Well…maybe now, more intelligent heads will prevail and we won’t be losing so many of our inherent rights as Americans….

Time will tell…

Source on CNN

Senate gives Patriot Act six more months
Thursday, December 22, 2005; Posted: 9:13 a.m. EST (14:13 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Senators voted late Wednesday night to extend some expiring and contentious provisions of the Patriot Act for six months after leaders announced minutes earlier that they had reached a bipartisan agreement.

Approval in the Senate, many of whose members said they wanted an extension so the act could be retooled, leaves House approval as the final hurdle to keep the Patriot Act intact for now.

The House will convene at 4 p.m. Thursday to approve the extension and to vote on changes that the Senate made to the Deficit Reduction Act and the military spending bill.

Last week, the House voted 251-174 to renew the 16 provisions after striking a compromise that altered some of them. The provisions were set to expire at year’s end if not renewed.

Controversial measures include those allowing the FBI — with a court order — to obtain secret warrants for business, library, medical and other records, and to get a wiretap on every phone a suspect uses.

The House approved a bill that would have extended most of them permanently, but a filibuster after the bill reached the Senate stopped the measure from moving forward.

Republican leaders tried to break the filibuster Friday, but could muster only 52 of the necessary 60 votes. Four Republicans crossed party lines to oppose the extension.

That vote came on the same day that The New York Times reported that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. residents, without warrants.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, cited the newspaper report as the reason he opposed permanently renewing the Patriot Act provisions, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, called the newspaper’s revelation “devastating” to the renewal effort.

Bush pushed senators to reauthorize the provisions, insisting they were vital to give law enforcement and intelligence agencies the tools they need to fight terrorism.

“I appreciate the Senate for working to keep the existing Patriot Act in law through next July, despite boasts last week by the Democratic leader that he had blocked the act,” Bush said in a statement released by the White House. “No one should be allowed to block the Patriot Act to score political points, and I am grateful the Senate rejected that approach.”

“The Patriot Act is a vital tool for America in the war on terror,” the president said. “The act has torn down the wall between law enforcement and intelligence officials to help us connect the dots and prevent attacks … The act will expire next summer, but the terrorist threat to America will not expire on that schedule.”

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, announced the agreement from the Senate floor after days of behind-the-scenes wrangling that ended the Senate impasse.

Frist had been one of the most outspoken supporters of re-authorizing the provisions, arguing that a vote against immediate reauthorization “amounts to defeat and retreat at home.”

In announcing Wednesday’s agreement, however, Frist said that the agreement to extend the act was evidence “that there is broad bipartisan support that the Patriot Act never should expire.”

“This is a win for America’s safety and security, and I’m pleased the Senate was able to rise above the partisan politics being played by the minority to do the right thing,” he said in a statement.

The Wednesday agreement marks a tidal shift among GOP leaders who have fervently resisted Democratic offers to temporarily extend the act so it could be revisited.

At least one Democrat applauded the new Republican sentiment.

In a statement calling the extension a “victory for the American people” because it strikes a balance between security and privacy concerns, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Congress now has time to “get the Patriot Act right.”

“I’m glad the president and Republican leaders have agreed with Democrats that we needed an extension,” he said. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to mend the Patriot Act. The wrong way is to force senators to cast their votes on legislation written in the middle of the night. The right way is the agreement we have tonight.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, has said the extension would enable common sense to re-enter the debate over the act. Before the Wednesday announcement, Leahy told reporters that 52 senators — including eight Republicans — had signed a letter to Frist calling for an extension.

Sen. John Sununu, R-New Hampshire, who co-sponsored the measure with Leahy, said there are “a number of different ways that we could work through this issue.” He added that an extension would give senators time to work out their differences on the act.

“I do think there are changes that can be made, acceptable to both the House and Senate, that will enable us to get strong, bipartisan majorities in both chambers,” he said.

The Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, created after the September 11, 2001 attacks, allows the government broad authority to investigate people suspected of involvement in terrorist activities.

My, my, my…is someone in the Halls of Congress starting to come to their senses?

Let us hope so…

SENATE BLOCKS PATRIOT ACT
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT Express
12/16/2005
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Friday blocked reauthorization of the broad anti-terrorism bill known as the USA Patriot Act, pushing Congress into a game of brinksmanship with President Bush, who has warned that the nation will be left vulnerable to attack if the measure is not quickly renewed.

With many Democrats and some Republicans saying the bill did not go far enough in protecting civil liberties, the Republican leadership fell short of the 60 votes required to break a filibuster.

The Patriot Act debate became a touchstone after the disclosure on Thursday night that Bush had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for terrorist activity.

Opponents of the extension of the measure are concerned that it would allow the government too much latitude in obtaining personal information, like library and medical records and business transactions, and conducting secret searches.

The vote was 52-47, with four Republicans joining all but two Democrats to back the filibuster. The bill’s opponents pushed for a three-month extension of the law to allow for more negotiations, but the White House and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist rebuffed their request.

Frist took the tactical step on Friday of switching his vote at the last minute to side with the backers of the filibuster, a procedural maneuver that allows him to bring the measure up for consideration again. After the vote, he said he would do so. “We will pass this bill,” Frist said, though he did not say when or how.

“This was the will of the Senate,” said Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., who led the opposition among Republicans. The chief Democratic opponent of the bill, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, said the votes would not change.

Source from CNN

Roadside bombs get Pentagon’s attention
Task force on insurgents’ ‘weapon of choice’ may get more clout

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — As the U.S. military’s death toll climbed further beyond 2,000, officials said Thursday they were taking steps to combat what has become the “weapon of choice” for insurgents — what the military calls improvised explosive devices.

The latest U.S. fatality — the 2,037th according to a CNN count of U.S. military deaths — occurred Thursday and was the result of a homemade bomb. The victim was a soldier assigned to the 43rd Military Police Brigade in the Baquba area, north of Baghdad.

The U.S. military also said that a U.S. soldier was killed when a roadside bomb destroyed his vehicle Wednesday in Ramadi.

Other methods were also used to kill in Iraq on Thursday.

In Baghdad, the bodies of 11 people were found, some slain execution-style and others showing signs of torture. In Baquba, gunmen ambushed an Iraqi army patrol, killing one soldier and wounding another.

But along with the kidnappings, ambushes and suicide car bombings — like the one that killed 20 people on Wednesday in Musayyib — the U.S. military has its hands full dealing with the homemade bombs that have killed many U.S. and Iraqi troops throughout the protracted insurgency.

Officials said the bombs are increasing in technical sophistication and that some are coming from outside of Iraq. (Watch: What senators were told about bombs — 2:26)

In Washington, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon is looking into placing a higher-level general in charge of a task force that has been studying ways to reduce the threat of remotely detonated bombs.

“The decision has not been made, but it has been discussed — that perhaps adding a three-star oversight to the effort might further enhance its ability to get things done,” Conway said at a news briefing with Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita.

“This whole effort to defeat IEDs is one of the most important things that’s taking place” at the Pentagon, Conway said.

Calling the problem “multifaceted,” Conway said the military wants to establish effective protection for troops, with the proper equipment and training.

He said the military wants to unravel the complex process used to stage the frequent roadside bombings and to break the “links in the chain” involved in detonating such an explosive. They are commonly set off using a cell phone or other radio frequency transmitter.

“You have to have a financier to put it all together. You have to have a bomb maker who has the expertise to actually create the device,” Conway said. “One person will lay it and another person will [detonate it ].”

Conway said: “It’s the only tool the enemy really has left in order to be able to take us on and cause casualties. And when we defeat that one method, you know, it’s over.”

The task force — launched in the summer of 2004 — has almost $1.5 billion to work with this year, Di Rita said. It has been headed by Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Votel.

Bombs entering Iraq
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, an Army spokesman in Baghdad, said Thursday that homemade bombs have “proven to be” the “weapon of choice” for many insurgents.

“[The typical insurgent] doesn’t have the capability or the courage to take on coalition forces or Iraqi security forces in direct combat,” Lynch said. “So in the wee hours of darkness, his people move out and emplace these bombs. They go off the next day and kill coalition force members, Iraqi security force members or innocent Iraqis.”

He said the bombs are becoming more sophisticated: “We have seen an improvement, an increase in some instances of technical capabilities of these IEDs.”

Lynch said the military is studying every aspect of the attacks to develop ways to fight the insurgents, including where the bombs were placed, their composition and their trigger mechanisms.

“We make a determination whether those bombs were made in Iraq. A lot of them are,” he said. “We make a determination of whether they were made somewhere else. Some of them are.”

There are “indications through multiple sources” that bombs and technology have been “transferred” into Iraq, he said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair last month said evidence points to Iranian ties to bombings in Iraq, though he added that Britain does not have proof. (Full story)

“We cannot be sure,” Blair said. But “there are certain pieces of information that lead us back either to Iranian elements or to Hezbollah.”

Lynch said a counter-insurgency academy in Taji, north of Baghdad, will focus on the study of insurgency and its tactics, including roadside bombs.

Lynch said Iraqis who oppose the current democratic process there represent the group that is “probably … behind most of these IEDs.” He said such insurgents include both Sunnis and Shiites.

He differentiated between domestic insurgents and foreign fighters and terrorists, who he said are responsible for huge, dramatic suicide attacks.

With 93 U.S. troops killed, October saw the highest number of American deaths in Iraq in a month since January, when 107 died.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Tuesday attributed those increases in fatalities to insurgents trying to disrupt the transitional parliamentary election in January and the constitutional referendum in October.

While the number of attacks using homemade bombs has risen, Pace said they are becoming less effective.

“The numbers of casualties per effective attack has gone down. That said, there are more overall IED attacks by the insurgents,” he said.

Pentagon officials said that in October there were about 100 attacks a day in Iraq compared with 85 to 90 attacks a day in September — and about half of all attacks involve homemade bombs.

Some military aircraft have been outfitted with onboard electronic jamming devices to stop some types of bomb detonation, and thousands of jammers on vehicles have also been sent to Iraq, according to the Pentagon.

In Washington, Conway said the military was studying similar tactics used in previous conflicts.

“Historically it’s been hard. If you go all the way back to the British experience in Northern Ireland, they had problems with it,” he said. “The Israelis in northern Israel and Lebanon have had problems with it, and we’ve tried to study what their experiences were and to learn from that.”

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/11/03/iraq.bombs/index.html?section=cnn_topstories

Source from CNN

Lawmaker: E-mails show Brown ‘out of touch’ during Katrina

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former Federal Emergency Management Director Michael Brown, who resigned after stinging criticism of his handling of the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina, exchanged e-mails about his appearance on the day of the storm and seemed “out of touch” after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, a Louisiana congressman charged Wednesday.

“In the midst of the overwhelming damage caused by the hurricane and enormous problems faced by FEMA, Mr. Brown found time to exchange e-mails about superfluous topics,” including “problems finding a dog-sitter,” according to Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Louisiana, who posted the e-mails on his Web site. (Copies of e-mails — PDF)

Some of the e-mails from Brown indicate he may have been overwhelmed by his responsibilities, Melancon said.

In an e-mail he sent the morning of the hurricane to Cindy Taylor, FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs, Brown wrote, “Can I quit now? Can I come home?” A few days later, Brown wrote to an acquaintance, “I’m trapped now, please rescue me.”

Melancon, whose district south of New Orleans was devastated by the hurricane, said Brown’s lack of leadership and concern is illustrated in more than 1,000 e-mails provided to the House committee now assessing responses to the disaster by all levels of government.

Melancon said that on August 26, just days before Katrina made landfall, Brown e-mailed his press secretary, Sharon Worthy, about his attire, asking: “Tie or not for tonight? Button down blue shirt?”

A few days later, Worthy advised Brown: “Please roll up the sleeves of your shirt all shirts. Even the President rolled his sleeves to just below the elbow. In this [crisis] and on TV you just need to look more hard-working.”

On August 29, the day of the storm, Brown exchanged e-mails about his attire with Taylor, Melancon said. She told him, “You look fabulous,” and Brown replied, “I got it at Nordstroms. … Are you proud of me?”

An hour later, Brown added: “If you’ll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you’ll really vomit. I am a fashion god,” according to the congressman.

The e-mails came from Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff, who oversees FEMA, following a request by Melancon and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Virginia, chairman of a House committee appointed to investigate what went wrong during Katrina, Melancon said.

Although Chertoff has not turned over all the documents requested by the committee, Melancon charged that the material received so far contradicts testimony by Brown before the committee in which he described himself as an effective leader.

Brown resigned in September amid accusations that FEMA acted too slowly after Katrina hammered Louisiana and Mississippi, killing more than 1,200 people. He defended the government’s response and blamed leaders in Louisiana for failing to act quickly as the hurricane approached.

He acknowledged he made some mistakes as FEMA’s director, but he stressed that the agency “is not a first responder,” insisting that role belonged to state and local officials.

Brown could not be reached for comment Wednesday night on the e-mails and Melancon’s charges.

The lawmaker cited several e-mails that he said show Brown’s failures. (Melancon’s analysis of e-mails — PDF)

For instance, two days after Katrina, Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA employees in New Orleans, wrote to Brown that “the situation is past critical.”

“Here are some things you might not know. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes,” Bahamonde said.

“The dying patients at the DMAT (Disaster Medical Assistance Team) tent being medivac. Estimates are many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for [Superdome] evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans in works to address the critical need.

“FEMA staff is OK and holding own. DMAT staff working in deplorable conditions. The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out. Phone connectivity impossible.”

Brown’s entire response was: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”

Two days later, on September 2, Brown received a message with the subject “Medical help.” At the time, thousands of patients were being transported to the New Orleans airport, which had been converted to a makeshift hospital. Because of a lack of ventilators, medical personnel had to ventilate patients by hand for as long as 35 hours, according to Melancon.

The text of the e-mail reads: “Mike, Mickey and other medical equipment people have a 42 ft. trailer full of beds, wheelchairs, oxygen concentrators, etc. They are wanting to take them where they can be used but need direction.

“Mickey specializes in ventilator patients so can be very helpful with acute care patients. If you could have someone contact him and let him know if he can be of service, he would appreciate it. Know you are busy but they really want to help.”

Melancon said Brown didn’t respond for four days, when he forwarded the original e-mail to FEMA Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks Altshuler and Deputy Director of Response Michael Lowder.

The text of Brown’s e-mail to them read: “Can we use these people?”

Melancon also charged that few of the e-mails from Brown show him assigning specific tasks to employees or responding to pressing problems

On September 1, FEMA officials exchanged e-mails reporting severe shortages of ice and water in Mississippi. They were to receive 60 trucks of ice and 26 trucks of water the next day, even though they needed 450 trucks of each.

Robert Fenton, a FEMA regional response official, predicted “serious riots” if insufficient supplies arrive.

Brown was forwarded the series of e-mails about the problem, but no response from him is shown in the e-mails provided to the committee, Melancon said.

Katrina came ashore along the Louisiana-Mississippi state line, after being downgraded from a Category 5 to a Category 4 storm. It flooded 80 percent of New Orleans. It was followed about a month later by Hurricane Rita, which caused more damage and flooding.

Melancon and several other Democrats from districts directly affected by Katrina were invited to participate as a ex-officio members of the Katrina investigative committee, though they have no formal role. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi refused to appoint any Democrats to the panel after GOP leaders rebuffed Democratic demands for an independent probe.

Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/03/brown.fema.emails/index.html

He knew the job was dangerous when it took it… Let’s hope he lasts…

A SHIFTING SPOTLIGHT IN A BLAZE OF CRITICISM
By TODD S. PURDUM
NYT Page One
10/27/2005

WASHINGTON — George W. Bush has been in the White House for 248 weeks, through a terrorist attack, two wars and a bruising re-election. But it seems safe to say that he has never had a worse political week than this one — and it is not over yet.

“I think all bets are off,” said former Sen. Warren B. Rudman, R-N.H. “Who knows what’s next?”

The biggest question for Bush now is what he can make of the 39 months remaining in his presidency. This singular week has been months — even years — in the making. The 2,000th American fatality in Iraq was just the latest daunting milestone in a war that will soon be three years old. The CIA leak investigation that threatens to indict a top White House aide or two on Friday grew out of the fierce debates over the flawed intelligence that led to that war.

And Harriet E. Miers’ withdrawal of her nomination to the Supreme Court is the bitter fruit of Bush’s own frailty in the wake of all those storms — and Hurricane Katrina — and of his miscalculations about how her appointment would be received.

Bush’s effort to avoid a fight by choosing a nominee with a scant public record (whose conservative fidelity only he could vouch for) instead prompted a ferocious backlash from the conservative activists he has courted for years.

“There’s all this talk about the Republican base and the conservative base of the Republican Party, and the conservative base of the president and how it’s important to play to the base and please the base and fawn over the base,” said former Sen. John C. Danforth, the Missouri Republican who was Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations.

“And look what it gets President Bush,” Danforth continued. “It just gets him a kick in the rear. That’s what they’ve done to him, and they’ve done it to him at a time when he’s vulnerable, and they’ve done it at the expense of a perfectly fine human being.”

Some scholars and Republican elders say it is now time for Bush to do what Ronald Reagan did when the Iran-Contra scandal threatened to derail his second term: Shake up the White House staff, retool his domestic and foreign policy agenda and move on. But most say they see few signs that Bush intends to do so.

“Assume there are several indictments,” said Richard Norton Smith, the head of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill., and a biographer of several prominent Republicans.

“Then,” Smith said, referring to the former Tennessee senator whom Reagan tapped as chief of staff to clean house, “the question becomes is there a Howard Baker moment? And if there’s a Howard Baker moment, who’s Howard Baker? There aren’t as many ‘wise men’ around Washington as there were 20 years ago.”

Miers’ withdrawal is all the more remarkable because Bush so seldom backs down. Again and again, he has racked up legislative victories that once seemed improbable, or at least managed to save face. His instinct, abetted by Vice President Dick Cheney, will once again be to grind out advances where he can find them.

In that sense, the abandonment of Miers seemed deliberate, an effort to shift the spotlight, however briefly, from the expected actions of the special prosecutor investigating the leak of a CIA agent’s identity, and reposition the president for a new confirmation battle with conservatives by his side.

But the president’s second term legislative agenda is at a standstill on matters large and small. His hopes for overhauling Social Security are dead for this year; the goal of reshaping the estate tax stalled with Katrina; and his administration was even forced to backtrack this week on its post-Katrina suspension of a law that requires paying locally prevailing wages for constructions projects financed by federal money.

The White House had argued that suspending the law, the Davis-Bacon Act, could speed hurricane repairs. But critics, including some congressional Republicans, complained that the administration was taking advantage of the disaster to upend a law important to unions.

Bush blamed Miers’ withdrawal on Senate demands for information about her views on important constitutional and legal questions during her service as White House counsel and in other top staff jobs.

“It is clear that senators would not be satisfied until they gained access to internal documents concerning advice provided during her tenure at the White House, disclosures that would undermine a president’s ability to receive candid counsel,” Bush said in a statement.

That seemed more a rationale than a reason, but Bush’s articulation of it now effectively precludes his naming Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Miers’ predecessor as White House counsel, to the court, as some aides have long suggested he might like to do.

“They’re not reaching out; they’re in a bunker mentality,” said one veteran Republican familiar with the thinking in the White House, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of offending the president. “The idea that they’re going to blame the Senate process for her going down says to me there’s no introspection going on.”

Second term presidents are notoriously insulated from second-guessing, and Bush has never been one to invite private criticism, or confess public error. His high premium on staff loyalty may well have led him to misjudge how his nomination of Miers — by all accounts the ultimate loyalist — would play.

“In the end, I always thought the thing that would bring her down was that she was his lawyer,” said Smith, the historian. “That makes people uncomfortable. It’s just too inside.”

Lyndon B. Johnson’s nomination of his longtime confidant Abe Fortas to be chief justice collapsed in 1968 partly for the same reason.

Richard D. Friedman, an expert on Supreme Court history at the University of Michigan Law School, said Miers’ withdrawal reflected the reality that modern confirmations had become “so contentious that the president has an incentive to pick somebody whose ideology he believes is compatible with his but about whom little is known,” while the Senate “then feels duty-bound to find out what it can about the nominee’s ideology.”

He added, “The nominee and the administration put up a wall, but in this case, it crumbled,” in part because of doubts in both parties about Miers’ stature.

The conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan wrote in Human Events Online that, by withdrawing, Miers “may just have helped” Bush “save his presidency.” In the same journal, Ann Coulter allowed, “Bush has us back on the team, ready to cheer for him unreservedly.”

But former Sen. John B. Breaux, D-La., who is pressing for the nomination of his home-state candidate, Judge Edith Brown Clement of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, had a much different view of what Miers’ withdrawal portends for Bush’s power to influence his own party, much less the opposition, for the rest of his term.

“It means,” Breaux said, “that the fear factor is gone.”

Ok…so it’s got a liberal bent….with a frosting of greenies…and maybe some tossed flakes on the side…

But, it’s funny…

http://www.climatemash.org/

Source

FEMA official in New Orleans blasts agency’s response
Regional director said top officials ignored his pleas for help
Thursday, October 20, 2005; Posted: 12:10 p.m. EDT (16:10 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Emergency Management Agency officials did not respond to repeated warnings about deteriorating conditions in New Orleans and the dire need for help as Hurricane Katrina struck, the first FEMA official to arrive in the city conceded Thursday.

Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA regional director, told a Senate panel investigating the government’s response to the disaster that he gave regular updates to people in contact with then-FEMA Director Michael Brown as early as August 28, one day before Katrina made landfall.

In most cases, he said, he was met with silence or a polite thank-you from Brown, who said he would check with the White House. “I think there was a systematic failure at all levels of government to understand the magnitude of the situation,” Bahamonde said.

The testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee contradicted Brown, who has said he wasn’t fully aware of the dire conditions until days later and that local officials were most responsible for the sluggish response.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who chairs the panel, decried the testimony and e-mail released by Bahamonde on Thursday as illustrating “a complete disconnect between senior officials and the reality of the situation.”

“His urgent reports did not appear to prompt an urgent response,” Collins said.

In e-mails to various FEMA officials, including one to Brown, Bahamonde described a chaotic situation at the Superdome, where many of the evacuees were sheltered. Bahamonde e-mailed FEMA officials and noted also that local officials were asking for toilet paper, a sign that supplies were lacking at the shelter.

“Issues developing at the Superdome. The medical staff at the dome says they will run out of oxygen in about two hours and are looking for alternative oxygen,” Bahamonde wrote in an e-mail to David Passey, an assistant to Brown, in late afternoon on August 28.

Less than an hour later, Bahamonde wrote: “Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast.”

Bahamonde said he was stunned that FEMA officials responded by sending truckloads of evacuees to the Superdome on that day even though they knew supplies were in short supply.

“I thought it amazing,” he said. “I believed at the time and still do today, that I was confirming the worst-case scenario that everyone had always talked about regarding New Orleans.”