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?

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has issued a new order tonight: Everyone must leave New Orleans, even if the police and military have to use force to get them out. The edict applies to those on their private property and those who don't want to leave.

Police estimate there are thousands of hold-outs.

The mayor also fiercely denied rumors that he had ordered relief workers to stop delivering water to those who refused to evacuate.

"I want to emphasize that I would like everyone to get out because it's a health risk," he said. "It is not safe. Mosquitoes that are biting dead people are starting to fly." The toxic nature of the water is evident from the smell of garbage, human waste and rotting corpses, and the slick sheen of oil, gasoline and other chemicals on the surface.

Arianna explains why the new Bush-meme of "this is not the time for fingerpointing" is dead wrong.

Look, if we’ve learned anything from watching shows like CSI, Law and Order, and their endless progeny, it’s that you can’t let a crime scene grow cold. You’ve got to start collecting and analyzing the evidence while the DNA is still fresh and let David Caruso or Vincent D’Onofrio start sweating the perps while the passions are still running high.

And make no mistake, what we saw go down -- and not go down -- in New Orleans was definitely a crime… a crime that is in many ways still in progress.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Louisiana officials have told CNN within the last two hours that the Superdome may be torn down.

The Louisiana Superdome was so heavily damaged during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath that it likely will have to be torn down, according to a spokesperson for Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.

Katrina sheared away much of the roof's covering, and rainwater began leaking into the stadium when it was being used as a shelter of last resort for thousands of residents stranded by the storm.

Was it damaged that bad? They were bragging during the hurricane that it was designed to withstand a huge storm. And what do they mean by "aftermath"? Flooding? Forced housing with an absolute failure to provide for basic human needs of nearly 40,000 stranded people? Really ugly memories?

When you drive into New Orleans heading to a French Quarter hotel, you go right by it. It is not the tallest building in town, but it certainly dominates the skyline.

Maybe it is because it now stands as a glaring symbol of man's inhumanity to man.

John Amato of Crooks and Liars, writing at HuffPo, has Bush's final report on what went wrong in New Orleans.

Colorado Senator Ken Salazar today called for the resignation of FEMA director Mike Brown. In a letter to President Bush, Salazar said:

"Specifically, Mr. Brown represented to the public that he could not have imagined the levees being breached in New Orleans, even though he had been briefed by federal government experts nearly a day and a half before Hurricane Katrina made landfall that those levees could indeed be breached by the hurricane surge. Having received such information, Mr. Brown should have acted more quickly than he did — and should not have suggested to the American public that he was given contrary information," Salazar said in the letter.

Also on the Colorado front, Rep. Diana DeGette -- along with Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) -- introduced legislation to separate FEMA from Homeland Security.