the chutry experiment

I can't see this Congress even allowing a serious investigation of how badly BushCo screwed up. But perhaps we can hope for something like a Republican Congressional Junta---serious-minded, truly patriotic Republican Senators going to the White House and demanding changes, insisting on the hiring of competent people for jobs like the head of FEMA and Homeland Security.

I wish the Democrats would start speaking up louder, and, yeah, I wish some of them would read my post and start using the words "moral failure." They could throw sin in there too.

What are the odds?

I can't imagine any real investigation, either, but I do think if the outrage is loud enough and clear enough, then some Republicans might at least demand that BushCo fire Brown and Chertoff and that FEMA and DHS receive adequate funding. For me, the call to impeachment is as much rhetorical as anything else.

And, yes, I wish Dems and other lefties would speak up on these issues. I do think your calling attention to the "moral failure" in not supporting FEMA is a productive starting point. Federal incompetence cost many lives and devastated hundreds of thousands more.

I'm conflicted about Dems speaking up right now--seems that BushCo have hung themselves pretty well thus far with their lies and confused stories and the media is angry enough that it's actually reporting some of that pretty well. The second Dems start yelling, the media will return to the "he said/he said" storylines and run process stories about partisanship. There will be a time, and maybe it's coming up very quickly, when the Dems will need to step up and hit hard, and I'd like to hear them talking about "moral failure" too.

Oh, meant to say, too, that I don't think there's any real possibility for impeachment but I do think there will have to be some hard-hitting investigations. It'll be pretty tough to completely stage manage this disaster. Dems will get to ask some very tough questions in the hearings, I hope.

I understood your "call" for impeachment as rhetorical, a means of calling attention to the Bush administration's failure to handle Katrina, one that is, in part systemic (cronyism, anti-science).

And, yes, I'm not looking forward to those "process stories" eiether, as much as I iamgine they are inevitable. I've been a little conflicted about the media coverage, but the genuine moments of horror and anger (Shep Smith's Geraldo's, and especially Kanye West's) have been pretty powerful.