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Well, there is another New Orleans out there. It is inevitable. And we’re thinking about it now as much as we were thinking then about the first New Orleans, which is to say: not much. We think about disasters after they happen. That’s just how we are.
A national Disaster Review Board that encourages people to move? Please.
Associated Press:
WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday passed legislation that could greatly expand private property rights under the environmental law that is credited with helping keep the bald eagle from extinction but also has provoked bitter fighting.
[…]
The bill would require the government to compensate property owners if steps needed to protect species thwarted development plans.
[…]
The changes were pushed through by the chairman of the House Resources Committee, GOP Rep. Richard Pombo. The California rancher contends the current rules unduly burden landowners and lead to costly lawsuits while doing too little to save plants and animals. (Link)
The vote was 229-193. The House rewrite faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
ADDED: Roll call here.
Reuters:
SAN FRANCISCO — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a widely expected move vetoed a bill on Thursday that would have allowed gay couples to marry.
The Republican governor had said earlier this month that he would veto the bill passed by California’s Democrat-led legislature. The bill was the first of its kind approved by a state legislature.
Schwarzenegger said he would leave the issue of same-sex marriage to the courts and voters, who approved a ballot measure five years ago defining marriage as between a man and woman.
“I do not believe the legislature can reverse an initiative approved by the people of California,” he said in a written statement.
“This bill simply adds confusion to a constitutional issue,” Schwarzenegger wrote. “If the ban of same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, this bill is not necessary. If the ban is constitutional, this bill is ineffective.”
Relatedly, hopefully:
These and other red-state Democrats who backed Roberts pose the biggest challenge to liberals hoping for a united party front if Bush nominates a staunch conservative next.
Says she:
My source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations.
According to the New York Times, her source was I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. This will come as a big disappointment to the Rove haters. (Link)
ADDED: Reportedly, Mr. Lewis released Ms. Miller from her vow of silence more than a year ago. And yet for the last three months, she sat in jail so she could stand on principle?! Okay. Put on her the list of people you can trust with the house keys.
ADDED (II):
I have no idea why this principle was important to Miller, or why Libby apparently waited until now to give Miller a “personal” waiver on top of the general one he issued long ago.
The entire Plame story, in my opinion, is one of the most overblown of modern times. The real story here is about her husband Joe Wilson, who, at his wife’s instigation, was sent on a diplomatic mission to Niger for which he was ill-suited, and who then lied about his own findings there in a New York Times op-ed, for the purpose of damaging President Bush politically. Joe Wilson is one of the great scoundrels of recent times, but you wouldn’t know it unless you are a regular reader of this or a handful of other sites. If you search our site for “Joe Wilson” or “Joseph Wilson,” you will find a link to the Congressional report that concluded that Wilson is a liar. (John at Power Line)
ADDED (III): Hold the keys!
Something about this seems fishy to me. (Orin at The Volokh Conspiracy)
If you have, good. (And please, don’t act like a Democrat by voting again.) But if you haven’t voted yet, what’s stopping you?
I rather doubt that the Republican blogosphere is representative of the GOP as a whole. Most of us are a little more libertarian than the average Republican. Still, people are paying attention to Patrick’s survey. And participating in it is your opportunity to let your candidate know that he or she can muster support.
So go vote! (Need a recommendation? Hit it for Rudy.)
In brief, the story you already know:
A grand jury in Austin charged [House majority leader Tom] DeLay, 58, and two associates already facing criminal charges with a single count of criminal conspiracy, accusing them of improperly funneling corporate donations to Republican candidates for the Texas legislature.
Now before going any further, let’s stipulate to the obvious:
We knew all along that Tom DeLay was a bully — ask the Heritage Foundation about his penchant for petty grudges. We knew all along that he was, on a fundamental level, unprincipled — ask him about the fat in the Federal budget. We knew all along that he was mostly interested in power for its own sake — recall, please, that he sought a House rules change to protect his leadership position in this very circumstance. And we knew that if it came to an indictment, it would be the end.
Agreed. But I’m not interested here in whether Tom DeLay is a power hungry politician who’s forgotten his principles, or even whether Ronnie Earle is a partisan hack who’s engaged in a political prosecution. I’m interested in the narrow question raised by the indictment: Did Tom DeLay violate the law? The answer is no.
• The grand jury indicted Mr. DeLay and his associates for a violation of Texas Penal Code § 15.02, Criminal Conspiracy.
• The object offense (i.e., the predicate of the alleged conspiracy) is a violation of Texas Election Code Sections 253.003, 253.094 and 253.104.
• The indictment alleges that Mr. DeLay and his associates conspired to make an unlawful contribution of corporate money to a political party within 60 days of an election. Specifically:
“[a] contribution was made directly to the Republican National Committee, a political party, during a period beginning sixty days before the date of a general election for state and county officers and continuing through the date of the election, and indirectly to candidates for the Texas House of Representatives, and that said contribution included a prohibited contribution by a corporation …”
• The indictment’s description of the Republican National Committee (RNC) as a “political party” is important; indeed, I think it key. You will search the Texas Election Code in vain for a definition of “political party.” What you’ll find instead is a lot of inferential evidence that for purposes of the statute, a “political party” — to whom corporate contributions were prohibited during the time in question — is a state-level creature, which the Republican National Committee is not. You’ll also find a definition of “political committee” as “a group of persons that has as a principal purpose accepting political contributions or making political expenditures,” which the Republican National Committee is. But the statute doesn’t prohibit corporate contributions to political committees.
• Texans for a Republican Majority (TRM), a political committee, took money from corporations, including Sears and Bacardi. Since corporations cannot make contributions to Texas House candidates, TRM sent the corporate money it collected to the Republican National State Elections Committee (RNSEC), an arm of the RNC. The RNSEC then exchanged — or, if you prefer, laundered — the (prohibited) corporate contributions for (permissible) personal contributions and paid out the latter to Republican candidates for the Texas Legislature. Was this a way of getting around the statute? Yes, of course. But as Brit Hume put it, the difference here is between a scheme to violate the law and a scheme to avoid violating the law. (By the way, the “laundering” of soft for hard dollars is a practice employed by Texas Democrats and Republicans alike, with no one having ever thought anything of it before now.)
• If there was no predicate offense, then there could be no conspiracy to commit the predicate offense. And if there was no conspiracy to commit the predicate offense, then Mr. DeLay is not guilty of the charge contained in the indictment. (Incidentally, even were we to assume that a violation of the law occurred, thus making the conspiracy charge at least plausible, the indictment offers no evidence at all that Mr. DeLay was party to it. If you doubt this, read for yourself the short-on-particulars work of the Travis County Grand Jury.)
And now, the fun begins …
More in due course.
UPDATE — Sorry for the absence of blogging this evening. But I’ve been trying to reconcile Tom DeLay’s indictment for criminal conspiracy — see Texas Penal Code § 15.02 — with the Texas Election Code, a violation of which is the alleged predicate of the conspiracy.
I’ll have more tomorrow. But for now suffice to say the indictment stinks. Per Paul Burka, editor of Texas Monthly:
I doubt that the case will go to trial. It would be a difficult and technical prosecution.
Yes, very difficult. Especially since no crime has been committed.
And when it’s the GOP presidential nomination you want, that’s quite a handicap.
(BUMPED TO TOP)
But if I lived in New York, this would be enough to get me to vote for him.
Baseball Crank:
But based on what we know so far, there is absolutely zero reason to believe that Frist did anything wrong, or that he will or should be in any legal jeopardy.
Sen. Bill First, R-TN, is a sorry majority leader and a highly implausible presidential candidate. (His chances of winning the 2008 GOP nomination are only slightly better than my own.) But that doesn’t make him a crook — especially when, as the Crank explains well, there’s not now any basis for thinking he’s done anything wrong.
From an MSNBC article on the impending confirmation of John G. Roberts Jr. as the 17th chief justice of the United States and the upcoming fight over Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement: “Democrats are trying to use floor speeches to pressure [President Bush] into picking a mainstream conservative instead of a hard-line conservative.”
Fascinating. Does anybody know what that means? What is a “mainstream conservative”? And how does such a conservative compare and contrast with a “hard-line conservative”? Inquiring minds want to know.
Meanwhile, this from Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD:
I encourage President Bush to nominate someone for Justice O’Connor’s seat who will further unite the citizens of our great nation, rather than drive a political wedge between them.
How about if the president nominates somebody of good character and professional accomplishment whose record demonstrates an intellectually honest effort to apply the law as written, and who will leave the uniting or dividing of the citizenry to the politicians? How about that?
And finally, from Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-MD, on her decision to vote against Mr. Roberts’ confirmation as chief justice: “I have too many doubts about his commitment to nondiscrimination, the right of privacy and equal protection under the law.”
Well do you have any doubts about your capacity as a senator to vote for legislation that prohibits discrimination, protects the right to privacy or provides for equal protection of the law? If not, you have nothing to fear from a conservative chief justice — unless, of course, you expect him to do your work for you. (By the way, Sen. Mikulski, if you’re truly interested in a “right to privacy,” why not introduce legislation to repeal the Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. 801 et seq., and get the Federal Government out of the business of telling people what they can put into their own bodies while in their own homes?)
Adam Cohen in the New York Times: “Justice Breyer has just published a book, ‘Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution,’ which is in part a response to those, like Justice Antonin Scalia, who believe the Constitution should be interpreted based on the ‘original intent’ of the founders.”
Justice Breyer’s book may well be a response to those who believe in “original intent.” But if so, it’s not a response to Justice Scalia, for Justice Scalia believes no such thing:
… it is simply incompatible with democratic government, or indeed, even with fair government, to have the meaning of a law determined by what the lawgiver meant, rather than by what the lawgiver promulgated. That seems to me one step worse than the trick the emperor Nero was said to engage in: posting edicts high up on the pillars, so that they could not be easily read. Government by unexpressed intent is similarly tyrannical. It is the law that governs, not the intent of the lawgiver. [Bold added; italics in original.]
Justice Scalia is a proponent of textualism, not of original intent. There is a difference.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument on Wednesday, October 5 in Gonzales v. Oregon; the Government seeks to vitiate Oregon’s voter-approved Death With Dignity Act and displace the states’ traditional power to regulate medical practice. (This is, of course, not the first time the Bush Administration has sought to alter the constitutional balance between the Federal Government and the states.)
The Administration’s brief is here; Oregon’s brief is here.
I’m rooting for Oregon.
(Thanks to Polipundit.)
Let’s say you believe the following:
• the size and scope of the Federal Government should be reduced and its spending concomitantly cut;
• despite her defects, America is a swell country who deserves the affection of her people and a robust defense against her enemies;
• individuals should generally be let alone to make choices for themselves and to reap the benefits or suffer the consequences thereof.
First question: what are you?
Second question: how can you and other likeminded folk make your voices heard in the halls of power?
Jon Henke solicits your thoughts.
The New York Times on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s strong showing in pre-election polls of the city’s black voters:
The numbers suggest that these voters are up for grabs, evidence that the black vote has been undergoing a transformation and is becoming harder to predict.
That statement is wildly misleading.
Michael Bloomberg is a Democrat-turned-Republican for political expediency; more importantly, he’s a bona fide liberal. That a substantial number of black voters support him is not evidence of the black vote having become harder to predict, for the black vote is predictably liberal.
Whether African Americans in New York City vote for Mr. Bloomberg or for his Democratic rival Fernando Ferrer, they will be casting a vote for a left-of-center candidate, which is what 80-90% of African American voters usually do.
Partisan identification in the U.S. usually predicts ideology, but not always. Former U.S. Senator Zell Miller of Georgia is a Democrat. He’s also a conservative. Were I a resident of his state, I would have voted for him. But that would have hardly suggested a “transformation” in my voting pattern.
Perhaps the Times intended to say that New York’s black vote is now up for grabs between liberal Democrats and liberal Republicans, thereby suggesting an (inconsequential) change in partisan voting pattern. But if so, the article doesn’t make that point explicit.
I’ll add only that having lived here all my life, I watched as this city grew explosively while still managing to keep a small town mentality. A lot of us like that.
Associated Press (via Yahoo News):
Bush said he is interested in whether the Defense Department should take charge in massive national disasters.
“Clearly, in the case of a terrorist attack, that would be the case, but is there a natural disaster — of a certain size — that would then enable the Defense Department to become the lead agency in coordinating and leading the response effort?” Bush asked. (Link)
Yes, Mr. President, there is a natural disaster of a certain size that would warrant the Defense Department as lead agency. And that size is any size for which you’ll be blamed should relief prove inadequate.
I’m back home. Power is restored. And at least a few gas stations are open and selling product.
Thanks to everyone who expressed their well wishes either by comment or e-mail. And thanks also to my friend Jim for all his hospitality.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming …
Michael Ledeen:
Our main enemy, the single greatest engine in support of the terror war against us, whether Sunni or Shiite, jihadi, or secular, Arab or British or Italian or Spaniard, is Iran. There is no escape from this fact. The only questions are how long it will take us to face it, how effective we will be when we finally decide to act, and how terrible the price will be for our long delay. (Link)
Meanwhile, the GOP has its own problems:
Big-time Republicans tell me Bush’s profligacy is doing a great job of neutralizing the Dem advantage in the spending-is-caring stakes. This may have been true initially — in the same sense as undercover cops neutralize a massive heroin-smuggling operation by infiltrating it. But, if they’re still running the heroin operation five years later, it looks less like neutralization and more like a change of management.
• To reiterate, there is no gasoline in Houston; some stations might be resupplied tomorrow. With Houstonians ignoring official pleas to stay away and returning to the city already, let’s hope so.
• My institution is adequately staffed and I was waived off for Saturday and Sunday. But my condo building is without power and I’m staying with a friend in the Houston Heights. We drove around for a bit tonight on the off chance of finding a decent meal. No dice. Everything is closed. So we came home and had Ramen noodles. We’re hoping a grocery store is open tomorrow.
• Fearing Rita’s potential destruction, more than 2.7 million people fled the greater Houston area. The resulting traffic congestion was a nightmare. Drama queens in the media wonder what this says about our capacity to evacuate a major city in the event of a terrorist attack or other calamity. I can tell them what it says. It says shit happens. It says we might take it in the teeth. It says some things you just have to reconcile with the God of your understanding and then let go of. It says grow the hell up. For there are things even the mighty Leviathan cannot do. One of these things is to move suddenly millions of people from one place to another without delay or hassle.
Did we learn from this experience? Might we now improve on our procedures in case such a large scale egress is ever again necessary? Yes, of course. But in no event is the evacuation of one of the Nation’s largest cities ever going to move with the speed of the drive-up lane at McDonald’s. That fact could produce unavoidable tragedy. This time it produced only inconvenience. Grown-ups know the difference — and are grateful.
Much of Houston is without power. There’s no gas here. Virtually every business is closed. And the police are out in force to prevent looting.
So if you don’t have to come home just yet, please don’t. Otherwise, you’ll face coming in what you faced going out.
But other parts of the state — and maybe the Nation’s economy — are in trouble.
Meanwhile, fire rages in Galveston.
I’m at home. My shift today ended at 7 p.m. Shortly thereafter, it become became clear that Houston was threatened with no more than light rain. Since I live close to my institution, I saw no reason to ride my employer’s clock or not to sleep in my own bed. So I cleared my departure with management and left. I’ll return tomorow at 7 a.m unless I’m called off.
Yes, I’m relieved for my city. And no, Houston is not New Orleans.
Although I’d guess that most of Houston’s population has not evacuated — only the low-lying areas are subject to mandatory evacuation, anyway — some significant portion (40%?) has left. And most of the ones who’ve stayed are apparently at home. As I left the Texas Medical Center today, the streets were virtually deserted. My condo complex is unusually quiet. And all but a few stores and businesses have closed. It feels quite strange.
The latest projection from the National Hurricane Center has Rita making landfall to the north of Galveston. And she may by then be down to a category 3. If so, that’s all good news for Houston, as it puts us on the “dry” side of a less fearsome storm.
I’ll be part of the “ride out” team at my institution. We’re going in tomorrow at 5 a.m. and once the flood walls shut, we’ll be there until some time after “the event.” I take that to mean Monday afternoon. (One sweet thing: I’ll be on the clock around-the-clock at time and a half, which has me with one of these in mind.) Last night I went out and bought all my hurricane rations, and tonight I’m at home doing laundry. Later I’ll take the dog to a friend’s house.
I count myself extraordinarily fortunate to have as colleagues men and women who are decent, able, loving and fun-loving, and whose company I enjoy. If you’re going to spend a few days living with others in close quarters, you want it to be with folks as good as these guys and gals.
I’ll see all of ya’ll again early next week. For now, blogging off.
Evacuating the Nation’s fourth largest city is not easy:
Sixteen hours to San Antonio and Dallas. Eleven hours to Austin. With over a million people trying to flee vulnerable parts of the Houston area, Hurricane Rita has already become a nightmare even for those who left last night.
Hoping to speed the evacuation ahead of Hurricane Rita’s arrival, authorities decided to open the incoming lanes of two Houston freeways to outbound traffic for the first time ever. Plans to reverse the traffic flow on U.S. 290 were abandoned because of traffic problems it would create in Brenham and Giddings.
Quite understandably, however, Houstonians are not presently concerned with traffic problems in other cities:
Drivers weren’t willing to wait for the same to happen on I-10. Near Sealy, a stream of motorists who heard of the plan on their radios pulled into the inbound lanes and drove off. Their impromptu traffic management plan raised everyone’s average speed from stop and go to 55 mph.
If you’re inbound on a Houston freeway, I’d suggest you get your ass off the road.
And she could drop to a 3 by landfall.
Hey, we’ll take whatever concessions Mother Nature gives us.
UPDATE III — Can you believe the size of this thing? (Easy, fellas. This link is hurricane related.)
UPDATE II —
So you can see from this illustration the course change I refer to in the update below. Over the last 24 hours it had been looking as if Rita would strike around Matagorda Island (also shown). The latest projected landfall doesn’t put Rita “dead on” for Galveston, as I indicated earlier after watching CNN’s report. But as you can plainly see, it puts her much closer to Galveston than she had been before.
UPDATE — Good grief. I’ve been hoping since yesterday that Rita would shift direction and spare Houston. Well, she has shifted, according to CNN anyway. But the shift is ever so slightly to the north, which has it looking as if the eye of the storm is now dead on for Galveston. Of course, we’re still two days out from landfall and further course change is possible. So I can still hope, and I do. But right now, it doesn’t look good for us. It just doesn’t. What else is there to say?
Associated Press (via KHOU-TV):
GALVESTON — Gaining strength with frightening speed, Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast a Category 5, 165-mph monster Wednesday as more than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were sent packing on orders from authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina.
“It’s scary. It’s really scary,” Shalonda Dunn said as she and her 5- and 9-year-old daughters waited to board a bus arranged by emergency authorities in Galveston. “I’m glad we’ve got the opportunity to leave. … You never know what can happen.”
With Rita projected to hit Texas by Saturday, Gov. Rick Perry urged residents along the state’s entire coast to begin evacuating. And New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the misery-stricken city all over again.
Galveston, low-lying parts of Corpus Christi and Houston, and mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys and began drawing energy with terrifying efficiency from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Between 2 a.m. and 4 p.m., it went from a 115-mph Category 2 to a 165-mph Category 5.
Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and easily one of the most powerful ever to plow into the U.S. mainland. Category 5 is the highest on the scale, and only three Category 5 hurricanes are known to have hit the U.S. mainland - most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.
John Little at Blogs of War, who lives very near me (we’re both just outside of downtown Houston), has comprehensive coverage.
UPDATE III - “Rita becomes the third most intense hurricane on record”
UPDATE II — The latest (4 p.m. CST) “3-day cone” is up. Projected landfall still looks to be about 100 miles south of Galveston.
UPDATE — Houston’s traffic is a mess:
Traffic crawled along Houston’s freeways today as officials ordered the mandatory evacuation of vulnerable areas in advance of Hurricane Rita, which was chugging toward the Gulf Coast as a dangerous Category 5 storm.
Mayor Bill White and County Judge Robert Eckels said today that some mandatory evacuations would begin at 6 p.m. They encouraged residents to leave voluntarily if possible before the evacuations become mandatory, and it was clear that thousands of residents were heeding the advice.
Traffic was especially heavy on the south end of Interstate 45, the main evacuation route from Galveston and the Clear Lake area, moving somewhat faster north of Loop 610. Speeds averaged about 20 mph on I-45 through Houston.
Traffic is at a crawl in the city, as well. And the gas stations that still have gas are packed with customers.
According to radio reports, there are no more hotel rooms in Austin or Waco. I haven’t heard about San Antonio or Dallas.
I can also tell you that the anxiety level in this city has risen, as has my own. Unsurprisingly, my institution informed us today that it would declare an emergency come Friday morning. So unless the storm alters path, that’s where I’ll be this weekend.
UPDATE III — Parts of Houston now under mandatory evacuation, effective at 6 p.m. today.
UPDATE II — Rita is now a Category 4 hurricane.
UPDATE — Rita is now a Category 3 hurricane.
Associated Press (via Breitbart):
The Army Corps of Engineers raced to patch New Orleans’ fractured levee system Tuesday and residents were forced to decide yet again whether to stay or go as a new, rapidly strengthening hurricane threatened to flood the city anew.
[…]
The new threat was Hurricane Rita, which strengthened into a 105-mph Category 2 storm as it barreled past the Florida Keys into the Gulf of Mexico.
Forecasters said the storm could strengthen to a 131-mph-plus Category 4 and hit Texas by the end of the week. But a slight turn to the right was possible, and engineers warned that even a glancing blow to New Orleans and as little as 6 inches of rain could swamp the city’s levees. (Link)
I can certainly understand anxiety about another hit to New Orleans. (Can you even imagine that? Good grief!) But as of 11 p.m. last night, this was Rita’s projected path:
Now that looks like a hit to Matagorda, Texas, which is to the south of Houston. If so, that would put Houston/Galveston on the east side of the storm. And as I understand it, the east side of a hurricane is the “bad” side. Grrr.
• Rita went today from a tropical storm to a category two hurricane. The National Hurricane Center in Miami now projects the storm will strengthen to category four by tomorrow afternoon. Officials still expect landfall at Galveston late Friday or early Saturday. But a high-pressure system over the southern United States could cause Rita to turn north.
• I’ve been on the phone tonight talking with friends about what we all plan to do. Nobody plans at present to evacuate Houston.
• If conditions at the store I just came from are any indication, there’s already been a run on bottled water and perishable goods. I’m sure the stores will get resupplied tomorrow. But I suspect that by tomorrow afternoon, the window of opportunity for Houstonians to stock up on certain items will close.
• From listening to and watching people at the store, and before that at the barber shop, I’d say there’s a small measure of apprehension in the air, as you’d quite naturally expect. But there’s no panic. People are doing what they can and accepting what they cannot control, which seems to me very healthy.
• If history is any guide, I can expect my neighborhood to flood and lose power. So if I go off-line later this week, you’ll know why. It’s also possible that my institution will declare an emergency, in which case I may be there for a day or two. But if Rita does indeed come here, I’ll endeavor to post as much local news — and as many pictures — as I can.
• Of course, I don’t wish this storm on anybody else, and what I wish does not in any case matter. But you’ll understand if I have my fingers crossed that Houston/Galveston is spared.
“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech …” — First Amendment 2.0
Comes now word of the Government’s latest Nanny State initiative:
The new squad will divert eight [FBI] agents, a supervisor and assorted support staff to gather evidence against “manufacturers and purveyors” of pornography — not the kind exploiting children, but the kind that depicts, and is marketed to, consenting adults. (Link)
Oh, well. It’s not as if the agents might be needed elsewhere because there’s an ongoing threat to national security …
(Yes, I do realize that the Government can do more than one thing at a time. But is this in any case a productive use of our tax dollars? Or the best use of them with a war on?)
With Galveston a possible target of Rita, now a tropical storm but expected to grow into a hurricane, city officials are already calling for a voluntary evacuation, even though the storm isn’t expected to make landfall until Friday or Saturday. They’ll make the evacuation mandatory as Rita draws closer.
Meanwhile, the city is lining up the buses and volunteer drivers. Like New Orleans, Galveston has a lot of poor who lack private transportation; unlike New Orleans, Galveston has a mayor who can put two and two together:
Galveston’s evacuation is to begin at 2 p.m. Tuesday if the weather forecast holds, but five-day forecasts are often off by hundreds of miles. Galveston officials are likely to decide whether a mandatory evacuation is warranted by Wednesday.
[…]
Galveston is lining up over 80 buses to take out evacuees starting at 10 a.m. Wednesday and running through 2 p.m. Friday. They will leave from the island’s community center at 4700 Broadway, using buses from the city, school district and Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority. Volunteers will drive the buses and will be allowed to bring their families. (Link)
You can even take your pet on the bus if you cage it. How’s that for customer service?
Need transportation? Call 409-797-3710.
Need transportation and want to take your pet? Call 409-763-8477.
Need transportation for a family member who’s bed-ridden? Call 409-938-2424.
Every friggin’ angle. And all on their own. George Bush and FEMA nowhere in sight. Who would have thought it possible?
Galveston, props to you. Ya’ll got it together.
Salon:
Latin American authorities say nearly 300,000 people from Mexico, Central America and South America lived in Gulf Coast areas struck by Katrina, according to a report by IPS, the Inter Press Service News Agency.
[…]
“If you don’t have a Social Security number, it’s like you don’t have no damage, you haven’t lost anything, you don’t exist,” says Yarida Valladares. She leans forward with tears in her eyes. Valladares, a native of Honduras, is one of the thousands of undocumented immigrants whose lives have been erased by Hurricane Katrina and whose stories have been largely untold. (Link)
I’m sorry for Ms. Valladares’ losses. I truly am. But I can feel for her while still believing that it’s quite unreasonable to expect the U.S. Government to do for illegal aliens as it does for its own citizens. There is, after all — or at least there should be — value in citizenship (or even legal residency).
Perhaps Ms. Valladares might avail herself of this opportunity to go home.
When weighting a poll to reflect the demographics of military recruits, apparently this is what you get:
The study surveyed a sample designed to match the characteristics of a cohort of new US military recruits. 53.1% were Republicans, 17% were Democrats, 81.6% were male, 18.4% were female, and all were between the ages of 18 and 24. [Emphasis added.] (Link)
Christopher Tozzo at A Stitch in Haste:
The truly maddening part of this never-ending debate are the so-called “conservatives” who are aghast at judges who “find” rights in the Constitution. What can possibly be more conservative than adhering to the plain text of the Ninth Amendment? (Link)
What indeed? The Ninth Amendment says:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Now clearly, or so it seems to me, the Ninth Amend