Heckuva job, Brownie:
Party politics played a role in decisions over whether to take federal control of Louisiana and other areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, former FEMA director Michael Brown said Friday.
Some in the White House suggested only Louisiana should be federalized because it was run by a Democrat, Gov. Kathleen Blanco, Brown told a group of graduate students at a lecture on politics and emergency management at Metropolitan College of New York.
Brown said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the hurricane be federalized, making the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster.
“Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking we had to federalize Louisiana because she’s a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,” he said.
Paging Sen. Lieberman. Sen. Lieberman? Joe, where are you?
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, was taken to the woodshed by Texas Congressional Democrats in a secret meeting in Washington on Friday:
Members described the meeting as frank and candid, at times testy, though never hostile. They said they reminded Perry, a Republican, that a redistricting plan he helped push through the Texas Legislature had cost their state possible chairmanships of the Agriculture, Homeland Security and Rules committees.
“We told him now that we are in the majority … we control a lot of money,” said Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi.
Uh, well, that’s pretty blunt.
Hillary Clinton launches exploratory committee for 2008 presidential campaign: “I’m in. And I’m in to win.”
Democrats add calcium to diet; spines stiffen.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV):
Mr. Rockefeller was biting in his criticism of how President Bush has dealt with the threat of Islamic radicalism since the Sept. 11 attacks, saying he believed that the campaign against international terrorism was âstill a mysteryâ to the president.
âI donât think he understands the world,â Mr. Rockefeller said. âI donât think heâs particularly curious about the world. I donât think he reads like he says he does.â
He added, âEvery time heâs read something he tells you about it, I think.â
Intensifying a war of words over a U.S. troop buildup in Iraq, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused President George W. Bush on Friday of playing politics with soldiers’ lives, a charge the White House called “poisonous.”
“The president knows that because the troops are in harm’s way that we won’t cut off the resources,” Pelosi, head of the Democratic-led House, told ABC’s “Good Morning America. “That’s why he’s moving so quickly to put them in harm’s way.”
Want to watch Hillary discuss her decision to enter the race?
We have some video for you here.
How’d she do?
A staggering 68 percent of Americans are opposed to the surge, according to the latest Newsweek poll.
You may recall the President announcing, during his primetime address on Iraq, the creation of a bipartisan working group to coordinate between the White House and Congress on the war on terrorism:
Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror. This group will meet regularly with me and my administration; it will help strengthen our relationship with Congress.
Nice touch there, using Lieberman as a wedge.
But Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have refused to be drawn into the Bush-Lieberman dog and pony show, sending a letter to the President yesterday declining the invitation:
We believe that Congress already has bipartisan structures in place, like the committee system and other Congressional working groups such as the Senateâs National Security Working Group, that could produce the result you described in your speech.
We look forward to working with you within these existing structures, in a bipartisan and fully consultative way, to make progress on efforts against terrorism and other important matters.
A weak and unpopular President and his token Democrat.