Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

The coincidence is not between Katrina and 9-11

James Robbins:

The coincidence of timing between Hurricane Katrina and the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has been irresistible to some commentators, particularly the president’s critics. The storyline is that George Bush handled the first crisis well, but in Katrina he met his match. The years of planning, of organizing, of preparing for large-scale emergencies of this type have resulted in a major city under water, its population displaced, and hundreds or perhaps thousands dead. The kindest critics only allege negligence; the harshest charge complicity.

Of course, the parallels between 9/11 and Katrina are at best inexact. Hurricanes are more frequent than terrorist attacks. They are more predictable. And they are often more devastating. Katrina is a case in point — the number of deaths may go well beyond those incurred on 9/11. But that will not in itself make the hurricane a more significant event. One cannot gauge the magnitude of events simply from body counts. Aspirin abuse accounted for about twice the number of American deaths in 2001 than the September 11 attacks, but who noticed?

The central difference between the two events is that Katrina killed many but murdered none. Though we give hurricanes human names, they lack consciousness and volition. They are natural phenomena, acts of God. They are no one’s fault. The 9/11 attacks, on the other hand, were voluntary and intentional actions carried out by 19 hijackers under the direction of Osama bin Laden, who came to personify the evil behind the acts. If you wanted someone to blame, he was your man, and for good reason. He admitted it.

...

Katrina has become for the critics what 9/11 could not be, what they wanted Iraq to be, the vessel into which they have poured all their frustrations for a broad assault on the president. The disaster has not only been used as a means of criticizing FEMA and the department of Homeland Security — which at least were involved in the crisis — but has also been used to indict the Bush administration’s views on the environment, taxes, stem-cell research, health care, race, military recruitment, the Supreme Court, labor outsourcing, and AIDS in Africa. To their ultimate shame, the Democrats have evenexploited the disaster for partisan fundraising. Ironically, the people who have most feared that President Bush is seeking to be a dictator are now complaining that he did not act enough like one.

Perhaps a better analogy is to Able Danger where perceived legal impediments thwarted an effort to name Atta and other terrorist and allow the FBI to take action. As this story in the New York Times indicates, perceived legal impediments thwarted a more robust federal effort early on the the Katrina aftermath. Lawyers and legalisms appear to be the bottlenecks to effectively fighting terror and responding to disaster.