Responsibility

I keep hearing from Republicans on the news that this isn't a time for blame. We shouldn't be playing politics with this tragedy. But what I haven't heard anyone on the news or even in the blogosphere say yet is that the issue isn't "politics" in the abstract term we ususally use it in. This reminds us that politics has real life consequences. This is really about responsibility. The federal government had a resposibility to the people of New Orleans. Those are Americans down there who just saw their city destroyed around them, and they were trapped in the ruins. Without food. Without water. Without medicine. And the president spend the first couple of days playing golf and having a barbecue. The secratary of state went to a broadway play and then went out buying thousand dollar shoes. It is perfectly legitimate to ask why the hell they weren't working 20 hour days trying to get relief and rescue efforts organized. Homeland Security and FEMA have both been shown to be completely incompatant. That's been evident to the entire country.

And now they're trying to weasle out this and pass the blame, and god damn it we're not going to let them get away with it. Not for some abstract political gain, to get a few more points on a Pew poll or something. But because if these people aren't held responsible for the thousands of deaths that have occured needlessly this week, then it will just happen again. I don't think one person involved in this catastrophy will be fired, and I want everyone to see that. Everybody needs to see that clip of Bush saying "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" or whatever it was. Because that's how this administration has been treating people responsible for intelligence failures and chaos in Iraq. And now this. And hopefully it will finally sink in this time, and the poll numbers will finally get to the point where even someone as stubborn as Bush will be forced to find some people who know what the hell they're doing to run these agencies that responsible for life and death mobilizations. And hopefully it will lead the American people to understand how important it is to have someone in office who's number one priority is not cronyism.

"If Necessary We Will Secede From The Union"

Taking a quick break from the disaster in the Gulf Coast. This is about a week old, but I found this on the LA Times website about a group called Christian Exodus that plans to move all their follwers to South Carolina and set up a Christian theocracy.

Christian Exodus activists plan to take control of sheriff's offices, city councils and school boards. Eventually, they say, they will control South Carolina. They will pass godly legislation, defying Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.

"We're going to force a constitutional crisis," said Cory Burnell, 29, an investment advisor who founded the group in November 2003.

"If necessary," he said, "we will secede from the union."

Looks like Bush hasn't thrown the crazys enough scraps, and they're getting angry.

His first six months in South Carolina have been idyllic, Janoski said. Not only do his neighbors wave as they pass by, but they also share most of his conservative Christian beliefs.

"If you're going to secede, this is the place to do it," he said. "A lot of the locals have that spirit."

Although Christian Exodus members are confident that they can capitalize on evangelical disillusionment with the Republican Party, local observers are skeptical.

James Guth, a professor at Furman University in Greenville who studies the influence of religion on politics, does not think that Christian Exodus will be successful beyond a county level.

"South Carolina is a state that is dominated by Republicans," he said. "Although there are people on the far right edge of the Republican Party … in general, the population is a big fan of Bush."

Nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, upstate South Carolina is the most conservative region of a conservative state: Bush won 58% of the South Carolina vote in 2004, and Greenville is home to Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist Christian college that until recently had banned interracial dating.

Cleatus Blackmon, treasurer and director of missions at the Greer Baptist Assn., which oversees 39 Baptist churches in Janoski's town, doubts that Christian Exodus' focus on taking over government bodies will appeal to the majority of the region's Christians.

"You don't find the word 'control' in the scriptures," he said. "The basic mission of the church is to proclaim God's redeeming love through the example of Jesus Christ."

But Christian Exodus activists insist that they will forge ahead, even if they end up polarizing the Christian community.

"We want to separate the wheat from the chaff," DiMartino said. "There's a lot of deception in the church. If the Republican Party says something, a lot of churches say it's gospel."

Despite its cynicism about the Republican Party, Christian Exodus plans to use the party's popularity to its advantage. Rather than running for office themselves, Christian Exodus activists hope to influence which Republican candidates win local primaries.

"All we have to do is put our guy on the ballot with an 'R' sign," Burnell said. "It could be a corpse and they'll vote for him."

Local Republicans, however, point out that they would never sit idly by while Christian Exodus took over.

"He talks about 2,000 activists, but I can easily get 4,000 activists," said Bob Taylor, a Republican Greenville County councilman and a dean at Bob Jones University. "There's incredible dedication to the [Republican] cause."

Don't you have some work to do?

Will Michael Chertoff get off the fucking TV? What the fuck? Doesn't this guy have a fucking job to do? His title isn't "Spokesman for Homeland Security Deptartment".

I think I saw him do a press conference on MTV about Hillary Duff's new haircut.

Even Utah Gets it

Link:

Unlike the Kansas School Board, which earlier this summer approved allowing educators to teach theories in addition to evolution that explain life on Earth, the Utah Board of Education on Friday unanimously approved a position statement supporting the continued exclusive teaching of evolution in state classrooms.
Only two people out of the dozens who attended Friday's meeting sided with Sen. Chris Buttars, R-West Jordan, and his proposal to allow teaching "intelligent design" as a theory to explain the origins of life.

I mean, how stupid are these people? More:

"SETI is an attempt to identify intelligent design in radio signals from outer space, signals with an intelligent origin rather than a natural origin," he said. "If we can try to detect intelligent design in signals we receive from outer space, why can't we detect intelligent design in genetic codes we see in biology?"
Buttars insisted that all he wants is equal time in the classroom - and it doesn't have to be the science classroom.
"Whenever anyone challenges the evolution people, they go berserk," he said. "[Evolution] is not a fact . . . We're dealing with censorship here. If we only taught Shakespeare in English class, that wouldn't be fair."
Some of the scientists retorted that science is not a democracy.
"Legitimacy is not determined by public opinion polls, radio and TV talks shows, privately published books and, most certainly, not by legislation," said Richard Tolman, a professor of biology and science education at Utah Valley State College.

Go Timmy!

Wow, Tim Russert screaming at Michael Chertoff (spelling?), screaming at him asking him how he and the president can say that they were caught off guard with the levee breaking. This guy keeps passing the buck, first saying that's not what he said, then saying that hell, the city's shaped like a damn bowl and anyone who left is just fine. It's those people who were stupid enough to stay behind that are all dead.

For once in his life, Russert not only calls him on the fact that those people left behind are all there because they were too poor to leave. Then he pulls out a print out of the Homeland Security web page that says they were responsible for natural disasters, so why the fuck didn't they have every boat, plane, bus, rickshaw, what have you down there getting these people the hell out of the city?

And of course, that's the city and the state's responsibility. Not his.

BTW, in case anyone has forgotten :

Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana

The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing.

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides, Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.

Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.

Hat tip to Atrios

Rehnquist Died

More:

His court decided that public schools can be sometimes be used for Bible study classes, that Congress can force public libraries receiving federal money to use filters to block Internet smut, that random drug tests can be given to students in competitive after-school activities or teams. The court also limited the use of affirmative action in college admissions and laid out rules for suing over discrimination in the workplace.
...

After being elevated to chief justice by President Reagan in 1986, Rehnquist gained the power to shape the court. Under his leadership the court scaled back criminal defendants' constitutional rights, limited the power of Congress to interfere in states' business and blurred the separation between church and state.

And while it's true that like all justices, the chief justice gets only one vote on cases, his vote is, practically speaking, first among equals. That's because he assigns the writing of certain opinions, runs the justices' meetings and in ways tangible and intangible is able to shape the high court's rulings.

At his weekly closed-door meetings of the justices, Rehnquist offered his view of a case first, essentially framing the issues for his colleagues.

In cases where his vote is in the majority, the chief justice assigns the writing of the majority opinion. On issues important to him, Rehnquist could choose to write the opinion himself _ as he did with the June 2005 ruling that a 6-foot granite monument with the words "I AM the LORD thy God" on the grounds of the Texas Capitol was a permissible acknowledgment of religion's place in society.

"In every domain that he cares about, the court has moved to some degree in the direction he wanted," said Sunstein.

And though the court was considered liberal when he joined it, Rehnquist lived long enough to see it dominated by Republicans. Seven of the current nine justices were named by Republican presidents. The court still usually broke 5-4 along ideological lines, because two GOP choices _ John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter _ usually voted with Clinton appointees Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.