Free Republic

Just watched a legal expert on Fox go thru the disaster event by event. Based on the Law Gov Blanco is legally liable. If lawsuits are filed, there is no way she can duck it. In addition, when Bush went went down there, he offered her immediate deployment of Reg Army troops, she told both him and Nagel that she "needed 24 hours" to decide. This is DC politics. As everyone from Bush to Clinton to Carter learned, Washington Politics are a whole lot tougher then local politics. Blanco is toast. EVEN if the National Dems get the "Independent Commission"...

The city of New Orleans followed virtually no aspect of its own emergency management plan in the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans officials also failed to implement most federal guidelines, which stated that the Superdome was not a safe shelter for thousands of residents.

The mayor's mandatory evacuation order was issued 20 hours before the storm struck the Louisiana coast, less than half the time researchers determined would be needed to get everyone out. City had evacuation plan but strayed from strategy By LISE OLSEN Copyright 2005 Houston ChronicleCancer patient Earl Robicheaux, his immune system depleted by radical chemotherapy, lay in a hospital bed as Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans.Trying to leave, he thought, seemed suicidal.But after four days in the hospital's reeking darkness, he escaped via a Black Hawk helicopter that landed on the roof of the University Hospital under heavy...

KATRINA'S AFTERMATH A Barrier That Could Have Been Congress OKd a project to protect New Orleans 40 years ago, but an environmentalist suit halted it. Some say it could have worked. By Ralph Vartabedian and Peter Pae, Times Staff Writer September 9, 2005 latimes.com In the wake of Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago, Congress approved a massive hurricane barrier to protect New Orleans from storm surges that could inundate the city. But the project, signed into law by President Johnson, was derailed in 1977 by an environmental lawsuit. Now the question is: Could that barrier have protected New Orleans from...

Fault Lines Ibd Thu Sep 8, 7:00 PM ET Katrina: Hillary Clinton says FEMA was more effective when her husband was president. The victims of Hurricane Floyd might venture a different opinion, and it wasn't FEMA that kept supplies from the Superdome. During a post-Katrina conference call with reporters, Sen. Clinton said, "Helping localities do what they needed to do to mitigate damage -- that philosophy governed FEMA during the Clinton administration. It obviously was rejected by this administration." Does that mean Clinton's FEMA was the model of government efficiency and effectiveness? Or was it closer to the DMV and...

The principle of subsidiarity was evidently ignored by those holding responsibility for the government of the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans. This principle was first clearly defined by Pope John XXIII and then later by the Second Vatican Council. The principle is valid for both the secular as well as the ecclesiastical realm. The principle of subsidiarity is the principle by which those in authority recognize the rights of the different members of society. Those in higher authority respect the rights of those in lower authority. And of course, with rights go responsibilities. It was the...

<p>"WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - 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.</p>

The Fox News Channel's Major Garrett made another appearance on the program this evening, following up on his blockbuster story yesterday. Among other things, Garrett got confirmation --on camera-- of the Louisian State department of Homeland Security's blocking of the delivery of relief supplies to the Superdome and the Convention Center. In addition, Garrett received confirmation from senior Salvation Army officials in Washington, D.C. that the Salvation Army's efforts at supplying the evacuees were also repeatedly blocked. Radioblogger will have the transcript up later, but the key takeaway was when I asked Garrett if characterizing Louisian's preparation for the storm...

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 6, 2005 — In New Orleans, those in peril and those in power have pointed the finger squarely at the federal government for the delayed relief effort. But experts say when natural disasters strike, it is the primary responsibility of state and local governments — not the federal government — to respond.

Thursday, Sept. 8, 2005 11:38 a.m. EDT Ray Nagin: School Buses Not Good Enough New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin garnered a ton of publicity with a profanity-laced interview he gave to WWL radio last Thursday, where he blasted President Bush and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco for not coming to rescue his city in time. However, Nagin's most newsworthy comments - where he explained why he didn't used hundreds of city school buses to evacuate his city's flood victims - went almost unnoticed. Turns out, Nagin turned his nose up at the yellow buses, demanding more comfortable Greyhound coaches instead. "I...

As radical environmentalists continue to blame the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina's devastation on President Bush's ecological policies, a mainstream Louisiana media outlet inadvertently disclosed a shocking fact: Environmentalist activists were responsible for spiking a plan that may have saved New Orleans. Decades ago, the Green Left - pursuing its agenda of valuing wetlands and topographical "diversity" over human life - sued to prevent the Army Corps of Engineers from building floodgates that would have prevented significant flooding that resulted from Hurricane Katrina......

The Red Cross Blocked The Fox News Channel's Major Garrett was just on my show extending the story he had just reported on Brit Hume's show: The Red Cross is confirming to Garrett that it had prepositioned water, food, blankets and hygiene products for delivery to the Superdome and the Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, but were blocked from delivering those supplies by orders of the Louisiana state government, which did not want to attract people to the Superdome and/or Convention Center. Garrett has no paper trail yet, but will follow up on his verbal confirmation...

Before hurricane Katrina made landfall, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana appears to have been more focused on securing federal funds for post-hurricane relief than ensuring that necessary troops were deployed to carry search and rescue missions, deliver food and water, and protect the citizens of Louisiana against marauding street thugs. President Bush had offered the governor federal aid, including additional troops. He declared Louisiana a disaster area before Katrina arrived. To the dismay of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, the governor told the president she wanted 24 hours to decide whether to accept the offer because Mr. Bush, as...

"As the devastation of Hurricane Katrina continues to shock and sadden the nation, the question on many lips is, Who is to blame for the inadequate response? As a former state legislator who represented the legislative district most impacted by the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, I can fully understand and empathize with the people and public officials over the loss of life and property. Many in the media are turning their eyes toward the federal government, rather than considering the culpability of city and state officials. I am fully aware of the challenges of having a quick...

I got this from Power Line. It's another great blog out there and it was also on Free Republic. The Freepers are doing great work on all this. "The New York Times is leading the shameless Bush and Republican bashing with respect to the response to Hurricane Katrina. One of its themes is that Congress didn't pay enough attention to flood control in the Gulf. But Donald Luskin reminds us of this bit of wisdom from the New York Times editorial page earlier this year." If you've been paying attention -- and I don't know how long you can before...

The Evacuation Plan Mayor Nagin Failed to ImplementClick here to listen to the entire transcript detailed below via Windows Media Player stream (from the guest/free section of Rush's site) RUSH: Folks, I'm sorry. I would have led off the program with this. I have been under a terrible misconception. I thought by now everybody would have known that there was a documented, detailed evacuation plan for the city of New Orleans that was not implemented at all. But I'm reading my e-mail, "Well, I never heard of this." Now, I didn't get a chance to spend the whole weekend watching...

Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, died in New Orleans because Mayor Ray Nagin did not issue a mandatory evacuation order until Sunday morning, well after the Saturday mid-afternoon order issued by neighboring parishes. The blogosphere has been wondering what took Nagin and the city so long; Glenn Reynolds has found the answer: President Bush declared a state of emergency in Louisiana, authorizing federal emergency management officials to release federal aid and coordinate disaster relief efforts. By mid-afternoon, officials in Plaquemines, St. Bernard, St. Charles, Lafourche, Terrebonne and Jefferson parishes had called for voluntary or mandatory evacuations. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin...

HURRICANE Katrina was a horrific natural disaster. To America's Angry Left it was yet another occasion to score political points against President George W. Bush. In the same spirit of opportunism that animated looters who stole television sets, Bush's political foes frantically sought to blame the devastation on him. A measure of the anti-Bush Left's derangement is that it blames him for bad weather. "Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes," The New York Times editorialised on Thursday. "But since this administration won't acknowledge that...

There will be plenty of time to argue about who was responsible for the slow response in New Orleans this week in dealing with those who did not choose to leave, or were unable to leave the city before the hurricane hit. The catastrophe that followed, when the levees gave way, and 80% of the city, and many of the surrounding suburbs flooded, was far worse than the hurricane itself.  Already many seem to have forgotten that New Orleans officials thought they had escaped Katina’s wrath as the storm moved north from the Gulf on Monday, prior to the levees...

Al Sharpton showed up on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" on MSNBC last night, and the pair sounded a theme that's becoming depressingly familiar in the effort to demagogue hurricane Katrina: Olbermann: I actually heard a commentator this afternoon--it was that Limbaugh--suggest that the issue of class and race in those who were left behind in New Orleans was irrelevant, because, as he put it, those people were not forced to live there and they weren't bused into New Orleans. And I was thinking, A, this guy is even more clueless than I thought he was, which is saying something. But, B,...