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

Mary, Mary (Quite) to the contrary

Investor's Business Daily:

Louisiana's senior senator, whose brother is lieutenant governor and whose father was New Orleans' mayor, is blaming President Bush for "the staggering incompetence of the federal government." Come again?

It's understandable that on the Sept. 4 edition of ABC's "This Week," Mary Landrieu said of President Bush, "I might likely have to punch him — literally" if he or members of his administration made any more disparaging remarks about local authorities and their pre- and post-Katrina efforts. Some are and were family.

Brother Mitch Landrieu is lieutenant governor of Louisiana. Father "Moon" Landrieu was not only mayor of New Orleans, but also later became secretary of housing and urban development under President Carter.

If anyone had clout in Washington, it would be this family and this swing-state senator. She could easily have traded her vote on a key issue or nomination for needed funding, a common practice in Washington. If funding for levee repairs was less than adequate, she was in a position to get more.

Likewise, ex-Sen. John Breaux was arguably the most influential senator in Washington during the Clinton years, and could easily have gotten more funding, if nothing else, in an effort to break the growing GOP hold on the South.

But if all money ever asked for was appropriated, as Breaux himself has said, everyone knew that the levee system was designed for a Category 3 hurricane, and not for a "once every hundred years" storm that could put New Orleans under 20 feet of water. And the track record of how money that was appropriated was actually spent is not good.

Despite Landrieu's complaints of budget cuts and paltry funding, the fact is that over the five years of the Bush administration, Louisiana has received more money — $1.9 billion — for Army Corps of Engineers civil works projects than any other state, and more than under any other administration over a similar period. California is a distant second with less than $1.4 billion despite a population more than seven times as large.

There is more and the locals do not look any better. Landrieu is speaking in the Democrat tradition of avoiding responsibility and blaming others for their messes. Her demogogery becomes more shrill as the facts "leak" out.