by TChris

The president who never accepts blame uttered some surprising words today:

President Bush said Tuesday that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina ...

Of course, the president hedged his acceptance of responsiblity:

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

Given the efforts of Bush supporters to deflect blame to state and local officials, or to the victims of Katrina, it isn't clear that Bush believes the government he oversees was remiss in any significant degree. Still, he acknowledged the obvious: "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," including, presumably, the government he was elected to run.

Don't miss Arianna today on how the GOP intends to turn Katrina to their benefit:

Two weeks in, Katrina has turned into an all-you-can-eat-right-wing-policy buffet.

And, as is so often the case with these tireless champions of crony capitalism, the main course at this opportunistic smorgasbord is “privatization”. And the target du jour is FEMA. The subtext is that the Katrina debacle somehow proves that disaster relief is no business for the government and should be turned over to the Halliburtons of the world (after all, they’ve done such a great job supplying our troops and reconstructing Iraq, right?).

Of course, FEMA’s Katrina failures have far less to do with some inherent big government bugaboos than with the way Bush and the partisan hacks he installed there turned a successful, widely-praised cabinet level agency (one that then-Gov. George Bush took time to praise in a debate with Al Gore in 2000) into a denuded and incompetently managed after-thought.

by Last Night in Little Rock

As previously reported here, the NRA was slow to speak out about confiscation of guns in NOLA. They did today:

National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre slammed New Orleans authorities Monday for seizing legal firearms from lawful residents. "What we’ve seen in Louisiana--the breakdown of law and order in the aftermath of disaster--is exactly the kind of situation where the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to protect themselves, " LaPierre said.

"When law enforcement isn’t available, Americans turn to the one right that protects all the others--the right to keep and bear arms," LaPierre said. "This attempt to repeal the Second Amendment should be condemned."

Usually, the NRA is right on this kind of thing. It took them as long to swing into action as the Bush Administration.

by Last Night in Little Rock

"I rarely read the [news] stories, and get briefed by people who... probably read the news themselves." --George W. Bush to Brent Hume on FoxNews (September 21, 2003)

[Via Presidential (Mis)Speak: The Very Curious Language of George W. Bush]

Apparently nobody in the White House paid attention to the news until they were hammered for the monumental FUBAR they call "Katrina disaster relief." If FEMA and anybody in the government watched CNN, FoxNews, or MSNBC, they would have learned all they needed to know to at least do something in time. Remember, Saddam Hussein knew more about the 1991 Gulf War from CNN than his own intelligence services. The Bush White House isn't that smart.

Another sad statistic. 45 bodies of patients have been recovered from Memorial Hospital in New Orleans.

by Last Night in Little Rock

CNN just reported Michael Brown resigned as head of the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency.

Al Franken said today that if Brown were smarter, he would be on suicide watch.

Steve Clemons of Washington Note is looking into allegations of fraud and FEMA contracting. This was a big story back in early 2005, which resulted in hearings presided over by Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, chairs of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Michael Brown testified at the hearings and defended FEMA. The Senate Panel found widespread FEMA fraud. More here. Lieberman and Collins' findings are here. The Sun Sentinel investigative series on the fraud is here.

Dissident Voice alleges Brown paid the claims to help Bush win the election. On contracting fraud and FEMA, check out this 2004 DOJ press release announcing Indictments.

by TChris

John Nichols points to a simple truth that drives the Bush administration: “When trouble hits, Halliburton hits it big.” Halliburton is assisted (as if it needs help) by Joe Allbaugh, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who is now a lobbyist and good friend of Michael Brown. Writes Nichols:

Conveniently, Allbaugh showed up in Louisiana on the day before [Vice President] Cheney's visit with the purpose, in the words of a Washington Post report, of "helping his clients get business."

He’s been effective, as this article makes clear:

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W Bush’s former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc and the other is Halliburton Co subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice president Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

FEMA hired another business with close ties to the administration, Bechtel Corp, to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Do these companies deserve our trust? Or our money?

by Last Night in Little Rock

Paramedics from San Francisco in NOLA wrote on RawStory this weekend that National Guardsmen were playing "cat and mouse" with looters and ignoring efforts to get food from nearby stores that was going to go bad anyway without refrigeration and should have been salvaged.

by Last Night in Little Rock

For no apparent reason, the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency refused to permit Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in Jefferson Parish, LA to reopen. Getting no explanation and taking matters into his own hands, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff ordered them to reopen for the people as noted here.

by TChris

Some Democrats remember that they’re supposed to stand up for the poor and powerless, not for the wealthy and their lobbyists. Here’s John Kerry:

The reality of what millions of Americans face every day was brought home this week. Americans saw on television the grave economic disparity that exists in this country. They were forced to confront the struggles that many African American families have faced for years due to lack of jobs and critical services to help open the doors of opportunity. They saw the people left behind literally and figuratively by the politicians who control Washington these days.

Some displaced children who have never been vaccinated will receive that basic service now that they’ve made it to a shelter. Kerry reminds us that 11 million other children aren’t receiving adequate health care. Must their homes be destroyed before they receive help?

Law Prof Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has five questions for Judge John Roberts in an op-ed in today's New York Times.

On a lighter note, I'm kind of partial to TChris's questions:

Did anyone in the White House ask you about Roe v. Wade? If the word abortion came up during any conversation with a member of the White House, please repeat that conversation for us. Was Guantanamo mentioned during your job interview? If given the chance, would you go duck hunting with Dick Cheney? Who should decide elections: voters or the Supreme Court?

More questions from TChris here. On a most serious note, I recommend Elaine Cassell's article on how death penalty jurisprudence will change under Roberts.

Here are some of the criminal law decisions authored by Judge Roberts.