Senate Hearings On Katrina

Doing some outlining/structural work on my book, while watching the Katrina hearings on C-SPAN for entertainment. Oh, we have blamings, and finger pointings, and convenient "I forgot who I talked to"s. Of course, now it's come out that the White House knew about the levee breach on the first day. "Brownie" was pretty quick to turn on Homeland Security now that he's no longer on their payroll, accusing them of shunting disaster planning to the side to focus on terrorism. Federal officials are stuttering. "Well, we weren't sure of our information," whines one. "We had reports of a broken levee, but on TV I saw people partying in the French Quarter!" Susan Collins (R-Maine) is displaying some appropriately non-partisan snark as head of the committee. (Rightly so, she's a St. Lawrence alumna.) Now they're disagreeing over their chain of command.

You know what I think? I think it's a two hour flight to Baton Rouge, and a one hour drive to New Orleans from there. Shouldn't someone higher up have GOTTEN ON A *@%#ing plane and gone to see for themselves?