Free Republic

Indianapolis -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on Friday blamed racism and government bureaucracy for hamstringing his city's ability to weather Hurricane Katrina and recover from the disaster that struck the Gulf Coast nearly a year ago. In remarks to the annual meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists, Nagin said the hurricane "exposed the soft underbelly of America as it relates to dealing with race and class." "And I, to this day, believe that if that would have happened in Orange County, California, if that would have happened in South Beach, Miami, it would have been a different...

Earlier this month in a Washington Post Op-Ed article Jimmy Carter blamed the current violence in Lebanon and Gaza on Israel, which had purportedly violated “key U.N. resolutions…by occupying Arab lands and oppressing Palestinians.” He got through an entire article without ever mentioning that Lebanon had failed to comply with the 2004 United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559, which called on Lebanon to disarm the terrorist group Hezbollah whose members now sit in its legislature and cabinet. Last February 20 in another Washington Post piece Mr. Carter attacked Israel for withholding tax revenues from the new Palestinian Authority government following...

Teen, Mom Sue MySpace.com for $30 Million; Suit Filed in Travis County Claims Popular Internet Site Fails to Protects Children From Adult Sexual Predators. By Claire Osborn AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, June 20, 2006 A 14-year-old Travis County girl who said she was sexually assaulted by a Buda man she met on MySpace.com sued the popular social networking site Monday for $30 million, claiming that it fails to protect minors from adult sexual predators. The lawsuit claims that the Web site does not require users to verify their age and calls the security measures aimed at preventing strangers from contacting users...

You couldn't make this stuff up. Landrieu just spoke on Fox News, saying that the damage to LA will be worse than it had to be because "the government" (Evil Republicans) didn't spend enough money on building levees and other protective structures for New Orleans. She then stated that using the strategic oil reserves to alleviate shortages from damaged oil rigs wouldn't be of much help because "the government" (Evil Republicans) hasn't spent enough federal money (your money) in building a greater industrial base for LA, which "the government" (Evil Republicans) has neglected. I feel so ashamed. If only I'd...

In the aftermath of the public revelation of the presidential "teleconference" and mounting criticism of the performance of Michael Chertoff, Administration sources told HUMAN EVENTS today that the secretary of Homeland Security has "only a few days left" in the Bush Cabinet. As one source acquainted with the former federal prosecutor and U.S. Appellate Judge said under promise of anonymity, "They will give [Chertoff] a little time so it won't hurt his reputation too much, but he's probably got only a few days left." For weeks, Chertoff has been under fire from Capitol Hill and in the media for his...

March 02, 2006 Katrina Tape Transcripts Show Media Hack Job For those who want to see the transcripts themselves of the video conferences, the New York Times has them for the August 28th and August 29th briefings. The transcript for the 29th makes one garbled mention of the levees around New Orleans (page 6). After making the point that the storm surge would cause the greatest devastation in the Gulfport area of Mississippi, going as high as 21 feet, Max Mayfield then turns to New Orleans: MAX MAYFIELD: ... The rest of the track we have 10 to 15 feet,...

Francis Maude, the chairman of the Conservative Party, has said that the homophobic attitude of the Thatcher government contributed to the death of his brother from Aids. Mr Maude, who served as a minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said he regretted voting for the now-repealed Section 28, which banned councils from promoting homosexuality. "In hindsight a mistake, I voted for it, I was a minister," he said. In an interview with the gay news website PinkNews.co.uk, Mr Maude said: "We've been seen for a long time as a party which hasn't been very open to gay people. That's...

Congressional investigators have faulted the Bush administration for failing to set up a clear chain of command in the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Out of touch with our reality Our Views By OPINION PAGE STAFF Published: Jan 29, 2006 Mr. President, we’re grateful for every dollar of aid we get, from private or public sources. But your statement of Thursday is simply out of touch with reality in Louisiana today. “I want to remind the people in that part of the world, $85 billion is a lot.” In the abstract, sure. It’s a lot of money. But as a senatorial inspection group found the other day, there has not been anywhere near $85 billion worth of progress. For one thing, that money isn’t...

Time and again over the past decade, the political instincts of California's Republican Party leaders have been far off the mark. Their embrace of marginally attractive candidates to run against Barbara Boxer in the 1998 Senate race and Gray Davis in the 1998 and 2002 governor's races resulted in huge lost opportunities. The only reason we have a GOP governor now is because of the quirks of the recall system; in a normal election, Arnold Schwarzenegger probably would have been weeded out in the Republican primary by an establishment conservative following the script that lackluster Bill Simon used to wallop...

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Thursday she was pleased to hear ex-FEMA chief Michael Brown has accepted some blame for the chaos following Hurricane Katrina. Brown had earlier told Congress that Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin were to blame, but in a speech on Wednesday he said he fell short of conveying the magnitude of the disaster and was slow in calling for help. Asked about Brown's switch, Blanco said "I'm glad that Mike Brown finally set the record straight." Blanco said the state's main disagreement with Brown and FEMA was the time it...

MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. - Former FEMA Director Michael Brown on Wednesday accepted a greater share of the blame for the government's failures after Hurricane Katrina, saying he fell short in conveying the magnitude of the disaster and calling for help. "I should have asked for the military sooner. I should have demanded the military sooner," Brown told a gathering of meteorologists at a ski resort in the Sierra Nevada. "It was beyond the capacity of the state and local governments, and it was beyond the capacity of FEMA," said Brown, former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Brown's remarks...

Don't Blame Bush for Katrina Christopher Ruddy Monday, Sept. 5, 2005 George Bush and the federal government are not to blame for the disaster we have witnessed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the primary responsibility for the disaster response lies with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and other local officials. Yet, leading Democrats and their allies in the major media are clearly using this disaster for political purposes and ignoring one obvious fact. This fact, which needs to be repeated and remembered, is that in our country state and local government have...

Of course the Left blames George W. Bush for the deaths this week of a dozen coal miners. Tom Blumer at BizzyBlog cites the New York Times edit page's usual Bush-bashing innuendo: ...the Bush administration’s cramming of important posts in the Department of the Interior with biased operatives from the coal, oil and gas industry is not reassuring about general safety in the mines. Steven Griles, a mining lobbyist before being appointed deputy secretary of the interior, devoted four years to rolling back mine regulations and then went back to lobbying for the industry. Blumer then points out what the...

China river contamination illustrates paralysis in crisis By CHING CHING NI Los Angeles Times 12/5/2005 BEIJING - The long-term environmental impact of last month's chemical explosion in northern China that left millions of people without safe drinking water remains to be seen. But the political fallout has begun. Beijing sacked its top environmental official Friday in an effort to show accountability for the mishandling of the crisis. More heads are likely to roll, possibly including local party leaders in Jilin province where an accident at a petrochemical plant spilled 100 tons of benzene and other cancer-causing chemicals into the Songhua...

WASHINGTON - Congressional failures to approve emergency funding for roads, schools and housing construction have stalled Mississippi efforts to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina, the state's Republican governor testified Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT Without such help, Mississippi businesses are unable to decide where to relocate and rebuild — potentially costing the state jobs and chilling its economy, said Gov. Haley Barbour. His comments were among the sharpest criticism by a top Republican from the hardest-hit states of Congress and Bush administration relief efforts. "We are at a point where our recovery and renewal efforts are stalled because of inaction in Washington, D.C., and...

N.Korea demands U.S. compensation for reactor project Mon Nov 28, 3:34 AM ET The United States should give North Korea "political and economic" compensation after the collapse of an international project to provide it with nuclear reactors, a spokesman for Pyongyang's foreign ministry said on Monday. Last week, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), the body running the project, pulled the plug on the long-stalled deal to provide two light-water reactors (LWRs) in exchange for the communist state freezing its nuclear weapons programmes, reports said. The beleaguered project had been suspended since 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of cheating...

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina two sports were all the rage in New Orleans. One was the blame game, attributing all local and state incompetence to the feds. The other was inventing and spreading stories of murder and mayhem -- killings, rapes, firing at rescuers, bodies stacked like cordwood. But the accounts turned out to be grim fairy tales. They were also hardly harmless sensationalism -- if there be such a thing; because of them people suffered and apparently died. * Editor & Publisher headlined an article, "Mortuary Director Tells Local Paper 40,000 Could Be Lost in Hurricane," while...

Sheila Jackson-Lee says the complete meltdown in New Orleans was due to the federal government not taking actions from lessons learned from 9-11. Ann Coulter succinctly argued that local and state governments were responsible for the problems suffered in New Orleans. Right on Ann! The segment on Geraldo, was far too short. They did not allow Ann to engage Jackson-Lee directly.....I would've enjoyed the exchange!