These are two signs I found on a building on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans. The sign on the left is the initial warning to looters that the owner left. The sign on the right is the update on his status as of September 4. Evacuees being unloaded from a military personell truck near our Mobile Canteen unit.
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Going to New Orleans
Dear Readers, I won’t be blogging for the next few days because I’m going to New Orleans. I’m leading a group of students from the Criswell College to a staging area in Baton Rouge where we will link up with Southern Baptist Convention Disaster Relief. We will man a Salvation Army Mobile Canteen and will be responsible for distributing 300,000 meals per day in New Orleans. The last several days, I’ve been blogging a lot about the political side of the Hurrican Katrina tragedy because I think the news coverage has been reflexively condemning of federal authorities. I am happy to say that I think that that tide is turning.…
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State of Louisiana Prevented Red Cross from Providing Relief to New Orleans Superdome
This is an unbelievable story being reported by Major Garrett of FOX News. The following is from Hugh Hewitt‘s website: “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…
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Majority of Americans Do Not Blame Bush for Hurricane Aftermath
According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, the majority of Americans do not blame President Bush for the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This is good news in light of the rush to judgment in the press to blame President Bush (see my previous posts).
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Mayor of New Orleans Had Responsibility To Evacuate
The city of New Orleans had a set of emergency procedures in place before Katrina hit that pertain to such events as catastrophic Hurricanes. The document is titled: “City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan.” This document outlines the plan that the city is to follow in case of an emergency evacuation. It says the following: “Conduct of an actual evacuation will be the responsibility of the Mayor of New Orleans in coordination with the Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, and the OEP Shelter Coordinator . . . Transportation will be provided to those persons requiring public transportation from the area . . . The evacuation must…
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John Roberts to Be Nominated As Chief Justice
CNN is reporting that President Bush will nominate John Roberts to succeed Rehnquist as chief justice of the Supreme Court. By appointing someone from the outside, the President ensures that there will be only two confirmation battles, not three (If he would have nominated a sitting justice to be chief justice, the senate would have to confirm the promotion as well as the filling of the two remaining vacancies). When she announced her retirement, Sandra Day O’Connor’s made her retirement contingent upon the President’s appointment of her replacement. In her resignation letter, she wrote: “This is to inform you of my decision to retire from my position as Associate Justice…
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Mayor of New Orleans Blames the Louisiana Governor
I just watched Soledad O’Brien interview New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin on CNN. She pressed him on whether he bore some responsibility for the tragedy at the Superdome and at the convention center. Mayor Nagin responded that when Bush came to Louisiana, Bush offered to centralize the chain-of-command so that the feds could take over rescue and relief from Governor Kathleen Blanco. According to Nagin, Bush was ready to move immediately, but Blanco said she needed twenty-four hours to think about it. Mayor Nagin was extremely frustrated with Governor Blanco to say the least. According to Nagin, while she was stalling, people were dying. This is quite a different picture…
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Disappointed with Russert, et al.
It’s not just the partisans who are rushing to judgment about who to blame for the catastrophic aftermath of Katrina. The clear thrust of mainstream media reporting has been to lay the blame for the crisis in New Orleans at the feet of the Bush administration. The default assumption in the media appears to be that if there was a failure of rescue operations, then the failure was a federal one. No reporter that I have seen has come up with a line of questioning that would insinuate a failure on the part of the Louisiana governor or the New Orleans mayor (I’ve mainly been watching CNN, NBC, and MSNBC’s…
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Federal Authorities Move to Relieve Governor Blanco of Command
President Bush and Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco Apparently, the Bush Administration believes the situation in New Orleans has been mismanaged by state and local officials. Tonight, the Washington Post reports that federal officials have attempted to take command over the National Guard troops that are currently under the authority of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. “Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said…
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William Rehnquist, the chief justice of the United States, is dead at 80
Chief Justice William Rehnquist succumbed to thyroid cancer tonight. His death is a great loss to our country, and my heart goes out to his family. I will miss chief justice Rehnquist. He was the quintessential originalist and an exemplary justice whose legacy will not soon be forgotten. Washington Post – “Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist Dies”