by TChris

The commander of the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged today that the Corps followed its usual procedures when it prepositioned resources in the New Orleans area before Hurricane Katrina, knowing that those procedures would be inadequate to protect against a category 4 or 5 storm. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock admitted that the Corps should have prepositioned more helicopters and sandbags.

As his poll numbers continue to plummet, President Bush will acknowledge today that poverty and inequality are long-standing problems in the country he governs. Unfortunately, he isn't likely to admit that he exacerbated the problem by insisting on tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest members of society.

by TChris

Mike Brown predictably blames Gov. Blanco and not President Bush for the way things went “to hell in a handbasket” in Louisiana. But Brownie revealed in an interview that he spent the week calling the president’s top aides to report that “local authorities were overwhelmed and that the overall response was going badly.” His account confirms an obvious conclusion: the president should have set aside his guitar and tackled the problem at its inception.

This isn’t a tune the White House wants to play.

A senior administration official said Wednesday night that White House officials recalled the conversations with Mr. Brown but did not believe they had the urgency or desperation he described in the interview.

Brownie’s attempt to play the blame game is contradicted by Louisiana officials:

Law Prof Eric Muller at Is That Legal takes issue with Judge John Roberts position that early in his career he was just a staff lawyer who didn't make policy decisions and just argued the way he was told.

....we are talking here about a man who left a clerkship with then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist to become a Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States under President Reagan, and who left that position to join the White House staff as Associate Counsel to the President.

These are no ordinary "staff attorney" positions. Nobody gets jobs of this sort just by being a talented young lawyer (as they do at the D.A.'s office, the Public Defender's Office, or the litigation firm downtown). These are, in their nature, ideological positions.

People for the American Way also scoffs at the claim that Roberts' position as Deputy Principal Solicitor General during Bush I was not an ideological position (received by e-mail):

by TChris

Fifty-four Senate Republicans, evidently afraid of the truth, killed Sen. Hillary Clinton's proposal for an independent investigation of the governmental response to Hurricane Katrina. A public outcry for accountability didn't deter Senate Republicans from protecting the Bush administration from scrutiny.

The Senate vote is hardly likely to be the last word on whether to create an independent commission or as an alternative a special congressional committee to investigate Katrina. The 9/11 Commission was established in 2002 after resistance from Republicans and the White House, and opinion polls show the public strongly supports the idea. In a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll taken Sept. 8-11, 70 percent of those surveyed supported an independent panel to investigate the government's response to Katrina. Only 29 percent were opposed.

This is just unbelievable:

Two Loyola University students attending classes at Boston College after their school was shut down by Hurricane Katrina were stabbed on a Boston street early Wednesday morning. Joseph Vairo, 19, was in serious condition at a hospital after being stabbed twice, Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn said. An unidentified 20-year-old was treated and released.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The LA Times today has an op-ed today, Roberts' bad decision by legal ethicists Stephen Gillers, David Luban and Steven Lubet that John Roberts was in the process of being interviewed for his appointment to the Supreme Court while he was deciding Hamdan v. Rumsfeld on the constitutionality of Gitmo military tribunals. (Roberts did not write the opinion, but he voted on the three judge panel.)

Judicial ethics and 28 U.S.C. § 455 mandated recusal. But, neither of those legal constraints kept Justices Thomas and Scalia from making George Bush president in 2000. Thomas' wife worked on Bush's transition team (§ 455(b)(5)(iii)) and Scalia's son worked for one of the law firms representing Bush (albeit not directly involved; § 455(b)(5)(ii)).

The "appearance of impropriety" standard applies. If it looks bad, that is enough.

by Last Night in Little Rock

CNN.com last night posted this story: 'People making decisions hesitated' / More officials' jobs may fall to Katrina response criticism with a video link to who knew what and when before Katrina struck.

And Michael Brown's magnanimous resignation is not the first.

Update: Never Mind, Positions have been filled.

From the Southern Center for Human Rights: Volunteer criminal defense attorneys and paralegals are needed this weekend in Louisiana:

When the levee broke in New Orleans, about 7000 men, women, and children were locked up in Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) and other area jails. After 2 days of chaos and rising water, people who were locked up were shoved onto
buses and scattered to 35 facilities throughout the state. They were sent without papers, and the OPP computer system is underwater. Many of the folks now sitting in DOC custody were in OPP waiting for bond, serving 5 day sentences for public drunkenness, waiting to be processed in/out, etc. They are now locked down in Louisiana's DOC, a notoriously mean-spirited bureaucracy that has very little capacity to reconnect families or even verify information that would allow these folks to be released & reunited with their families.

Sen. Patrick Leahy's staff has been live-blogging the confirmation hearing for Judge John Roberts.

7:30 p.m. Senator Durbin questions Judge Roberts about the death penalty.

Sen. Durbin is asking Judge Roberts about a question he was posed earlier: If there is room for a judge’s values and beliefs in their rulings. Sen. Durbin is asking Judge Roberts about what goes through Judge Roberts mind when he addresses cases that deal with the death penalty. Judge Roberts says that it is important to differentiate between cases that offer new scientific claims versus new personal claims. Judge Roberts says that it is important to recognize the irrevocability of the death penalty, and that it is necessary to bring additional scrutiny to those cases. Judge Roberts says that DNA evidence is an important opportunity that is a significant development in the law.

Here is the exact exchange:

The owners of the New Orleans nursing home where 34 elderly and infirm patients died have been charged with negligent homicide.

Mable Mangano and her husband, Salvador Mangano Sr., surrendered to Medicaid fraud investigators in Baton Rouge on Tuesday and were being held in a parish prison. The Manganos declined an offer from St. Bernard Parish authorities of buses to evacuate the residents of their facility, and they did not use a contract they had with an ambulance service, the state said.

The couple has been released on bond. Their lawyer says they were faced with a Hobbsian choice:

The nursing home owners had to make a difficult decision between evacuating the patients, many of them elderly and on feeding tubes, or keeping them at the home and weathering the storm, [Lawyer Jim Cobb said. "If you pull that trigger too soon those people are going to die," he said. Three people from another nursing home had died during the evacuation ahead of the hurricane.

But the Attorney General of Louisiana says:

by Last Night in Little Rock

Still defending the Administration's argument that race had nothing to do with the Katrina debacle, Secretary of State Condalezza Rice, who was watching "Spamlot" in NYC in front row seats, buying expensive shoes the next day on Fifth Avenue, and getting tennis from a NYC tennis pro while NOLA flooded, hedged her bets on CNN.com today.

Update: Law Prof Glenn Reynolds, writing over at his MSNBC blog, sums up a general consensus of opinion on today's hearings: The Senators bloviated, speechified and repeatedly touted themselves. In agreement: Slate's Dahlia Lathwick, Ann Althouse and me. Although none of them mentioned Jeff Sessions who I thought was the worst of the bunch.

Update: I tuned in to watch a little bit of the hearings. Sen. Jeff Sessions has been speechifying against abortion without asking a question for almost five minutes. I can't believe he wasn't interrupted and told to ask a question.

There will be a break and then Sen. Feingold will question Judge Roberts at 5:05pm. I hope he asks about the death penalty like he did at Roberts' 2003 confirmation hearing. If you're not by a tv, you can watch here.

The radical right isn't happy with Roberts' answers. One commenter there says, "...this nomination is shaping up as the biggest failure of the Bush presidency."

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Here's an open thread on Judge John Roberts' confirmation. My latest Scoring Scotus, Judge Roberts Speaks, is up at Eric Alterman's Altercation today.