From UPI: Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city. An eyewitness account from two San Francisco paramedics posted on an internet site for Emergency Medical Services specialists says, “Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot.” “We shut

From The New York Times: As New Orleans descended into chaos last week and Louisiana’s governor asked for 40,000 soldiers, President Bush’s senior advisers debated whether the president should speed the arrival of active-duty troops by seizing control of the hurricane relief mission from the governor. For reasons of practicality and politics, officials at the Justice Department and the Pentagon, and then at the White House, decided not to urge

Revelations over “discrepencies” in Brown’s resume likely gave Bush an excuse to remove the beleagured head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency from national firestorm. Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff will announce a new leader for on-the-ground Katrina relief efforts.

You know, when you stop to think about it, she’s really passing judgment on you…

From the Washington Post, “Projects Plentiful in Louisiana”: Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic. Except that barge traffic

From Roll Call: Citing what he said was a “history” of public corruption in Louisiana and the “abysmal failure” of current state officials to respond to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) on Wednesday urged Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to prevent local politicians from controlling any part of the billions of federal disaster relief dollars slated for the state. Tancredo’s heart is in the right place—I honestly

In light of today’s WaPo story, “Judge Orders Berger to Pay $50,000 for Taking Classified Material,” I thought now might be a good time to repost some old material.  From my “blue” period. The Sandy Berger’s Lament poem Were I a marsupial, none of you would care what I stuffed in my pockets.  Instead, you’d love me and pet me and feed me tasty eucalyptus leaves. Still brings a tear

Dean:  “…The ugly truth of America is that this whole ‘exploding gas tank’ thing wouldn’t even be an issue if—instead of Pintos—we were talking about, say, 1997 Mercedes-Benz S600 Coupes.”*

From the New York Times: Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary who has been the Bush administration’s point man in fielding criticism of the hurricane relief effort, came under fire Wednesday from some Congressional Democrats for private remarks about the conditions faced by storm survivors that struck the lawmakers as insensitive. The new criticism was set off by a private and sometimes contentious briefing that Mr. Chertoff and other senior

Well, it looks like the newest lefty Katrina talking point is beginning to clarify itself, and it’s one of the worst yet.  The jackals must be getting desperate. Exhibit A:  Kerry-supporting, anti-war “conservative” Andrew Sullivan (who, let’s face it, he’s a hirsute¹ Josh Marshall with a nicer apartment and a bear fetish), begins his morning dutifully parroting the hard left line that FEMA is, in his words, attempting “to censor