Update: Please read Stranded by Clive Stafford Smith in today's Guardian. Mr. Smith founded The Justice Center, which needs help as outlined below:

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Original Post 9/1/05

The Justice Center, located in New Orleans is home to four cutting edge, non-profit criminal defense offices. It houses:

• The Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, a capital trial office providing indigent defense in Louisiana for over ten years.
• A Fighting Chance, a specialist capital defense investigative team.
• The Capital Appeals Project, the statewide office for capital appeals in Louisiana.
• The Innocence Project of New Orleans, part of the national network of innocence projects working to free those wrongly convicted.

They need help. From their bulletin:

If George Bush was the CEO of a large U.S. Corporation and mismanaged a project as big as the Katrina rescue effort, he'd be fired. What we have experienced, as Van Jones writes over at Huffington Post, is a monumental failure of leadership.

Michael Moore writes President Bush:

Dear Mr. President:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

The rest is just as good. Including the "p.s." about Cindy Sheehan.

by TChris

New Orleans police officers have experienced the same tragedy as the rest of the city's residents. Some have responded in heroic fashion. Others have quit.

Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "Go to hell -- it's every man for himself."

The Chief of the Louisiana State Police says New Orleans officers have told him that they don't want to risk their lives for looters. It is presumably that kind of sentiment that has led to talk of "shoot to kill." Some looters are opportunistic, to be sure, but many are just trying to get basic supplies from stores that are in no position to sell them what they need.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday:

Vice President Cheney, who has spent part of August at his home outside scenic Jackson, Wyo., remains there today -- although his spokeswoman, Lea Anne McBride, doesn't call it vacation. "He's working from Wyoming today," McBride told me this morning.

And when is he coming back? "He will certainly be coming back. I'm not able to tell you the day right now. I don't have that handy."

Via America Blog.

I've been hearing all day that the Republicans are going to try to deflect criticism from Bush by blaming Louisiana Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco. While I think Bush bears far more blame, it won't bother me a bit. She gave "shoot to kill" orders to the National Guard tonight.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco warned rioters and looters in New Orleans on Thursday that National Guard troops are under her orders to "shoot and kill" to end the rampant violence in the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Announcing the arrival of 300 Arkansas National Guard troops in New Orleans fresh from service in Iraq, Blanco said, "these troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded." "These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will," she said.

[Via Raw Story.]

Australia News: "It was like a concentration camp in there."

A must read from Arthur at Light of Reason and Atrios:

From CNN:

It’s hard to describe. It’s something I never could conceive of ever seeing in a major city like New Orleans. It is hard to believe. This is New Orleans, Louisiana we’re talking about. We spent the last few hours at the convention center where there are thousands of people just laying in the street. They have nowhere to go. These are mothers. We saw mothers. We talked to mothers holding babies. Some of these babies are 3, 4, 5, months old living in these horrible conditions. Putrid food on the ground. Sewage, their feet sitting in sewage. We saw feces on the ground. These people are being forced to live like animals. When you look at some of these mothers your heart just breaks. We’re not talking about a few families or a few hundred families. Thousands of people are gathered around the convention.

These are mirrors of emergency radio traffic off of a scanner in New Orleans, for anyone looking for unfiltered news: here and here

[Via Dale Murphy, Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service]

I've got to head out for a few hours. Please take over with news, thoughts, links (in html format), whatever. There are Katrina donation links up on both sides of TalkLeft, one to the Red Cross and one to a liberal blogoshpere Katrina fundraising effort, so there is no need to repost those.

Anderson Cooper was so great just now on CNN. He laced into Sen. Mary Landrieu saying people who have witnessed the devastation don't want to hear politicans congratulating other politicians for how they've responded.

He was yelling, basically, "Don't you get it yet?" He mentioned seeing a woman's body on the ground being eaten by rats. Landrieu told Anderson she understood what he was saying and then thanked the President again.

Update: Crooks and Liars has the video, you have to watch this, it's one of few truly raw moments on television. I've always liked Anderson Cooper, but he absolutely shines tonight.

Update: Think Progess has the transcript.

I'm turning comment registration back on. There have been too many annonymous comments from people not taking the time to include their user name. Also, there have been too many comments with urls not in html format.

If you have a problem with the registration or get a validation error message, send me an email and I'll re-evaluate.

Received by e-mail from Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid's office:

Senate to Convene at 10:00 p.m., Thursday, September 1, 2005

The Senate will convene briefly tonight, Thursday, September 1, at 10:00 p.m., to vote on the emergency supplemental bill in support of relief efforts due to Hurricane Katrina. Vote will be done by Unanimous consent because most members are not in DC.

The bill provides an extra 10 billion for FEMA and $0.5 billion to DOD to provide for relief efforts.