Townhall’s Steve Muscatello is hearing unconfirmed reports that Nagin has resigned—possible, though I saw him delivering a news conference earlier today and he seemed much calmer than anytime in the last few days (for what that’s worth). Secondly, rls notes : I was listening to the radio last night, some woman sitting in for L. Ingram (Iknow, Radio Free Nazi) and she was saying that the Bush Admin legal request

“Fucking glorified thunderstorm… This Gulf disaster is all Rove’s doing, Billy.  To take the spotlight off the peace movement.  You realize that, right?” * “Sure.  And for the record, the neocons are damn lucky that Kung-fu mysticism doesn’t work on hurricanes.  Else my feet of fury would’ve been all over Katrina like ten deadly piggies of white on rice!”*

MSNBC’s Bloggermann: Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: “Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater…” Well there’s your problem right there. If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government’s response to a crisis, this was it. Translated Keith:  Who cares what he does.  It’s what he says that I find troublesome.  I mean, clearly he’s not a polished public speaker, and

From the Telegraph UK, Liberal Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson looks at reaction to Katrina and it’s aftermath: Disasters happen. Two hundred and fifty years ago, on November 1, 1755, the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, was flattened by an earthquake that killed thousands of its inhabitants. Like the hurricane that inundated New Orleans last week, the calamity inspired not only awe at the power of nature and sympathy for the helpless

Today’s provocative lefty talking point—picked up by Kevin Drum and others and parroted in the comments here in order to suggest a disconnect between Presidential leadership and the “troops on the ground” (because remember:  the left loves the troops; it’s the commanders they can’t stand)—has to do with a BBC report (video here, direct link here) showing Lt. Commander Sean Kelly, a Pentagon spokesman for Northern Command, “accidentally” telling the

Regular readers of my site—particularly social conservatives—will recognize that I’m no Bush apologist, and have been critical of the President when I believe he’s taken missteps (lumber / steel protectionism; ideological dithering in the terror war, etc.) or backed bad law (Schiavo, McCain-Feingold, etc.); having said that, though, I’m going to take what I consider to be an intellectual stand here and state clearly and for the record that I

Earlier this week, the New York Times did itself little honor when it blasted the Bush Admnistration for not providing the very federal monies that it itself had raged against in an earlier editorial.  Well, it seems this kind of thing is becoming a pattern with the Paper of Record.  From the Weekly Standard “Scrapbook,” Sept 5/12, “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times”: Let it be recordeth that

This Saturday press briefing by Lt Gen H Steven Blum speaks to the questions some of the commenters here have asked about a “paperwork delay” bringing the military law enforcement presence into NO.  Read the whole thing, but for the purposes of this post I’ll excerpt a relevant portion of the Q & A: GEN BLUM:  […] Martial law has not been declared anywhere in the United States of America.

Several interesting points / arguments made in the comments to the previous post outlining Blanco’s series of indecisions after Nagin’s initial failures with regard to positioning buses and supplies.  With regard to the Stafford Act and my earlier contention that jurisdictional takeover requires active assent from the NO government, Dorkafork notes that the Act “is mainly about financial assistance and coordination of aid agencies.  The references to jurisdiction I see

The reflexively anti-Bush headline aside (about which John Cole has more), this is an important article in that some of the behind-the-scenes machinations between the local and federal governments in the wake of the levee breaks are beginning to come to light: Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at