Katrina Hearings: Utter Waste of Time

I've only caught bits and pieces of this in the news, but every one of them makes me absolutely positive that this is solely a political game. Now tell me, is this fact finding or political games?

Pulling out a series of news reports as she questioned Chertoff during a House committee hearing, McKinney read the headline: "Nursing home owners charged in deaths," in the case of 34 residents who were not evacuated from the floodwaters in New Orleans.

"Mr. Secretary, if the nursing home owners are arrested for negligent homicide, why shouldn't you also be arrested for negligent homicide?" McKinney asked.

"It seems that chaos was the plan that was implemented," she said of the administration's slow response to the catastrophe. "Leadership, Mr. Secretary, was lacking."

Then there is the question of the military/FEMA being used as first responder. Several Governors don't like the idea. Unfortunately, Jeb Bush was one of the speakers. He is the Governor of the state that gets the most hurricanes, but he was backed up by others.

"If this process is federalized," the governor said, "then the innovation, the creativity, the sense of responsibility, the passion for service would subside. . . . If this responsibility is federalized, then that would be as big a disaster as any natural disaster that hits our communities."

Govs. Rick Perry of Texas and Janet Napolitano of Arizona generally agreed with Bush during a hearing in which lawmakers said they worried about the response if Wilma does strike with force.

Oh, for those that don't know Perry is a "R" and Napolitano is a "D."

The Gateway Pundit has an excellent piece on the Katrina Facts & Fictions. (got that from the geekWife.) It is supposed to be about the race issues, but there are facts listed that show that FEMA's response wasn't nearly as poor as people have been stating. I especially like this quote from the post-gazette.com .

"The federal government pretty much met its standard time lines, but the volume of support provided during the 72-96 hour was unprecedented. The federal response here was faster than Hugo, faster than Andrew, faster than Iniki, faster than Francine and Jeanne."

For instance, it took five days for National Guard troops to arrive in strength on the scene in Homestead, Fla. after Hurricane Andrew hit in 1992. But after Katrina, there was a significant National Guard presence in the afflicted region in three.

You think Ms. McKinney has bothered actually trying to find any of the facts, or is she still depending on Oprah for information? I think the geekWife had it correct that the MSM has failed miserably on this information. I'll conjecture that they failed far worse than FEMA did. (Yes, I think FEMA had failures in this, but they aren't as horrific as the MSM and the Looney Left would have the rest of the world believe.)