A retired Marine major explains that FEMA is not a first responder.

I’ll have more thoughts on this later. But briefly, to the degree that this has been a PR disaster for the administration, it (unlike all of the other things, like Global Warming, and Racism in Amerikkka, and lousy movies out of Hollywood, and French disdain for us, and the hurricane itself) really is Bush’s fault.

Why? Because he’s not only done nothing to discourage the notion that the federal government should see every sparrow that falls, and immediately call in an air strike of a soft net upon which it can plummet, nurses at the ready, and grief counselors for the potentially bereaved sparrow family, even before it hits the ground, he’s actively encouraged it. As such, criticism of him as a “conservative” shows just how meaningless that word has become, a situation to which, for better or worse, he has been a major contributor.

[Update at 9:30 AM PDT]

Hugh Hewitt has related thoughts, and questions for Terry Neal and Brendan Loy:

What is the “police power?”

Where does it reside?

Is there a federal “police power?”

Can the federal government order the evacuation of a city when state and local officials have not done so?

Who has first call on a state’s national guard?

Who controls a city’s police department?

Can a federal official order a police department to deploy in strength to specific points within a city such as the Supredome or the Convention Center?

Can a federal official commandeer a city’s supply of school busses, city busses, and city personnel?

[Update mid afternoon on Tuesday]

Here’s another little bit from Bill Whittle’s piece from yesterday that’s pertinent:

A person of some modest education might have remembered that the worship and adulation fostered after 9/11 was for the NYPD and the FDNY. No one was buying FEMA hats after 9/11, because FEMA is essentially a mop-up agency. It’s the first responders, the local governments, that will determine if a city will live or die. The State — that means, the “governor”– has the sole authority to mobilize the National Guard, and the governor of the state of Louisana was not only slow to do that, she turned down NG assistance from several OTHER states as well. The President does not have the authority to drop precious egg salad sandwiches from Michael Moore’s missing helicopters. We do this ON PURPOSE. We limit the power of the federal government, as those of us fortunate enough to have spent time in Civics, rather than Self Esteem classes, are aware. This is so that we do not develop a central power so strong that eventually we end up with idiot inbred royals, or Presidentes for life, on the face of OUR money.