by Last Night in Little Rock

An indictment against the political action committee formed Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX,22) was released today in Austin, TX. No individuals were charged with any wrongdoing, including Rep. DeLay.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Always a source of entertainment these days is a press briefing by Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Somebody at the White House dutifully transcribes these jewels for us. (The DoD website has proved to be fodder for Rumsfeldisms, which produced a good book and as shown here.)

Today's is no exception. Today's is priceless. It reminds me of the Cold War era films shown in school of what to do in a nuculer attack: "Duck and cover."

This is just too good. McClellan invokes the "blame game" defense and gets it shoved down his throat. Just about a fourth of it appears below, but the rest is on the link above.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times tomorrow has an article about the chaos in the legal system in NOLA, an issue that has been flying around the NACDL list serv since the storm. Criminal defense lawyers have been hearing these horror stories for over a week.

It compares the problems in NOLA today to the chaos after the Chicago Fire of 1871.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Administration's decision not to let the media have access to Hurricane Katrina photos of the dead. Vincent Carroll of the Rocky Mountain News took a swipe at TalkLeft for criticizing the decision.

Critics of the Federal Emergency Management Agency are shellacking it again for barring journalists from taking pictures of Hurricane Katrina's victims as bodies are pulled from receding waters.
"This is reminiscent of the policy against photographs of the flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers," declared the Denver-based TalkLeft blog in a typical complaint. "Anything that puts the government in a bad light becomes taboo."

posted by Last Night in Little Rock

This was written by Chris Rose of the Times-Picayune:

Dear America,

I suppose we should introduce ourselves: We're South Louisiana.

We have arrived on your doorstep on short notice and we apologize for that, but we never were much for waiting around for invitations. We're not much on formalities like that.

by TChris

Has spinmeister Rove saved the president's fanny again?

White House officials must be breathing a sigh of relief about the news coverage this morning that increasingly depicts the controversy over the government's response to the Gulf Coast disaster as a largely -- or even purely -- partisan issue.

Maybe not.

by TChris

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani thinks Saddam Hussein should “be executed 20 times a day for his crimes against humanity," which seems the very definition of overkill. One execution normally suffices to achieve the desired result.

Talabani claims an investigating judge “was able to extract confessions from Saddam's mouth” about various killings during Hussein’s regime. Hussein’s lawyer, Khalil Dulaimi, contends that Hussein didn’t confess and that the judge who leaked the claimed confessions to Talabani “must resign immediately.”

Dulaimi rebuked Talabani for his remarks, saying they meant "there will be no chance of a fair and clean trial."

The trial, before a special tribunal, is scheduled to commence on October 19. Meanwhile, the regime change orchestrated by President Bush hasn’t produced an end to indiscriminate killing in Iraq.

A police spokesman on Thursday said police had located 14 unidentified bodies in civilian clothes at several sites near the town of Mahmoudiyah, about 30 kilometers south of Baghdad. He said all had been shot to death.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Twenty years ago last month, a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 crashed into a mountain and killed 520. Because of Japanese culture, without waiting for determining who was at fault, the President of Japan Airlines immediately made a point to personally visit with the survivors of all passengers that he could find and personally apologize. I remember the video of the man bowing to the person receiving him. Aside from disaster, the Japanese also apologize for inconveniencing someone else.

In times of great personal disgrace, Japanese culture also recognized "the fine art of seppuku," the ultimate in acceptance of personal responsibility.

We used to hear our government officials talk of that concept. Now, of course, they have spun it around to the "personal responsibility" of those who lacked the wherewithal to escape New Orleans instead of their own responsibility. Spin for the sake of saving face. No matter that they swept up with the poor the nursing home and hospital patients who had no ability to escape who died in their beds.

In American culture, a simple resignation for the good of the country or the President would be enough. But that requires class, style, a conscience, and a desire to do the right thing; something these people all lack.

We have a lot to learn from Japanese culture.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times today has a surreal article today about "post-apocalypse" New Orleans: Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street.

This is a view the talking heads on TV will never give us, with words with power.

by TChris

Howard Kurtz surveys (with, thankfully, little comment of his own) various reactions to the president’s decision to substitute the conservative John Roberts for the conservative William Rehnquist. The reaction most likely to stimulate severe illness comes from Pat Robertson, who is “thankful” that Hurricane Katrina may have “brought [Roberts] some good.” Perhaps Robertson was praying for a disaster that would kill thousands so that senators would be distracted from Roberts’ confirmation hearings.

Slightly less stunning is conservative Bill Kristol’s concern that by swapping a conservative Roberts for a conservative Rehnquist, the president may feel pressure to nominate a more moderate candidate for Justice O’Connor’s seat. Kristol thinks that would be a betrayal of the president’s base, and he fears that Attorney General Gonzales might be the “moderate” who would emerge from that scenario. The notion that Gonzales, who regards the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," is insufficiently conservative to satisfy the right wing is astonishing. Maybe the president should just go with his base and nominate Pat Robertson instead.

I'll be on the road today and tomorrow. Last Night in Little Rock and TChris will fill in some during my absence, and I'll try to get a post or two in, but there also will be an open thread each day, like this one, for readers to take over.

by Last Night in Little Rock

This odd piece crossed my computer yesterday, and I didn't read it until today. It is from the website Intellectual Activist, and it posits that the "welfare state" is the cause of chaos in New Orleans.

People in disasters work together, fights and gunshots are proof the "welfare state" is a failure, NOLA is Baghdad under water, etc. It represents a similar thought pattern to those who believe that the people of NOLA deserve what they got if they didn't leave, neglecting to mention that 100,000 simply had no means to leave.

The author of the piece mentions "the projects" in Chicago that were "mercifully" torn down. He also admits that Fox News is his source of information.

Despite the false name of the website and the hidden agenda of potential racism, one might want to read it to think what the Bush apologists are thinking: The good citizens of New Orleans are reaping what the "welfare state" sowed.

And so it goes....