Credit where it's due....

Even some dyed in the wool right-wingers are coming clean with their misgivings about the federal response to Katrina. Jonah Goldberg(!) points out another disturbing angle to the story, and one he finds indefensible: the administration was supposedly working on preparing our country for a large-scale terrorist attack. But four years after 9/11 we're confronting a large-scale disaster, and the government has shown nothing but incompetence. For four days.

So the question is, would the money have been better spent if the Republicans hadn't gotten their way? And, though it sickens me to say so, that is at best an open question. I have the utmost faith in the kleptocratic and dysfunctional governments of New Orleans and Louisiana to waste and steal money. But, we were supposed to be preparing --at the national level -- for a major terrorist attack for the last four years. I just don't see much evidence of that preparation. Congress re-assembled lickity-split to deal with Terri Schiavo -- a decision that didn't and does not bother me the way it bothers some. But however you define the issues involved in that case, in terms of real human suffering they are very hard to stack-up against what's happened in New Orleans. Congress should have convened yesterday and rescinded the highway bill. It should have broken-open the farm bill like a piñata and reallocated the monies therein.

It's a shame that intellectual honesty from the right is such a rarity, but Bush Republicans seem to place their party before their country.