Race is one issue that will not go away when examining the New Orleans devastation. Writer Leonce Gaiter, who authored the book Bourbon Street, addresses it today in Katrina's Deck is Full of Race Cards.

The first days were the most telling. Nobody mentioned it. Tens of thousands of people trapped in increasingly filthy conditions—free-flowing feces, dead bodies lying about, grounds soaked in urine—yet nobody mentioned that they were all black. It was obvious to anyone with eyes. The images made you squirm and cringe—hordes of black faces pleading for help—life, food, water—in a major American city. Yet nobody mentioned it. What were they afraid of? Were they scared that the right-wingers would accuse them of playing the race card? Accuse them of suggesting that America had not achieved the colorblind state of utopian bliss that they insist it has; that white people and the American society over which they hold sway are not as perfectly just as they claim?

Finally, a good idea from the government. It will begin handing out debit cards today worth $2,000 to Katrina survivors, beginning with those at the Astrodome and other rescue centers.

The Washington Post has an article today in which lawyers theorize about statutes Fitzgerald might use against Rove and company in the Valerie Plame leak.

While I agree that the federal statute prohibiting leaking a covert operative's identity may be a stretch in this case, I think the new statute bandied about in the article, embezzlement of public property, is an even greater stretch.

Fitzgerald seems to have plenty of choices with perjury, making a false statement to a federal official, obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. He may even have conspiracy to out a covert operative.

I doubt Fitzgerald is out searching for statutes to charge Administration officials using some novel theory. If he has the goods on the traditional ones, he'll indict. If he doesn't, he won't.

I've written before about my concern about former Judge and legal analyst Leslie Crocker Snyder's support for the death penalty. Crocker Snyder is running for Manhattan D.A. against long-time holder of the office Robert Morganthau.

Ellis Henican has a very disturbing article about Crocker Synder today.

Leslie Crocker Snyder, the swaggering ex-judge who wants Morgenthau's job, has been a booster of capital punishment, although she rarely mentions the issue these days. Over the years, she hasn't just supported the death penalty. She's promoted it, relished in it. At times, she's seemed to enjoy the idea of putting criminals to death. What other conclusion can we take from page 262 of her high-octane autobiography?

Convicted killer Terrell Martin was such a bad guy, she writes, "I would have been willing to give him the lethal injection myself."

She's no better with drug offenders:

Crooks and Liars has the video.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times yesterday had a poignant story of the suicide of NOLA PD PIO Sgt. Paul Accardo. The fact there were two suicides was previously reported here.

Accardo was a lovable perfectionist who was a fixture on the nightly TV news, making sense of the senseless crimes he reported on for the Department.

Colleagues believe he was overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness, unable to do anything to help anybody. Whatever he did do would not be enough by his own standards. The Times article is like a punch in the gut:

by Last Night in Little Rock

Evacuees are landing at Ft. Chafee, AR by the hundreds as already noted here. Yesterday I was on I-40 for 2-1/2 hours each way to and from Ft. Smith, and the buses were still coming and going, with markings from many states. A lawyer friend in Ft. Smith reported a dozen buses heading south back to New Orleans on US-71 (via Shreveport) yesterday.

The local newspaper for Ft. Chafee is the Southwest Times Record of Ft. Smith. Today's edition discusses:

• local school officials preparing to absorb the children into their systems.

• More "evacuees" being sent from Chafeee elsewhere

• A survivor complaining his is not a criminal and shouldn't be treated like one.

The statewide paper is the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette with a separate Northwest Arkansas Edition. Its coverage today:

• State officials still are trying to get a handle on the numbers of evacuees so they can be given medical care, housing, and jobs.

• Ft. Chafee is now a processing point for evacuees, and 2,000 have been processed through the hospital alone, with 300 having been transferred to area hospitals. Many are being sent elsewhere.

• The Northwest Arkansas Regional Campus of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has undertaken training National Guardsmen as medics.

Bob Denver died Friday.

Most of the blog eulogies for Bob Denver talk about Gilligan's Island. Thanks to Avedon Carol of Sideshow for pointing out that for some of us, his role as Maynard G. Krebs on Dobie Gillis is his defining moment.

Bob Denver was born in my hometown, New Rochelle, NY. I was only in elementary school, but I never missed the Dobie Gillis show, although it was more because of Tuesday Weld. Where has she been lately? Who'll Stop the Rain, Play It As It Lays, Pretty Poison and Looking for Mr. Goodbar are some of my all-time favorite movies.

R.I.P. Mr. Denver.

by TChris

Elected Republicans may still have the president's back, but they can't afford to ignore anger like this:

"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today," Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard said on CBS' The Early Show. "So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."

This article lists some of the hearings that will soon be held in the House and Senate to assess -- as has been the president's mantra during the past couple of days -- "what went wrong and what went right." Justifiable anger has fueled the demand for a candid inquiry into the failings of the Bush administration, oversight notably absent from the passive, stonewalling majority party in recent years.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Word on the street in Little Rock is that its intrepid and indefatigable coroner with a heart of gold, Mark Malcolm, who this writer knows personally as a stand up guy, will be on Larry King Live tomorrow on CNN, 9 pm, 12 am, 3 am ET, telling about his trip to New Orleans as a volunteer to cope with the dead bodies, and FEMA would not allow them to deal with any of the dead without signing off on it, and FEMA would never sign off. He apparently gave up in frustration, and he is going on Larry King Live to tell his story about his experience with the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency. See Katrina Dead to be Warehoused in Former Leper Town, below.

(Keep in mind that this is third hand information but from what I consider reliable sources or it wouldn't be up here.)

Compare and contrast: What FEMA's August 29 FEMA Press Release issued by Mike Brown said, with Donald Rumsfeld today:

Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), today urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.

“The response to Hurricane Katrina must be well coordinated between federal, state and local officials to most effectively protect life and property,” Brown said. “We appreciate the willingness and generosity of our Nation’s first responders to deploy during disasters. But such efforts must be coordinated so that fire-rescue efforts are the most effective possible.”

The process of collecting dead bodies in New Orleans is about to begin. Where will the bodies be taken? To Saint Gabriels, LA, a small town that used to be a leper colony.

In a long, low, nondescript warehouse in a Louisiana town that used to be a leper colony, Hurricane Katrina's victims will be identified and returned to their families.

How are their families going to come and pick them up if they are stranded in Houston and elsewhere? Are the authorities going to take the dead bodies to the Astrodome? How will these relatives, who have been left with less than zero, pay for the burials, once they get the remains back?