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It's not a police state in the making. It's just vast incompetency in the making.

This whole thing was because of the failure of a mayor (Nagin) and a governor (Blanco) to perform their duties. There should probably be some point - fairly close in - where a non-performing local authority should be superseded - and later there should also be something like federal charges for irresponsible local authorities who did not perform their duties at a crucial time.

All we need to do is tighten up local response, at least to some extent by penalizing failure, and prepare backup mechanisms. We don't need immediate federalization of anything, because it simply won't be efficient.

This whole thing was because of the failure of a mayor (Nagin) and a governor (Blanco) to perform their duties. There should probably be some point - fairly close in - where a non-performing local authority should be superseded - and later there should also be something like federal charges for irresponsible local authorities who did not perform their duties at a crucial time.

Sounds like a vast left wing incompetency.

But consider carefully how this power could be misused in the hands of misguided, incompetent, or partisan federal authorities.

"It's just vast incompetency in the making. This whole thing was because of the failure of a mayor (Nagin) and a governor (Blanco) to perform their duties."

Sure, it was incompetency but no competent chief executive is going to allow this kind of incompetency to affect the perception of his job performance. No chief executive worth his salt would put his fate in the hands of a Nagin or a Blanco.

"This whole thing was because of the failure of a mayor (Nagin) and a governor (Blanco) to perform their duties."

I agree, but the thing that gets me is that hurricane scientists have been warning for years, well over 20 years, that if Americans continued to build and move into vulnerable coastal areas, disaster was inevitable.

Well, Americans by the millions moved into those areas and we had a disaster. Yet not once have I heard it mentioned that everyone knew the danger, that we had been warned about it for so long.

I am not sure what a lot of the fuss is about.
Day one: denial, I spoke with people from the NOLA area who went with the fatalist yet optimistic view that everyone was blowing it out of proportion.
Day two: it was bad, so bad, the folks there could not get a good fix on the situation - as is common with events which destroy the infrastructure.
Day three: A bit of a spat over the meaning of federalism - with national resources in the area or en route.
Day four: the troops begin streaming in.

All in all, that is pretty fast work for the size of the problem.
Now - perhaps a plan could have been in place to drop comm equipment in for those who needed it on days two and three, and perhaps some future national planning needs to take that into account, but the call was still on the local authorities to make , which they did not seem to do in a proper fashion, other than to scream about it all. And I get the idea that had the Naval assets who were on alert, or the National Guard, gone in right away, Mr. There-is-only-one-mayor-of-New-Orleans-and-I-am-it, along with his Governor, would have screamed about that, too.

We could have eliminated some time on day three by streamlining a process wherein the national command structure was able to get in and get the job done, but I am not sure that the answers we will see bandied about in the near future are of the sort I, or any one who thinks it through too deeply, will want to see.
Local authorities need a plan for when and how to ask for help, and how to deal with a population that goes berserk after only a day or so of difficulty, but I am not sure that I want to see the national government take over.

All we need to do is tighten up local response, at least to some extent by penalizing failure, and prepare backup mechanisms.

We certainly do. We ALL have to pay for their screwups, we certainly shouldn't have to stand by and watch them destroy their city in the name of states rights. Heh. States rights don't mean the right to destroy your biggest city under 15 feet of water, oil, dead bodies, and human waste.

Posse Comitatus is nothing but a hindrance on the Military to act in needed ways. If they want to come up with a replacement fine, but we need the military in here doing things that only they are trained and equipped to do. DHS, the big fat boondoggle, obviously can't assume the role that the military would -- watch the howling if THEY tried. I'd say people would trust the Armed Forces more than they would a new Federal Internal Polizei under DHS.

(Besides, giving the Military freedom to operate will give them more freedom to join us when the revolution comes -- just kidding. Heh.)