[wildwood]

Once again, the inimitable Michelle Malkin has excellent research, commentary and links on her blog.

[Shqipo]

Fire Scott McLellan, instead. He's not up to slapping down the lunacy of the WH press corps that will stink up the air for the next year about Katrina.

[Dane]

Huh nothing about the inept mayor nagin and governor blanco.

FEMA got hit with a double whammy, a catrostrophic hurricane and an inept and almost criminally incompetant state and local govt.

Time for michelle to put down her poison pen and poitn fingers at the true incompetants, nagin and blanco.

[roses of sharon]

Ah, good conservatives, fighting back again!!

I love it when they get tough.

[martin_fierro]

Dubya should can Norm Mineta while he's at it.

[Dick Bachert]

AND CHERTOFF who has made more contratictory statements in the last week than -- and I HATE to say this -- Bill Clinton did about Monica in his the entire impeachment thing.

Too bad he can't fire Blanco and Nakin as well.

They have a lot of blood on their hands.

[G-dzilla]

Well, at least this time the legacy media can't claim that Michelle is a "Bush brown-noser"...

[devane617]

My only question is what has happened in the DHS? We have spent BILLIONS and regardless of whose fault the response to Katrina was, it was a complete failure. WE are completely unprepared to handle a major crisis in a major city -- not to mention how we could handle a coordinated attack by terrorists in two or more cities. I wonder if the terrorists know just how vulnerable we are?

[M1911A1]

I agree. Brown should go.

I'm as fed up with the "blame Bush for Katrina" nonsense that is being bandied about, but it is folly to think that the entire chain of command at the federal level is flawless.

I have been none too happy with Michael Chertoff, either. He may be doing good work, but he has also been busy making statements that sound idiotic in light of the facts.

Bush is well known for loyalty to those who work for him. This should not prevent him from letting go of people who let the country down.

[Travis McGee]

I hope that sooner or later the MSM discovers that New Orleans did have a written emergency plan to cover the evacuation of the poor, but that the idiot mayor of New Orleans ignored it, and allowed the evacuation buses to be ruined by the flood, forgotten.

The city leaders had at least two full days to use these hundreds of buses to evac the poor, exactly as their own emergency management plan called for.

Here's the southeast Louisiana evac plan supplement, most recently revised in 2000. Go to page 13, read paragraph 5. It states:

5. The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating.

[mhking]

Brown just plain screwed up. As did Michael Chertoff.

This was Chertoff's first test as DHS Secretary, and he failed. Miserably.

What if this had been a terrorist attack? His agency obviously was not ready to take charge in a catastrophic situation in order to protect people.

This does not take blame away from Ray "leave the buses in the yard" Nagin and Kathleen "deer in headlights" Blanco.

There is enough blame to go around.

But Bush really needs to get rid of both Brown and Chertoff.

Just damn.

If you want on the list, FReepmail me. This IS a high-volume PING list...

[oceanview]

Malkin has gone off the deep end here. FEMA can't mount a relief effort in the face of an insurgency amongst some of the local populace, with the local and state government washing their hands of the situation within the first moments after it occurred.

[Ramius]

Firing the FEMA director would be an empty political maneuver. It accomplishes nothing, fixes nothing, and accelerates nothing.

[CFC__VRWC]

Once again, the inimitable Michelle Malkin has excellent research, commentary and links on her blog.

Maybe - but on this she's got almost as big a political tin ear as Hillary Clinton does. Firing Brown right now would throw all of the feds' relief efforts into complete chaos - their plate is already filled to overflowing as it is, but they are starting to get on top of things. Canning the FEMA head would not only set those efforts way back, it would cause the media feeding frenzy to completely explode out of control.

After things have stabilized and people on the Gulf Coast are getting steady flows of aid and assistance and the real rebuilding has started, there will be plenty of time for President Bush to conduct a review of FEMA's and other agencies' performances and maybe "suggest" that a few resignations are in order.

[Burr5]

It does seem that Brown is an incompetent pinhead. These kinds of excuses are egregious examples of bureaucratic CYA.

On the other hand, I'm certain that it's fair to blame Bush for installing a "political hack" as the LA Times does in one link. If the implication is that he's "unqualified" (as opposed to incompetent) then you might want to read his background carefully and ignore the sneeering tone the paper and the blogger quoting it have adopted.

That being said, I don't have any confidence in the guy, and agree that he must go. If you are completely unaware of facts-on-the-ground that are clear to any common citizen with FOX NEWS on, then you can't be counted on to run the show should Al-Qaeda lights off a dirty bomb in downtown Anywhere, USA.

[Darnright]

PD, want to comment on this thread, please?

[Yosemitest]

Michelle Malkin is great and should be a shining example to all our children. The Cutting Edge: IT'S IDEOLOGICAL, NOT RACIAL.

[bert]

Unfortunately she is wrong. She is not competant to make the request she made.

She would have done better to keep silent.

[Just mythoughts]

BUMP

[bobwoodard]

A couple of things, I think he probably deserves a pass on the assesment of looting/security situation since you had the NO Mayor, Governor, Atty General of LA, and one of the Senators saying that the looting wasn't too bad, it was acceptable, it was understable and it was only for life sustaining items. If I had the people in charge of the area telling me not to worry about it, I'd focus on something else that seemed more pressing.

Also, in our (FL's) case I seem to remember FEMA worked through the City/State officials, which makes me wonder when you have the collapse of the local government (NO), how long does it take to actually figure that out, what do you do in that case and how long does it take to happen?

[OKSooner]

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Sounds like one of those statements that could mean more than one thing. Maybe it means something like "for now I'll help you save face."