Katrina Coverage

CNN appears to have usurped the scooping rights of WAFB in this case, so lets look at them first. In "Investigation Launched Concerning Looting by NOPD Officers" they describe how one of their reporters went to the Amerihost Inn and Suites and found out that some NOPD officiers had holed up on the 10th floor […]

FEMA is paying contractors an average of $2480 to nail down blue tarps on damanged roofs. It's a two-hour job, and FEMA is providing the tarps for free. A company in Austin says they'd do the job for just $300: "Fixing roofs on Gulf Coast proves costly for taxpayers".
The contractors point out that they have […]

You might remember this from June. The NOPD - apparently directed by Eddie Compass - hired a deputy of Louis Farrakhan, Dennis Muhammad, to give their cops "sensitivity training":
[…the hiring came] after a rise in "anti-police" sentiment in the city.
In an item picked up by the Drudge Report, Police Chief Eddie Compass explained that […]

I find this hard to believe:
New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard, whose forensic team has conducted scores of autopsies on the 650 or so bodies recovered from New Orleans says he has run across only seven gunshot victims. "Seven gunshots isn't even a good Saturday night in New Orleans," Dr. Minyard says.
There's an interesting addition provided […]

Douglas Brinkley is a historian who's writing a book on Katrina. He also accompanied Sean Penn on his boat trip.
He appeared on O'Reilly's show yesterday. While I didn't see it:
OR has got some guy on there (the guy who wrote kerry's bio) and he is reaming Nagin a new one. He won't a federal investigation […]

According to CNN-USA Today-Gallup, 70% approve of Bush's response to Rita. That contrasts with 40% who approved of his response to Katrina.
His overall job approval rating is 45% according to both that and a recent Fox poll.

From this:
The number of people out of work because of Hurricane Katrina has reached 279,000, and many more job losses are expected because of Hurricane Rita. The lost jobs, coupled with surging energy prices, are expected to deliver a sharp blow to overall economic growth in the second half of this year. Also of concern […]

According to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson:
"Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time…New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again."
This from the Houston Chronicle's "New Orleans' racial makeup up in […]

Two weeks ago, the head of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, Johnnie Burton, said that there had been minimal damage to underwater oil and gas pipelines. Now, her office has changed that estimate of the damage:
"It appears that way," said MMS spokesman Gary Strasburg, who pointed out that Burton's comments were based on initial […]

Lisa Myers of NBC reports in "New Orleans levee reported weak in 1990s":
NBC News has obtained what may be a key clue, hidden in long forgotten legal documents. They reveal that when the floodwall on the 17th Street Canal was built a decade ago, there were major construction problems — problems brought to the attention […]