The Cost of Uncaring Ignorance and Deception

While the chair of the Senate committee investigating federal "response" to hurricane Katrina accuses the administration of trying to run out the clock without providing information ("My staff believes that [the Department of Homeland Security] has engaged in a conscious strategy of slow walking our investigation in the hope that we would run out of time to follow the investigation's natural progression to where it leads,"), the Washington Post has found some highly damaging documents which show that "In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property..."

To be somewhat flippant about it, Katrina is the new 9-11. It is the nexus of certain kinds of fears and insecurities, in a situation that is more likely to recur and affect more Americans than another terrorist attack.

A government that cares about the future would be working to fix the system that failed, rather than hiding its failure.