would be a waste. I worked three jobs and have a couple of Master's, with honors. Back in the day, what my parents decided was common. I have plenty of old friends who went through the same thing. That's is what William Rehnquist represents to me.

50 years ago, a young black boy named Emmitt Till was murdered for whistling at a white woman. His killers got a slap on the wrist. 50 years later, this aging baby boomer can go out for dinner with her friend Terrill at the best restaurant in DC. We've come a ways, but not thanks to William Rehnquist.

Wonder why I oppose John Roberts? Now you know. I want to live in a world where I can go to dinner with whomever I choose, work in whatever profession I choose and decide when and where I'm going to have a family and with whom. It seems to me that those are the basic "rights to privacy" which John Roberts can't find in the Constitution. If those rights aren't enshrined in law, they don't exist. Period.

When the Paint Comes Off

Read this as a cautionary tale for avian flu. Remember that "civilization" is a really thin veneer.

Official: We're back in the Stone Age
City dwellers become hunters and gatherers

Tuesday, September 6, 2005 Posted: 0918 GMT (1718 HKT)

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- The 21st century was swept away here. The winds and the floods and the disasters that followed took it.

Some strange, more primitive time took its place, amid the useless computers and cars of the modern world. Those stranded were left behind to forage for food and water, share what little they have with neighbors, and find somewhere safe before night falls.

"Say goodbye to the Jetsons," Aaron Broussard, president of next-door Jefferson Parish, told residents on the all-night radio station and news lifeline. "We're back to the Flintstones."

Life is hand-to-mouth, if it continues at all. On Rampart Street on the edge of the French Quarter, a wooden handcart became a funeral bier. An elderly man's dead body was left atop it, wrapped in a shroud made from a child's bedsheet and tied with twine.

Still, many survive, emerging from their homes determined to find ways to stay alive. A shopping cart is a wonderful tool -- mobile, lightweight, the basket high enough to stay above the foul-smelling puddles. A woman used one to move her family's belongings to a ramshackle sidewalk camp. Then her children turned it into a jungle gym.

On the edge of the very poor Ninth Ward along the Intracoastal Waterway, a man and women wade stomach-deep, pushing a rowboat to a higher, drier stretch of grass. They scavenge for whatever might be useful -- a bucket that won't leak, a solid piece of wood, tools.

A block or two away, where the water drops to knee-deep, to puddles, and then to dry land, the scene recalls a movie set of a war zone. Abandoned buses line a larger avenue, one every few blocks. A building burned to the ground smolders. A charred car, its front doors gone, sits in an intersection.

"We've all got guns," said Katha Fields, who lives down the street. Weeks ago, when this city was a place of tourists and jazz and jambalaya, she was a tour guide. Now, she and her neighbors gather at dusk, weapons at hand, and keep watch.

Right now, it is just the Gulf Coast living like this. In a global pandemic, all bets are off.

The Truth

The reporters at the New Orleans Times-Picayune are my heros, and they are the best webwriters around, telling the hardest story to report in my lifetime.

Mayor says Katrina may have claimed more than 10,000 lives
Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center

By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer

Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.

"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.

"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.
"There's an old woman," he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. "It's not on, but at least you can shut the door," said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson.

The scene of rotting bodies inside the Convention Center reflected those in thousands of businesses, schools, homes and shelters across the metropolitan area. The official death count from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana was 71 as of Monday evening, but that included only those bodies that had been brought to a make-shift morgue in St. Gabriel.

Nearly a full week after Hurricane Katrina, a rescue force the size of an invading army had not yet begun the task of retrieving the bodies Sunday. What's more, officials appeared to have no plan.

Daniel Martinez, a spokesman for FEMA working on Interstate 10 in eastern New Orleans, said plans for body recovery "are not being released yet."

Dozens of rescue workers questioned Monday said they knew of no protocol or collection points for bodies; none said they had retrieved even one of the many corpses seen floating in neighborhoods around the city as they searched for survivors.

Scores of rescue workers this week repeated the same mantra, over and over: We can't worry about the dead; we're still trying to save the living.

But as rescue teams across the city said they had checked nearly every house for survivors, the enormity of the death that lay in Hurricane Katrina's wake came into sharp focus even as the plans for taking care of the dead remained murky.

Mayor Ray Nagin, addressing the potential body count for the storm for the first time, said the storm may have claimed more than 10,000 lives.

In a news conference Monday morning, Deputy Chief Warren Riley said his department was "not responsible for recovery."

"We don't have a body count, but I can tell you it's growing. It's growing," he said.

As the rescue missions covered more and more ground but yielded fewer survivors, New Orleans Police Deputy Chief Steve Nicholas said that the time has come to start dealing with the dead.

"I know we're still rescuing people, but I think it's time we start pulling out the bodies," he said.

The highest concentration of casualties from Hurricane Katrina likely will come in the Lower 9th Ward, St. Bernard Parish, areas first inundated on Aug. 29 with floodwaters that engulfed second story homes in minutes. New Orleans also will likely see mass casualties, New Orleans Police Capt. Timothy Bayard said.

"We're going see a lot more bodies out of New Orleans East than we anticipated," he said.

In just one subdivision, Sherwood Forest, survivors who showed up to the Convention Center on Monday said police told them roughly 90 people in the subdivision had died.

In St. Bernard, 22 bodies were found lashed together. Officials surmised the drowning victims had tried to stay together to keep themselves from being washed away in the storm.

Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu said "more than a thousand" people had died in St. Bernard. "When the death toll comes out, it's going to be a jolt for everybody," he said. "I'll be surprised if the casualties in St. Bernard are less than a thousand."

As a reporter and editor, I respect these people on the ground. NOLA is doing the best job in the country under the worst circumstances. The best way you can reward their work is to read them. They aren't going to let FEMA hide their fuck-ups. You'll get the truth from NOLA.

Scenes We Don't Want to See

Del. Air Guard nurses witness ‘chaos’
With injured patients all over facility, group gives needed help to relief effort
BY MIKE BILLINGTON / The News Journal
09/06/2005

NEW ORLEANS — She was old. Her dark hair was so encrusted with dirt that it stood at odd angles as paramedics carried her on a stretcher from a Blackhawk helicopter to an area beneath Terminal D at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

The paramedics reached the maintenance area turned triage center and lowered the stretcher onto a baggage carrier that was doubling as a hospital gurney.

Maj. Terry Thomas leaned down and asked the woman a few questions.

“We’re going to take care of you,” said Thomas, a Delaware Air National Guard flight nurse. “We’re going to take you upstairs and then we’re going to get you to a hospital.”

The old woman turned her head slightly, her dark brown eyes searching the major’s face until she saw the truth in it.

She smiled, reached out a weathered brown hand and touched Thomas lightly on the forearm.

“Bless you,” she said, her voice hoarse from a lack of food and water.

Thomas and nine other Delaware Air National Guard flight nurses flew into the city Saturday night. When they arrived, they found more than 200 patients lying on stretchers, sitting in wheelchairs or just hunkering down on the concrete in the maintenance area.

Some hadn’t moved from that spot in three days. One had been there four days.

“When they got here I said ‘Thank God y’all came,’ ” said Gary Simpson, a New Orleans firefighter and paramedic. “I was trying to do triage here by myself and so many people kept coming in I couldn’t keep up.”

Hey, Yanks, I bettcha didn't know that this is a third world country?

The Truth

Now that we are a week into the continuing Katrina fuck-up, I found it instructive and frightening to revisit Declan Butler's Sally O'Reilly's Weblog at Nature from last May. I'm not trying to scare you, but an informed and prepared community is one that survives.

I heard an NPR reporter inteview the congressman from the coastal Mississippi district on my drive to the grocery last evening. He wants to get his district's FEMA guy fired for making bad and expensive decisions. I'll post the audio link when NPR puts it up. It was a remarkable interview.

It is here. Needs Real Player or WMP.

The cable channels have been telling us that the loss of life in Katrina makes it the most deadly natural disaster in US history. Not true. 675,000 Yanks lost their lives in the Great Flu pandemic of 1917-19.

The Dead

Along Gulf, Aiding the Living and Counting the Dead
In New Orleans, Crews Begin to Pump Out Water

By Timothy Dwyer and Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 6, 2005; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 5 -- Federal officials opened a vast morgue to collect the dead and health officials scrambled to create a health care network to help the living, while states across the country struggled to find housing and other provisions for the more than 1 million people driven from their homes by Hurricane Katrina.

Although the storm's announced death toll was just over 200 on Monday, officials began to brace themselves and the public for a body count that could reach well into the thousands.

Hurricane Katrina brought unprecedented destruction to the Gulf Coast. View the Post's multimedia coverage of the disaster and its impact upon countless residents of seven states. (David J. Phillip - AP)

Meanwhile, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it had closed gaps in levees damaged by the hurricane and had begun pumping water out of the city and into Lake Ponchartrain. The flood in the swamped Ninth Ward had dropped by a foot, and downtown streets were wet instead of inundated.

The vast scope of the calamity triggered by the storm was still emerging. officials estimated that more than 1 million people -- many of whom fled with only the clothes on their back and a few prized possessions stuffed in a bag -- have been forced from their homes, most likely for many months.

Amid mounting recriminations about the slow pace of the government response to the calamity unleashed by last week's storm, President Bush visited the stricken area for the second time in four days, and his administration appointed a federal official to assume control of recovery efforts in storm-ravaged New Orleans.

Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff tapped Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen to coordinate the government's relief efforts in the city. Allen will report to beleaguered FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, who will keep responsibility for the rest of the Katrina-affected Gulf Coast region.

Bush also declared a state of emergency in eight states -- as far away as Utah and West Virginia -- bringing to 13 the number eligible for special federal aid as a result of the hurricane.

Federal agents, troops and law enforcement officers from around the country continued to pour into New Orleans, and police officials expressed confidence the city was mostly safe from the marauding gangs that had terrorized citizens in the storm's chaotic aftermath.

The rapidly growing scale of the effort was evident in the official statistics of federal personnel involved as of midday Monday: 38,000 National Guardsmen, 6,000 FEMA responders and 4,000 from the U.S. Coast Guard, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship, pulled into New Orleans port Monday and will assist in aid efforts.

Across the state, doctors and nurses worked feverishly to cobble together a new health care network, transforming abandoned stores, basketball arenas and other spaces into hospitals to treat the hurricane's victims.

The relief effort even grew to include counterfeit clothes, 100,000 items of which were taken from U.S. Customs Service storehouses and distributed to evacuees in Houston's Astrodome. Two cruise ships anchored in Galveston, Tex., were to begin taking on evacuees as well -- as many as 2,600 each.

The numbers will be horrifying. 10-20,000.

Trapped

Double Trap for Foreign Workers

By IAN URBINA
Published: September 6, 2005

BILOXI, Miss., Sept. 5 - Like so many other people here, Pedro, a landscaper from Chiapas, Mexico, is desperately trying to get out of Biloxi. He wants to take his wife, Anna, who is eight months pregnant, someplace cleaner and safer, wherever that might be.

But aside from being low on gas like everyone else, Pedro, who would not give his last name because he is undocumented, is nervous about traveling in a city swarming with police officers and National Guard troops.

Bran Dize, a prep cook from Spanish Town, Jamaica, near Kingston, worries that Hurricane Katrina may suddenly have made him an illegal immigrant because, he said, his guest worker visa requires him to work at a casino - the Beau Rivage - that, for all practical purposes, no longer exists.

Hurricane Katrina has left its victims feeling vulnerable and uncertain, but for many noncitizens trapped here, the anxiety is especially acute because they worry that they will jeopardize their legal status if they try to leave.

There are worries, too, about those who may not have survived the storm. The Mexican government has opened two mobile consulates in the affected areas, one in Mobile, Ala., and the other in Baton Rouge, La., to begin looking for tens of thousands of their citizens reported missing. The authorities in Mexico estimated that 145,000 Mexicans live in the area. At a tense meeting on Friday with immigration officials from the Jamaican government, a group of about 40 Jamaican guest workers from the Grand Casino, the Beau Rivage and the Casino Magic fired a battery of tough questions.

"Will we get paid for the remaining three months left in our contracts?" one woman asked from the back of the crowd gathered at the Fairview apartments here. "We don't have plane tickets back to Jamaica," another said. "Who will pay for these?"

Solid answers were in short supply. "I'm looking into this right now, but you have to be patient," said Barbara Dacosia, who oversees the 950 or so Jamaicans who work in casinos along the Gulf Coast in a nine-month guest worker program. "We're going to do some practical things, and we're going to do some tropical things, and that means we're going to pray."

Much like these immigrants, the city of Biloxi, defined over the past century by its transient culture of summer vacationers, sailors and gamblers, is at a standstill. Boats have been washed ashore. The number of visitors has dropped to zero from 10 million a year. The floating casinos have sunk. And movement is difficult.

"We tried to get gas, but when we got to the counter with our container, the man waved his hand and said no," Pedro, the Mexican landscaper, said in Spanish. "We couldn't say anything because we thought he might get mad and call the police."

José, also a Chiapas native who did not want to give his last name because he is undocumented, said that the only people he knew outside of Biloxi lived in Denver. But aside from having less than $20 left, he said he was also unsure whether he could make it that far without getting caught by the immigration authorities.

Just Another Roll of the Dice

Gambling's Number Comes Up in Mississippi

By Jerry Hirsch
LA Times
9/5/05

Just a week ago the Grand Casino Biloxi gambling barge floated gently on the Gulf of Mexico shoreline. Now it stretches awkwardly across the lanes of U.S. Highway 90 in Mississippi, ripped from its moorings by the storm surge that followed Hurricane Katrina.

The 106,300-square-foot structure — about the size of a Target department store — is a total loss, along with its 2,800 slot machines and 89 roulette, craps and blackjack tables.

"They will have to break it up and cart it away in dump trucks to get the highway open," said Larry Gregory, executive director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission.

When that happens, workers will haul off a large piece of an industry that has helped revive this corner of one of the poorest states in the nation. As the gaming companies search for their employees, and make sure they have paychecks and medical insurance that will work in neighboring states, no one is predicting how long it will take for the industry to come back.

Until Katrina swept through Hancock, Harrison and Jackson counties, visitors to the state's Gulf Coast left more than $1.2 billion annually in the coffers of the 13 casinos that in little more than a decade have transformed a once-sleepy backwater into a thriving tourist destination.

"The Mississippi Gulf Coast had almost no economy before the casinos came," Gregory said.

In the 13 years since the first casino opened, the state's coast has grabbed a 4% share of the nation's gaming market, not including Indian gaming establishments, helping to make Mississippi the nation's third-biggest casino state, after Nevada and New Jersey.

Other measures also demonstrate the economic improvements the industry has wrought.

Thanks to casino jobs and tourism employment, the region's jobless rate last year averaged 4.2%, at least a full percentage point below the averages for Mississippi and the nation.

The median per capita income of $24,811 by the Gulf Coast's 370,000 residents is 4.4% above the state figure, according to the Harrison County Economic Development Commission, though it's still about $6,000 below the national median.

The coast's casinos pumped $49 million in tax revenue into the region's local governments in fiscal 2005 and $99 million into state coffers, the gaming commission said. The figures don't include the millions of additional dollars collected by the state and local governments in the form of lodging and sales taxes generated by visitors to the area.

"This money was really important to Mississippi, which for decades has suffered from an inability to collect tax revenues," said John Gnuschke, director of business and economic research at the University of Memphis.

"This will be the No. 1 issue facing the legislature," Gregory said.

The #1 issue facing the legislature for Mississippi when they return. This is it for the poorest state in the Union that has even poorer than many 3rd World nations. Unbelievable. Naturally, they don't have anything better to do like say...

* Restructure the most regressive tax system in the nation so there is more money coming into the state government to rebuild

* Focus on rebuilding homes for peope to have a place to live in their communities

* Invest in the statewide infrastructure so they are better prepared for the next hurricane that hits the Gulf

Instead, they are going to protect the gamblers. Figures. I hope they roll a 7 this time, because their citizens are stuck on snake eyes again. I have heard about a 12 step program dealing with this....

Still Leaving People Behind since 2002

One of my favorite posters over at Kos is Teacherken. His posts are funny and always insightful. Today, he hit the nail on the head.

As many of you know, I'm a teacher. One of the myriad of questions that my wife and I have had through out this disaster is what happens with the kids? I can tell you that registration at my school is no picnic. We are a week and a half into the school year and the master schedule is hardly set. I doubt that I'm going to have a "stable" roster for my classes until the 1st day of Fall, no matter what line of bull Guidance is spinning this week.

So what happens to all of those kids that don't have a home? Any logical and, dare say I, compassionate person would say that these people have been through an incredible disaster and probably aren't too focused right now on the 3 R's. Then we have the Bush Administration.

As teacherken points out here apparently Sec. Spellings doesn't think these kids should be exempt from NCLB. Apparently, they will do just fine and HAVE to be tested.

I'm glad to know the sky is purple in her world. Back in reality, how the #@$^&! does she suggest we do this? In North Carolina, we do our state testing by measuring the expected growth of a student from one year to the next. How can we do that on someone from Sildel when their records are still under 4 feet of water?? More importantly, what kind of pathetic excuse for a human being would I be to expect these kids to do as well as their peers? Sure, the gifted kids probably will but what about everyone else?

Or are they like the citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast that these people don't care about once the cameras are turned off? Remind me again where Social Darwinism is found in the Bible!

Human Cost

Official Death Toll Starts to Mount
# Thousands of Bodies Are Expected in a Recovery Process That May Last Months

By Scott Gold, Richard A. Serrano and Peter H. King, Times Staff Writers

NEW ORLEANS — The nation's senior health official bluntly predicted Sunday that Hurricane Katrina's death toll would rise into the thousands as Louisiana medical authorities tallied the first sobering evidence — 59 dead in makeshift morgues and another 100 corpses lined on docks east of the flood-swept city.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt became the first senior Bush administration official to confirm publicly that arriving teams of medical examiners expected to spend months collecting bodies.

Leavitt said it was "evident" that the storm killed thousands.

As a team of senior administration officials toured the battered Gulf Coast in advance of President Bush's return to the region today, the federal government came under renewed criticism. Democrats and agitated Louisiana officials said the government had failed to prepare for the disaster and did not provide immediate help to tens of thousands of victims.

"We have been abandoned by our own country," said Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish in Louisiana and a Democrat. He broke down on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday recounting the drowning death of the mother of one of his aides.

Trying to deflect the criticism by insisting that they were too caught up in the unfolding crisis to respond, federal officials tightened their grip on the movements and mission of National Guard and active-duty troops along the Gulf Coast. The force was expected to total more than 16,000 troops by today.

Bush dispatched several Cabinet officials to the region to help assess the damage and to provide assistance, including Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"Homeland Security has the baton," Rumsfeld said, referring to Chertoff's role in coordinating troops for the relief effort.

While active-duty troops concentrate on relief operations, National Guard troops have moved to assume control of security in New Orleans, replacing exhausted police.

Watch the anger scale up as the body counts come out.

Site News

Bumpers,

With now 2 vacancies on the SCOTUS, I'm going to have to devote more time to Judging the Future. This is occuring while we are living through the sequelae of Katrina, looking forward to avian flu and so forth. The body counts for Katrina will be leaking out soon and they are going to be horrifying. These are going to be major political and societal shifts. There will be a lot of important (and scary) news. I need help here at Bump. Guest posters, can you step up and handle some of the load? Bumpers, would a few more of you like to be front pagers? Email me with a writing sample.

Digital Divide

And speaking of Antonia Zerbisias, her Star column today is directly on point.

New media filling networks' void on Katrina

ANTONIA ZERBISIAS

The major networks have been all but irrelevant in this disaster.

And they wonder why their Nielsen numbers are sinking?

Last week, cable news audiences broke even Iraq war records. In prime time on Thursday, a total average minute audience of 10 million aged 25-54 was glued to Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

But the big news in hurricane news was — and will continue to be — online. Some lesser news websites enjoyed triple digit growth, although for the happiest of reasons.

According to Nielsen/Net ratings, the biggest gainer over Aug. 22-29, at 170 per cent, was Advance Internet, home to NOLA.com where you'll find New Orleans' beleaguered Times-Picayune. Its Web site normally draws about 516,000 unique views. But, last Monday, that was up to 1.4 million. By today, it probably is double that.

The most popular news sites, CNN, MSNBC, AOL News and Fox News also saw their hits jump by millions, but the percentage increases, while robust, were obviously smaller, ranging from 44 to 105 per cent.

And you can bet that alternative news sites and the blogosphere saw their hit meters spin out, thanks to chatter about how the Bush administration savaged government spending to the New Orleans U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, the organization charged with keeping the city above water.

What really made waves in the cybersphere last week was the online publication of the Times-Picayune. It put entire pages up on the Web because it couldn't get them out into the streets. On Tuesday, it had to evacuate its building, forcing its reporters to file electronically from wherever they could. Nothing stopped the flow of news.

Less noted was how two New Orleans TV stations, critical sources of local information, could not get on the air, but did manage to webcast reports. Both WNOL Channel 38, a WB affiliate, and WGNO Channel 26, an ABC affiliate, were loading both video and text updates.

The Internet not only kept citizens in touch with news and views but it also allowed them, as we saw during the London bombings in July, to contribute, with words and pictures. By mid-week, CNN received more than 3,000 files with hundreds of images and video.

As for the viewer email, judging by the reaction of Jack Cafferty, the guy charged with reading it on CNN, it came as an e-valanche of rage directed at the Bush administration.

That rage, all over cable news channels and blogosphere, could turn the tide against the administration in a way the war in Iraq never could.

The sad thing is, the people who really could have used this valuable information were the very same we saw over and over again in those gut-wrenching images from the Superdome and the sodden streets.

They're the poor, without computers, without wireless, even without cable.

They're on the wrong side of the digital divide — and there they will likely stay.

Indeed, media companies such as Verizon, Qwest, Comcast, Bell South, Time Warner and SBC Communications have priced broadband access so it's unaffordable to even middle-income Americans.

Which is why, according to a study by Freepress.net, the richest country in the world ranks only 13th in the world for broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. (Canada is fifth.)

And so, the people that we now think of as Katrina's "refugees'' were also those that most relied on the output of the major broadcast networks for information, well before their homes were washed out. That's because all they needed to receive their signals is a set and a working electrical outlet.

But, even if they had these very basic things, they would have learned nothing — at least nothing that would have helped them avoid or avert this cataclysmic event.

My hit count more than doubled.

Other News

This is completely off the screens of the US media, so this may be the first you are hearing about it, Yanks, unless you regularly read the Canadian papers, as I do. The Toronto Star leans left, but this editorial seems to represent the consensus Canadian position. Canada is the US's principal trading partner, but you sure don't see much coverage in the US media which recognizes that.

Lumber, oil and taxes

What a difference a week can make.

The damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina on oil production in the Gulf Coast region of the United States has overtaken all media commentary on another big economic story — the threat of a full-blown Canada-U.S. trade war.

That confrontation stems from the Bush administration's decision simply to ignore the most important ruling yet taken by an impartial, bi-national dispute settlement panel under the North American Free Trade Agreement.

That order required the Americans to lift their tariff on Canadian softwood and give back the $5 billion collected so far.

In its impact, however, the lumber rift can hardly compare to the damage that Hurricane Katrina has done to U.S. oil production.

As Bart Melek, a senior economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns, put it, "There is certainly a potential crisis in the making. To get some idea of what was lost, you'd have to find a new Canada, a new Mexico or a new Saudi Arabia to replace this."

With that in mind, the recent suggestion by New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton that Ottawa respond to U.S. intransigence on lumber by slapping a hefty export tax on Canada's oil sales to the U.S. sounds almost cold-blooded today.

We cannot imagine that any Canadian, including Layton, would be so callous as to want to worsen the impacts of the Gulf Coast disaster.

That said, Prime Minister Paul Martin might want to point out to U.S. President George W. Bush that Layton's proposal for oil is identical to the Americans' proposal for "solving" the lumber dispute.

When U.S. officials say they want us to negotiate a solution to the lumber imbroglio, what they mean is they want us to agree to impose an export tax on our softwood lumber sales to the United States.

There is no question that the Americans would see a Canadian export tax on oil as a violation of the free trade agreement.

But that is exactly what the imposition of an export tax on Canadian lumber would be.

Read The Star if for no other reason than to take in Antonia Zerbisias's blog. She's the best media critic in North America.

Looking At Ourselves

Aftermath of Katrina
Receding floodwaters expose the dark side of America - but will anything change?

Jonathan Freedland sees a country waking up to injustice and high-level incompetence

Monday September 5, 2005
The Guardian

Yesterday the New York Times' resident conservative columnist David Brooks wondered if there could now be a "progressive resurgence". There is a precedent. After an earlier Louisiana disaster, the floods of 1927, there was public outrage that not a single federal dollar had gone to feed or shelter the victims: the army had even demanded reimbursement from the Red Cross for the use of its tents. From now on, the public resolved, the federal government would have to protect the vulnerable. That shift paved the way for the activism of FDR and all that followed. Nearly 80 years on, history might be about to repeat itself.

Finally, America will have to get over the shock of seeing itself in a new, unflattering light. It is not just the lawlessness, violence and gun culture that has been on show in New Orleans. It is also that America likes to think of itself as the "indispensable nation", the strongest, richest, most capable country on the face of the earth.

That belief had already taken a few blows. The vulnerability exposed on 9/11 was one. The struggle in Iraq - where America has become a Gulliver, tied down - was another. But now the giant has been hit again, its weak spot exposed. When corpses float in the streets for five days, the indispensable nation looks like a society that cannot take care of its own. When Sri Lanka offers to send emergency aid, the humiliation is complete.

That could lead to a shift in priorities, a sense that too many energies were diverted to Iraq and Afghanistan and away from the home front. It could even see the US retreating from the world and hunkering down.

But don't count on it. At the end of the 1970s, American confidence was also shaken - by defeat in Vietnam, by the serial failure (and worse) of government institutions. What followed, after the interval of the Carter presidency, was a period of gung-ho bullishness that became the Reagan era. It may look battered - but only a fool would count America out.

Slime and Defend

Josh Marshall:

As noted, the Washington Post got burned today by a "senior Bush official" who told them that Gov. Blanco of Louisiana had never declared a state of emergency in the site -- a claim the Post printed as fact. Yet the claim was demonstrably false and by late afternoon the Post had been compelled to print a correction.

This week's Newsweek contains the same false claim -- and though their recital of the anecdote is unsourced, common sense suggests that someone or some operation fed them both the same line, which neither organization checked out before running.

Monday's Times, not surprisingly, confirms that the White House damage control operation is being run by Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett.

Add it up.

And who will report this out?

Judging the Future

Bush Nominates Roberts to Be Chief Justice of Supreme Court

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 5, 2005

Filed at 8:08 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Monday nominated John Roberts to succeed William H. Rehnquist as chief justice, and called on the Senate to confirm him before the Surpeme Court opens its fall term on Oct. 3.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist's tenure was not only one of the longest, but also one of the most consequential.

Roberts, who once clerked for Rehnquist, said he would be honored, ''to succeed a man I deeply respect and admire.''

Video here. Needs Real Player.

Compendium of Failure

Killed by Contempt

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 5, 2005

Each day since Katrina brings more evidence of the lethal ineptitude of federal officials. I'm not letting state and local officials off the hook, but federal officials had access to resources that could have made all the difference, but were never mobilized.

Here's one of many examples: The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients.

Experts say that the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the crucial window during which prompt action can save many lives. Yet action after Katrina was anything but prompt. Newsweek reports that a "strange paralysis" set in among Bush administration officials, who debated lines of authority while thousands died.

What caused that paralysis? President Bush certainly failed his test. After 9/11, all the country really needed from him was a speech. This time it needed action - and he didn't deliver.

But the federal government's lethal ineptitude wasn't just a consequence of Mr. Bush's personal inadequacy; it was a consequence of ideological hostility to the very idea of using government to serve the public good. For 25 years the right has been denigrating the public sector, telling us that government is always the problem, not the solution. Why should we be surprised that when we needed a government solution, it wasn't forthcoming?

Does anyone remember the fight over federalizing airport security? Even after 9/11, the administration and conservative members of Congress tried to keep airport security in the hands of private companies. They were more worried about adding federal employees than about closing a deadly hole in national security.

Of course, the attempt to keep airport security private wasn't just about philosophy; it was also an attempt to protect private interests. But that's not really a contradiction. Ideological cynicism about government easily morphs into a readiness to treat government spending as a way to reward your friends. After all, if you don't believe government can do any good, why not?

Which brings us to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In my last column, I asked whether the Bush administration had destroyed FEMA's effectiveness. Now we know the answer.

Several recent news analyses on FEMA's sorry state have attributed the agency's decline to its inclusion in the Department of Homeland Security, whose prime concern is terrorism, not natural disasters. But that supposed change in focus misses a crucial part of the story.

For one thing, the undermining of FEMA began as soon as President Bush took office. Instead of choosing a professional with expertise in responses to disaster to head the agency, Mr. Bush appointed Joseph Allbaugh, a close political confidant. Mr. Allbaugh quickly began trying to scale back some of FEMA's preparedness programs.

You might have expected the administration to reconsider its hostility to emergency preparedness after 9/11 - after all, emergency management is as important in the aftermath of a terrorist attack as it is following a natural disaster. As many people have noticed, the failed response to Katrina shows that we are less ready to cope with a terrorist attack today than we were four years ago.

But the downgrading of FEMA continued, with the appointment of Michael Brown as Mr. Allbaugh's successor.

Mr. Brown had no obvious qualifications, other than having been Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate. But Mr. Brown was made deputy director of FEMA; The Boston Herald reports that he was forced out of his previous job, overseeing horse shows. And when Mr. Allbaugh left, Mr. Brown became the agency's director. The raw cronyism of that appointment showed the contempt the administration felt for the agency; one can only imagine the effects on staff morale.

A Failure of Leadership

By BOB HERBERT
Published: September 5, 2005

"Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead"

Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president's failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.

The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of American citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see.

Hospitals with deathly ill patients were left without power, with ventilators that didn't work, with floodwaters rising on the lower floors and with corpses rotting in the corridors and stairwells. People unable to breathe on their own, or with cancer or heart disease or kidney failure, slipped into comas and sank into their final sleep in front of helpless doctors and relatives. These were Americans in desperate trouble.

The president didn't seem to notice.

Death and the stink of decay were all over the city. Corpses were propped up in wheelchairs and on lawn furniture, or left to decompose on sunbaked sidewalks. Some floated by in water fouled by human feces.

Degenerates roamed the city, shooting at rescue workers, beating and robbing distraught residents and tourists, raping women and girls. The president of the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world didn't seem to notice.

Viewers could watch diabetics go into insulin shock on national television, and you could see babies with the pale, vacant look of hunger that we're more used to seeing in dispatches from the third world. You could see their mothers, dirty and hungry themselves, weeping.

Old, critically ill people were left to soil themselves and in some cases die like stray animals on the floor of an airport triage center. For days the president of the United States didn't seem to notice.

He would have noticed if the majority of these stricken folks had been white and prosperous. But they weren't. Most were black and poor, and thus, to the George W. Bush administration, still invisible.

After days of withering criticism from white and black Americans, from conservatives as well as liberals, from Republicans and Democrats, the president finally felt compelled to act, however feebly. (The chorus of criticism from nearly all quarters demanding that the president do something tells me that the nation as a whole is so much better than this administration.)
.....
Like a boy being prepped for a second crack at a failed exam, Mr. Bush has been meeting with his handlers to see what steps can be taken to minimize the political fallout from this latest demonstration of his ineptitude. But this is not about politics. It's about competence. And when the president is so obviously clueless about matters so obviously important, it means that the rest of us, like the people left stranded in New Orleans, are in deep, deep trouble.

FEMA Fell Down

Why FEMA Was Missing in Action
# Most of the agency's preparedness budget and focus are related to terrorism, not disasters.

By Peter G. Gosselin and Alan C. Miller, Times Staff Writers

The Federal Emergency Management Agency once speedily delivered food, water, shelter and medical care to disaster areas, and paid to quickly rebuild damaged roads and schools and get businesses and people back on their feet. Like a commercial insurance firm setting safety standards to prevent future problems, it also underwrote efforts to get cities and states to reduce risks ahead of time and plan for what they would do if calamity struck.

But in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, FEMA lost its Cabinet-level status as it was folded into the giant new Department of Homeland Security. And in recent years it has suffered budget cuts, the elimination or reduction of key programs and an exodus of experienced staffers.

The agency's core budget, which includes disaster preparedness and mitigation, has been cut each year since it was absorbed by the Homeland Security Department in 2003. Depending on what the final numbers end up being for next fiscal year, the cuts will have been between about 2% and 18%.

The agency's staff has been reduced by 500 positions to 4,735. Among the results, FEMA has had to cut one of its three emergency management teams, which are charged with overseeing relief efforts in a disaster. Where it once had "red," "white" and "blue" teams, it now has only red and white.

Three out of every four dollars the agency provides in local preparedness and first-responder grants go to terrorism-related activities, even though a recent Government Accountability Office report quotes local officials as saying what they really need is money to prepare for natural disasters and accidents.

"They've taken emergency management away from the emergency managers," complained Morrie Goodman, who was FEMA's chief spokesman during the Clinton administration. "These operations are being run by people who are amateurs at what they are doing."

Richard W. Krimm, a former senior FEMA official for several administrations, agreed. "It was a terrible mistake to take disaster response and recovery … and disaster preparedness and mitigation, and put them in Homeland Security," he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff acknowledged in interviews Sunday that Washington was insufficiently prepared for the hurricane that laid waste to New Orleans and surrounding areas. But he defended its performance by arguing that the size of the storm was beyond anything his department could have anticipated and that primary responsibility for handling emergencies rested with state and local, not federal, officials.

"Before this happened, I said … we need to build a preparedness capacity going forward," Chertoff told NBC's "Meet the Press." He added that that was something "we have not yet succeeded in doing."

Under the law, Chertoff said, state and local officials must direct initial emergency operations. "The federal government comes in and supports those officials," he said.

Chertoff's remarks, which echoed earlier statements by President Bush, prompted withering rebukes both from former senior FEMA staffers and outside experts.

"They can't do that," former agency chief of staff Jane Bullock said of Bush administration efforts to shift responsibility away from Washington. "The moment the president declared a federal disaster, it became a federal responsibility…. The federal government took ownership over the response," she said. Bush declared a disaster in Louisiana and Mississippi when the storm hit a week ago.

"What's awe-inspiring here is how many federal officials didn't issue any orders," said Paul C. Light, an authority on government operations at New York University.

Evidence of confusion extended beyond FEMA and the Homeland Security Department on Sunday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said that conditions in New Orleans and elsewhere could quickly escalate into a major public health crisis. But asked whether his agency had dispatched teams in advance of the storm and flooding, Leavitt answered, "No."

"None of these teams were pre-positioned," he told CNN's "Late Edition." "We're having to organize them … as we go."

Such an ad hoc approach might not have surprised Americans until recent decades because the federal government was thought to have few responsibilities for disaster relief, and what duties it did have were mostly delegated to the American Red Cross.

The Outrage

Yes, I'm angry. Angrier than I ever knew I could be. As Pat K. says in a comments thread below, I'm having a hard time concentrating, I weep easily. By the time we have the merest handle on what happened in the Gulf Coast, we will learn that there are 10-20,000 dead, many of whom died of lack of care in the aftermath. These deaths are on George W. Bush's hands.

I'm a Red Cross trained disaster volunteer, have been for decades and have worked a number of natural and man made disasters, principly floods in the Midwest and Midatlantic. What the feds did here was unconscionable, immoral and probably criminally negligent. The president should be impeached at a minimum, and tried for manslaughter. That FEMA wasn't on the ground with the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and the other NGOs immediately (including Doctors Without Borders and the other international NGOs with mass displaced persons experience) boggles my mind: we know how to do this.

I'm also unspeakably sad. I'm watching the death of one of the world's great cities on CNN. One that means a great deal to me as a musician, the city that birthed one of the world's great musics, one that I particularly love. New Orleans has one of the most distinctive cultures of any city in the US, and gave us also a great cuisine, something that matters to me as a cook. I haven't been able to watch Emeril on the Food Channel this week, it is too painful. I've never visited New Orleans. Now, I may never get to.

While George Bush tells lies and slanders the reputations of Kathy Blanco, Mary Landrieux and Ray Nagin.

Burning, cold hard rage inhabits me like a physical knot in my gut.

Hurricane Center Director Tells Paper He Briefed Brown and Chertoff on Danger of Severe Flooding

By E&P; Staff

Published: September 04, 2005 6:55 PM ET

NEW YORK Dr. Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told the Times-Picayune Sunday afternoon that officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, including FEMA Director Mike Brown and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, listened in on electronic briefings given by his staff in advance of Hurricane Katrina slamming Louisiana and Mississippi--and were advised of the storm’s potential deadly effects.

"Mayfield said the strength of the storm and the potential disaster it could bring were made clear during both the briefings and in formal advisories, which warned of a storm surge capable of overtopping levees in New Orleans and winds strong enough to blow out windows of high-rise buildings," the paper reported. "He said the briefings included information on expected wind speed, storm surge, rainfall and the potential for tornados to accompany the storm as it came ashore.

"We were briefing them way before landfall," Mayfield said. "It’s not like this was a surprise. We had in the advisories that the levee could be topped."

Chertoff told reporters Saturday that government officials had not expected the damaging combination of a powerful hurricane levee breaches that flooded New Orleans.

Brown, Mayfield said, is a dedicated public servant. “The question is why he couldn’t shake loose the resources that were needed,’’ he said.

Brown and Chertoff could not be reached for comment on Sunday afternoon.

In the days before Katrina hit, Mayfield said, his staff also briefed FEMA, which under the Department of Homeland Security, at FEMA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., its Region 6 office in Dallas and the Region 4 office in Atlanta about the potential effects of the storm. He said all of those briefings were logged in the hurricane center’s records.

UPDATE: My Flu Wiki partner, DemfromCT and I have been having an email exchange about how and where we became foodies and learned to treasure good food in community and he sent me this about his introduction to crawfish:

My first raw oyster was in New Orleans at Manolo Pasquale's, where I learned that Cajuns could do wonders with the inferior crayfish. I eat them rarely outside of the Big Easy, and maybe never again.

I hope you commentors are right. All the New Orleanians I know are among the toughest people I've ever met. But it won't be the same.

New Orleans: The Dying Continues

Time running out for survivors
Rescuers: Not enough resources to save all in New Orleans

Sunday, September 4, 2005; Posted: 7:58 p.m. EDT (23:58 GMT)

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Time is running out for thousands of people awaiting rescue six days after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, rescuers say.

Officials say they do not have the manpower, the resources or enough time to save everyone.

"My guys are coming back and telling me, 'Sir, I went into a house, and there are three elderly people in their beds, and they're gasping, and they're dying,' " Coast Guard Capt. Bruce Jones said.

"And we got calls today, 'We need you ... to go to a place in St. Bernard Parish. It's a hospice, ... and there are 10 dead and there are 10 dying.' But those people were probably alive yesterday or the day before."

Though pilots, rescue crew members and maintenance workers are red-eyed and exhausted, they're refusing to rest, CNN's Karl Penhaul reported.

For every person plucked from the flood, there are hundreds still waiting, rescuers say. (Watch a report on rescue efforts -- 3:10)

"There's simply not enough resources," Jones said.

"It's an awful feeling to know you've not got everybody in time," rescue swimmer Chris Monville said. "You're trying to get everybody out. But in these temperatures the weak and the sick expire first, and it tears at your heart.

Monville said he has rescued 126 people in a single day.

As of Sunday morning, the Coast Guard reported it rescued more than 17,000 people via helicopter, boat, cutter and ferry -- almost twice the number of lives it has saved in the past 50 years.

The Coast Guard is asking anyone trapped in their homes or in buildings in New Orleans "to hang brightly colored or white sheets, towels or anything else" to help rescuers locate them.

More than 1,300 Coast Guard personnel are involved in the effort around New Orleans, and more are on the way, it said. Meanwhile, Army helicopters dropped boxes of food and water to survivors waiting for rescue.

The Coast Guard says it has delivered thousands of bottles of water to victims in the New Orleans area, is monitoring hundreds of pollution cases, and coordinating the salvage of more than 100 vessels.

Missions are being staged from Belle Chasse, Bucktown and the New Orleans Sains Training Facility, and from five cutters along the Mississippi River.

So even now, six and a half days after Katrina came ashore, there are still large numbers of people dying out there who won't be reached in time. Not because they were unreachable, but simply because of FEMA's late start - on Friday and Saturday, they were doing what they should have been doing Tuesday and Wednesday: feeding and evacuating the tens of thousands of people at the Superdome and the Convention Center. This Coast Guard operation should have been happening Wednesday and Thursday, not yesterday and today. And from Friday on, the rescue operations would have been at the mopping-up stage, not the doing-the-basics stage.

That would have saved hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives.

Dereliction of duty. Criminal negligence.

Impeachment.

End of the Neo-Con Moment

Brooksie gets it.

The Bursting Point

By DAVID BROOKS

Last week in New Orleans, by contrast, nobody took control. Authority was diffuse and action was ineffective. The rich escaped while the poor were abandoned. Leaders spun while looters rampaged. Partisans squabbled while the nation was ashamed.

The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting.

And the key fact to understanding why this is such a huge cultural moment is this: Last week's national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation's psyche.

Over the past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find W.M.D.'s in Iraq. We have seen incompetent postwar planning. We have seen the collapse of Enron and corruption scandals on Wall Street. We have seen scandals at our leading magazines and newspapers, steroids in baseball, the horror of Abu Ghraib.

Public confidence has been shaken too by the steady rain of suicide bombings, the grisly horror of Beslan and the world's inability to do anything about rising oil prices.

Each institutional failure and sign of helplessness is another blow to national morale. The sour mood builds on itself, the outraged and defensive reaction to one event serving as the emotional groundwork for the next.

The scrapbook of history accords but a few pages to each decade, and it is already clear that the pages devoted to this one will be grisly. There will be pictures of bodies falling from the twin towers, beheaded kidnapping victims in Iraq and corpses still floating in the waterways of New Orleans five days after the disaster that caused them.

It's already clear this will be known as the grueling decade, the Hobbesian decade. Americans have had to acknowledge dark realities that it is not in our nature to readily acknowledge: the thin veneer of civilization, the elemental violence in human nature, the lurking ferocity of the environment, the limitations on what we can plan and know, the cumbersome reactions of bureaucracies, the uncertain progress good makes over evil.

As a result, it is beginning to feel a bit like the 1970's, another decade in which people lost faith in their institutions and lost a sense of confidence about the future.

"Rats on the West Side, bedbugs uptown/What a mess! This town's in tatters/I've been shattered," Mick Jagger sang in 1978.

Midge Decter woke up the morning after the night of looting during the New York blackout of 1977 feeling as if she had "been given a sudden glimpse into the foundations of one's house and seen, with horror, that it was utterly infested and rotting away."

Americans in 2005 are not quite in that bad a shape, since the fundamental realities of everyday life are good. The economy and the moral culture are strong. But there is a loss of confidence in institutions. In case after case there has been a failure of administration, of sheer competence. Hence, polls show a widespread feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

Katrina means that the political culture, already sour and bloody-minded in many quarters, will shift. There will be a reaction. There will be more impatience for something new. There is going to be some sort of big bang as people respond to the cumulative blows of bad events and try to fundamentally change the way things are.

Reaganite conservatism was the response to the pessimism and feebleness of the 1970's. Maybe this time there will be a progressive resurgence. Maybe we are entering an age of hardheaded law and order. (Rudy Giuliani, an unlikely G.O.P. nominee a few months ago, could now win in a walk.) Maybe there will be call for McCainist patriotism and nonpartisan independence. All we can be sure of is that the political culture is about to undergo some big change.

We're not really at a tipping point as much as a bursting point. People are mad as hell, unwilling to take it anymore.

The Brits Get It

Black fury at Bush over rescue delay

Richard Luscombe in Miami
Sunday September 4, 2005
The Observer

Civil rights leaders, church officials and rap stars have united in ferocious criticism of President George Bush's attitude towards the tens of thousands of black people still trying to escape the hell of New Orleans.

An overwhelming majority of the refugees are African-Americans, who make up 67 per cent of the city's half-million population, and some are questioning whether the government's response would have been quicker had the catastrophe struck a white community. The Reverend Calvin Butts, president of New York City's Council of Churches, writes in today's Observer: 'If this hurricane had struck a white middle-class neighbourhood in the north-east or the south-west, his response would have been a lot stronger.'

In an extraordinary outburst during a live television fundraising concert broadcast on America's NBC network, the rapper Kanye West said: 'Bush doesn't care about black people. It's been five days [waiting for help] because most of the people are black. America is set up to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off, as slow as possible. We already realised a lot of the people that could help are at war right now.'

The episode was further proof of growing anger within the black community and a belief that race was a factor in the days of delay before troops and emergency supplies began to arrive.

Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader, said he saw 'a historical indifference to the pain of poor people and black people' in the US and said it was poignant that blacks were suffering in New Orleans, for many years the south's biggest slave-trade port.

'Today I saw 5,000 African-Americans on Highway 10, desperate, perishing, dehydrating, babies crying - it looked like the hold of a slave ship. It's so ugly and obvious. The issue of race as a factor will not go away.'

Crass Politics

Falluja Floods the Superdome

By FRANK RICH

On Thursday morning, the president told Diane Sawyer that he hoped "people don't play politics during this period of time." Presumably that means that the photos of him wistfully surveying the Katrina damage from Air Force One won't be sold to campaign donors as the equivalent 9/11 photos were. Maybe he'll even call off the right-wing attack machine so it won't Swift-boat the Katrina survivors who emerge to ask tough questions as it has Cindy Sheehan and those New Jersey widows who had the gall to demand a formal 9/11 inquiry.

But a president who flew from Crawford to Washington in a heartbeat to intervene in the medical case of a single patient, Terri Schiavo, has no business lecturing anyone about playing politics with tragedy. Eventually we're going to have to examine the administration's behavior before, during and after this storm as closely as its history before, during and after 9/11. We're going to have to ask if troops and matériel of all kinds could have arrived faster without the drain of national resources into a quagmire. We're going to have to ask why it took almost two days of people being without food, shelter and water for Mr. Bush to get back to Washington.

Most of all, we're going to have to face the reality that with this disaster, the administration has again increased our vulnerability to the terrorists we were supposed to be fighting after 9/11. As Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, pointed out to The Washington Post last week in talking about the fallout from the war in Iraq, there have been twice as many terrorist attacks outside Iraq in the three years after 9/11 than in the three years before. Now, thanks to Mr. Bush's variously incompetent, diffident and hubristic mismanagement of the attack by Katrina, he has sent the entire world a simple and unambiguous message: whatever the explanation, the United States is unable to fight its current war and protect homeland security at the same time.

The answers to what went wrong in Washington and on the Gulf Coast will come later, and, if the history of 9/11 is any guide, all too slowly, after the administration and its apologists erect every possible barrier to keep us from learning the truth. But as Americans dig out from Katrina and slouch toward another anniversary of Al Qaeda's strike, we have to acknowledge the full extent and urgency of our crisis. The world is more perilous than ever, and for now, to paraphrase Mr. Rumsfeld, we have no choice but to fight the war with the president we have.

War in the Streets

Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans

By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writer

NEW ORLEANS — Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

Jones said the military first needs to establish security throughout the city. Military and police officials have said there are several large areas of the city are in a full state of anarchy.

Dozens of military trucks and up-armored Humvees left the staging area just after 11 a.m. Friday, while hundreds more troops arrived at the same staging area in the city via Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters.

“We’re here to do whatever they need us to do,” Sgt. 1st Class Ron Dixon, of the Oklahoma National Guard’s 1345th Transportation Company. “We packed to stay as long as it takes.”

While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.

Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and police helicopters filled the city sky Friday morning. Most had armed soldiers manning the doors. According to Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeremy Grishamn, a spokesman for the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the vessel kept its helicopters at sea Thursday night after several military helicopters reported being shot at from the ground.

Numerous soldiers also told Army Times that they have been shot at by armed civilians in New Orleans. Spokesmen for the Joint Task Force Headquarters at the Superdome were unaware of any servicemen being wounded in the streets, although one soldier is recovering from a gunshot wound sustained during a struggle with a civilian in the dome Wednesday night.

“I never thought that at a National Guardsman I would be shot at by other Americans,” said Spc. Philip Baccus of the 527th Engineer Battalion. “And I never thought I’d have to carry a rifle when on a hurricane relief mission. This is a disgrace.”

Spc. Cliff Ferguson of the 527th Engineer Battalion pointed out that he knows there are plenty of decent people in New Orleans, but he said it is hard to stay motivated considering the circumstances.

“This is making a lot of us think about not reenlisting.” Ferguson said. “You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn’t come here to fight a war. We came here to help.”

Tragic Incompetence

Editorial in the morning's Times-Picayune:

An Open Letter to President Bush

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

Your Government Wants To Kill You

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard on Press the Meat:

Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.

But I want to thank Governor Blanco for all she's done and all her leadership. She sent in the National Guard. I just repaired a breach on my side of the 17th Street canal that the secretary didn't foresee, a 300-foot breach. I just completed it yesterday with convoys of National Guard and local parish workers and levee board people. It took us two and a half days working 24/7. I just closed it.

MR. RUSSERT: All right.

MR. BROUSSARD: I'm telling you most importantly I want to thank my public employees...

MR. RUSSERT: All right.

MR. BROUSSARD: ...that have worked 24/7. They're burned out, the doctors, the nurses. And I want to give you one last story and I'll shut up and let you tell me whatever you want to tell me. The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. She drowned Friday night.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. President...

MR. BROUSSARD: Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody.

Unfuckingbelievable. I can't think of any other way to put it.

Photo Op President

I found this at War and Piece:

Dutch viewer Frank Tiggelaar writes:

There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.

ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.

The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.

The Nightmare

Storm Exposed Disarray at the Top

By Susan B. Glasser and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page A01

The killer hurricane and flood that devastated the Gulf Coast last week exposed fatal weaknesses in a federal disaster response system retooled after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to handle just such a cataclysmic event.

Despite four years and tens of billions of dollars spent preparing for the worst, the federal government was not ready when it came at daybreak on Monday, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior officials and outside experts.

Among the flaws they cited: Failure to take the storm seriously before it hit and trigger the government's highest level of response. Rebuffed offers of aid from the military, states and cities. An unfinished new plan meant to guide disaster response. And a slow bureaucracy that waited until late Tuesday to declare the catastrophe "an incident of national significance," the new federal term meant to set off the broadest possible relief effort.

Born out of the confused and uncertain response to 9/11, the massive new Department of Homeland Security was charged with being ready the next time, whether the disaster was wrought by nature or terrorists. The department commanded huge resources as it prepared for deadly scenarios from an airborne anthrax attack to a biological attack with plague to a chlorine-tank explosion.

But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that his department had failed to find an adequate model for addressing the "ultra-catastrophe" that resulted when Hurricane Katrina's floodwater breached New Orleans's levees and drowned the city, "as if an atomic bomb had been dropped."

If Hurricane Katrina represented a real-life rehearsal of sorts, the response suggested to many that the nation is not ready to handle a terrorist attack of similar dimensions. "This is what the department was supposed to be all about," said Clark Kent Ervin, DHS's former inspector general. "Instead, it obviously raises very serious, troubling questions about whether the government would be prepared if this were a terrorist attack. It's a devastating indictment of this department's performance four years after 9/11."

"We've had our first test, and we've failed miserably," said former representative Timothy J. Roemer (D-Ind.), a member of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. "We have spent billions of dollars in revenues to try to make our country safe, and we have not made nearly enough progress." With Katrina, he noted that "we had some time to prepare. When it's a nuclear, chemical or biological attack," there will be no warning.

Indeed, the warnings about New Orleans's vulnerability to post-hurricane flooding repeatedly circulated at the upper levels of the new bureaucracy, which had absorbed the old lead agency for disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, among its two dozen fiefdoms. "Beyond terrorism, this was the one event I was most concerned with always," said Joe M. Allbaugh, the former Bush campaign manager who served as his first FEMA head.

But several current and former senior officials charged that those worries were never accorded top priority -- either by FEMA's management or their superiors in DHS. Even when officials held a practice run, as they did in an exercise dubbed "Hurricane Pam" last year, they did not test for the worst-case scenario, rehearsing only what they would do if a Category 3 storm hit New Orleans, not the Category 4 power of Katrina. And after Pam, the planned follow-up study was never completed, according to a FEMA official involved.

"The whole department was stood up, it was started because of 9/11 and that's the bottom line," said C. Suzanne Mencer, a former senior homeland security official whose office took on some of the preparedness functions that had once been FEMA's. "We didn't have an appropriate response to 9/11, and that is why it was stood up and where the funding has been directed. The message was . . . we need to be better prepared against terrorism."

The roots of last week's failures will be examined for weeks and months to come, but early assessments point to a troubled Department of Homeland Security that is still in the midst of a bureaucratic transition, a "work in progress," as Mencer put it. Some current and former officials argued that as it worked to focus on counterterrorism, the department has diminished the government's ability to respond in a nuts-and-bolts way to disasters in general, and failed to focus enough on threats posed by hurricanes and other natural disasters in particular. From an independent Cabinet-level agency, FEMA has become an underfunded, isolated piece of the vast DHS, yet it is still charged with leading the government's response to disaster.

"It's such an irony I hate to say it, but we have less capability today than we did on September 11," said a veteran FEMA official involved in the hurricane response. "We are so much less than what we were in 2000," added another senior FEMA official. "We've lost a lot of what we were able to do then."