Yes, evidently you can blame everything on George W. Bush

Did New Orleans Catastrophe Have to Happen? 'Times-Picayune' Had Repeatedly Raised Federal Spending Issues: "New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars."

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Print Story: Schwarzenegger Museum in Austria to Close on Yahoo! News: "A tiny Arnold Schwarzenegger museum featuring some of the training equipment once used by the body builder-turned-actor-turned-California governor is about to close, officials said Tuesday.

The museum, which also displays photos and paintings, is tucked into a corner of a fitness center in the Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium in Graz, a southern Austrian city near Schwarzenegger's home village.

The fitness center and the museum will close Wednesday because of financial problems, an administrator at the center said. She declined to have her name published because of privacy concerns. A letter sent to Schwarzenegger asking for financial help had gone unanswered, she added."

So you're saying there's a chance (Part XXXVII)

Trouble between Paris and Paris? Is there a possibility of the Adam, slipping in?

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | The Fix: "The Paris Hilton-Paris Latsis nuptials are again in uncertain territory after this weekend. Paris (er, the Hilton one) spent a few days down in Miami with the rest of America's celebrity world for the MTV Video Music Awards, accompanied by the producer of her upcoming album, Lil' Kim's ex-boyfriend Scott Storch. The two were seen holding hands and showed up at the awards show to walk the red carpet together. Either through intentional or genetically unavoidable vagueness, she shrugged off questions about whether or not she is actually getting married with: 'I don't know. I'm just having fun!' Hilton's pseudo-spokesperson Rob Zimmerman tried to spin the weekend another way. 'Paris is very happy and in love with Paris, and the wedding is still on,' he said. 'Warner Brothers flew Paris and Scott down for the VMAs to bring some attention to the album. They're just friends.' (Page Six)"

I'm shocked, shocked to read this.

The Pentagon firing a critic of the no-bid corrupt Halliburton contracts? No way.

Halliburton Contract Critic Loses Her Job: "A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.

Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander of the Army Corps, told Bunnatine H. Greenhouse last month that she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance reviews. Greenhouse's attorney, Michael D. Kohn, appealed the decision Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying it broke an earlier commitment to suspend the demotion until a 'sufficient record' was available to address her allegations."

Juan Cole on the shenanigans around the Iraqi Constitution.

Informed Comment: "The rule of law is no longer operating in Iraq, and no pretence of constitutional procedure is being striven for. In essence, the prime minister and president have made a sort of coup, simply disregarding the interim constitution. Given the acquiescence of parliament and the absence of a supreme court (which should have been appointed by now but was not, also unconstitutionally), there is no check or balance that could question the writ of the executive."

Whoops!!!

Can you imagine the shitstorm of accusations if a potentially damaging file on a Democractic nominee was lost?

Library Missing Roberts File: "A file folder containing papers from Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.'s work on affirmative action more than 20 years ago disappeared from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library after its review by two lawyers from the White House and the Justice Department in July, according to officials at the library and the National Archives and Records Administration.

Archivists said the lawyers returned the file but it now cannot be located. No duplicates of the folder's contents were made before the lawyers' review. Although one of the lawyers has assisted in the Archives' attempt to reconstruct its contents from other files, officials have no way of independently verifying their effort was successful."