Three nursing home patients in New Orleans died while being evacuated:

Three residents of a New Orleans nursing home fleeing Hurricane Katrina aboard a school bus died during an evacuation to a Baton Rouge church Sunday, authorities said.

The Times Picayune is running a news blog here. The paper will be reporting throughout the storm from a hurricane bunker on the third floor of the building:

Update: Katrina may be our "Asian Tsunami." One other point: we need to stop destroying the Louisiana wetland which serves as a buffer. More on that here.

"While the many are concerned with how the hurricane will effect the price and production the oil and gas - we are also concerned about the people and the precious habitat that could be destroyed as Hurricane Katrina makes land fall." said Sidney Coffee, Executive Assistant to the Governor for Coastal Activities. "The country depends on the resources provided by coastal Louisiana - the cargo and shipping industries, and the millions of barrels of oil and gas that flow through the terminals and pipelines found throughout America's WETLAND," continued Coffee "A direct hit from a storm like Hurricane Katrina could be devastating, and this danger is increased by the continued loss of our wetlands."

Katrina will cut oil production in the gulf coast of Mexico area by one-third.

U.S. energy companies said U.S. Gulf of Mexico crude oil output was cut by more than one-third on Saturday as Hurricane Katrina appeared poised to charge through central production areas toward New Orleans. The Gulf of Mexico is home to roughly a quarter of U.S. domestic oil and gas output, with a capacity to produce about 1.5 million barrels per day of crude and 12.3 billion cubic feet per day of gas.

Accuweather says where Katrina crosses the coast, it will resemble a war zone:

Update 7pm: Experts predict New Orleans will turn into an Atlantis and more than 1 million people will be homeless.

When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans on Monday, it could turn one of America's most charming cities into a vast cesspool tainted with toxic chemicals, human waste and even coffins released by floodwaters from the city's legendary cemeteries.

Crude oil prices have already shot up due to Katrina.

Crude oil soared to a record above $70 a barrel in New York after Hurricane Katrina forced companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. to shut operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

So far, there's no word about banning sex offenders from hurricane shelters as planned in Flordia.

Live local NOLA tv video coverage here. Also, as mentioned below, Truth Laid Bear has a Katrina blogging aggregator page. More links with webcams from New Orleans here. Newsblog is here. Also check out the NOLA Hurricane Center.

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Original Post 12:30 pm

This hurricane is serious. The eye is now less than 200 miles away. It may be a category five. Here is the projected path. The Mayor has ordered mandatory evacuation of the city.

What an editorial!

Rove's record has been consistent. Over 35 years, he has been a master of dirty tricks, divisiveness, innuendo, manipulation, character assassination, and roiling partisanship.

It's a two-pager that traces Rove's history and brings us up to RoveGate.

Related: Bush Launches Operation "Cindy Sheehan."[hat tip Patriot Daily.]

Grits for Breakfast reports:

Texas incarcerates more people for marijuana than any other state, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI), a D.C.-based think tank, said in a new public policy report. In Texas, "marijuana arrests comprised 56 percent of total drug arrests (48,963 out of 88,053 total arrests). Texas currently has 1,215 people in prison for marijuana as the controlling offense."

...Nationally, nearly half of all drug arrests in 2003 were for marijuana, chalking up $5.1 billion in enforcement, adjudication and incarceration costs for marijuana alone, the group reports. Download the full study here.

Last week, TalkLeft contributer Last Night in Little Rock, aka John Wesley Hall, wrote a moving post about his wife's trip to Crawford. Arianna really liked it and asked me if I'd like to post it at Huffington Post. Of course, my answer was yes. Here it is. Thanks, Arianna!

Update: John Amato of Crooks and Liars has a post at HuffPo too - on the she-pundit with long blonde hair.

by TChris

In today’s NY Times Magazine, Jeffrey Rosen argues that John Roberts (who might serve for 40 years if confirmed to the Supreme Court) should be asked about “a Brave New World of constitutional disputes” that could arise during the coming decades. These include:

• Brain fingerprinting: Using neuro-imaging techniques to detect electro-chemical signals could reveal whether an interrogated subject is telling the truth. Would the Court view an involuntary brain scan as a nonintrusive gathering of information rather than a search governed by the Fourth Amendment? Would the Court view brain scans as forcing an involuntary disclosure of thoughts prohibited by the Fifth Amendment’s requirement that individuals not be made to testify against their will?

• Genetic screening: Would the Court decide that the right to procreation and to privacy in intimate decision-making outweighs a state’s interest in prohibiting the creation of “designer babies,” genetically engineered to weed out (for instance) homosexuality, or to assure a child of a preferred gender?

• DNA analysis: If affirmative action continues to pass constitutional muster under some circumstances, will a potential beneficiary of a race-based preference be entitled to rely on a DNA analysis showing the presence of genes that came from Africa?

Other topics: “Old Age and Drug Legalization” and “Property, Free Expression and the Right to Tinker.” Judge Roberts is unlikely to take a meaningful position on any of these issues (arguing that he shouldn’t prejudge any issue likely to come before the Court), but the article is a fun read for those who like to ponder the evolution of constitutional jurisprudence in the 21st century.

by TChris

“Survivor” might be reality TV in the US, but it’s a way of life in Iraq. The invasion of Iraq has nonetheless given Iraq’s TV stations an opportunity to develop their own reality TV series. The bombing of homes spawned “Materials and Labor,” a show inspired by “This Old House” that might have been called “This Destroyed House.”

The same network also broadcasts a weekly show called "Congratulations!" featuring producers who help young, poor couples marry, and another that follows TV crews on road trips to hand out $1,000 to lottery winners.

This summer, a rival network, Sumeria, began running "Iraq Star," an amateur singing competition that bears more than a passing resemblance to "American Idol."

Here’s a sad commentary:

"This is the only good thing we've acquired from the American occupation," Majid al-Samarraie, the writer of "Materials and Labor," said as he watched the reconstruction of Ms. Ismail's home.

Via Crooks and Liars: Oh those high class Repubs:

One more you are all familiar with, but for me, as the mother of a kid who is in the draft-age range, it's the one that really gets my heartstrings going.

I think military recruiters who target teenagers in high school when our country is in engaged in an unnecessary war are the source of evil. My response to them as a mother is, "Over my dead body." True, I'm blessed to have a kid who realizes that repaying educational loans is preferable to promises of a free education by military recruiters. For kids who don't recognize the distinction, or who don't understand that loans are out there for everyone, ask yourselves, what's the benefit of a promise of a free future education if you're dead?

[second graphic via Buzzflash]

Frank Rich is still on a roll and his dice just get hotter and hotter. Don't miss "Echoes of Vietnam" (subtitled "The Vietnamization of Bush's Vacation")in the Sunday New York Times.

The Democrats are hoping that if they do nothing, they might inherit the earth as the Bush administration goes down the tubes. Whatever the dubious merits of this Kerryesque course as a political strategy, as a moral strategy it's unpatriotic. The earth may not be worth inheriting if Iraq continues to sabotage America's ability to take on Iran and North Korea, let alone Al Qaeda.

As another politician from the Vietnam era, Gary Hart, observed last week, the Democrats are too cowardly to admit they made a mistake three years ago, when fear of midterm elections drove them to surrender to the administration's rushed and manipulative Iraq-war sales pitch. So now they are compounding the original error as the same hucksters frantically try to repackage the old damaged goods.

I stopped writing about the case of Natalee Holloway a long time ago. There was no news and it finally seemed like all but the Holloway family was ready to move on. But now the cable news stations are back to almost full-time Holloway coverage. And not one show I've seen states what I think is the obvious: Aruba has learned how to play dirty, most likely courtesy of our FBI, with whom the Aruban authorities began sharing investigation files last month.

The "news" in the case is not news at all. There's no big break. All that happened was the Kalpoe brothers were re-arrested yesterday on suspicion of other charges . They can be held and interrogated anew for eight days.

Here's what I think happened. Time is running out on keeping Joran van der Sloot detained. The 116 days he can be detained without charges under Aruban law expires in early September. The authorities ran out of leads long ago and none of the suspects have cracked - despite untold hours of interrogation and harsh detention conditions. So, out of leads and short on time, the Aruban authorities decided to turn up the heat on the Kalpoe brothers. They dug and dug until they believed they had enough to link the brothers to crimes totally unrelated to Natalee.

There's a lot of tension and a big law enforcement presence in Crawford today as Bush supporters came to town. The Brad Show is broadcasting live with Air America radio now.