First up: political reasons why the Bush Administration didn’t federalize the relief effort. Bush/Card/Rove and company should know by now that no matter what they do it will be wrong in the eyes of the left and just done what it took to save lives and relieve suffering. Although when the final numbers are in I predict Katrina will have about the same body count as 9/11.

Instead, the Washington officials decided to rely on the growing number of National Guard personnel flowing into Louisiana, who were under Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco’s control. The debate was triggered as officials began to realize that Hurricane Katrina exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration’s senior homeland security officials, the hurricane showed the failure of their plan to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated and unable to act quickly until reinforcements arrive on the scene…..But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.

“Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?” asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.
http://nytimes.com/2005/09/09/national/nationalspecial/09military.html?ei=5094&en=29839ee3ffe8c2ba&hp=&ex=1126238400&adxnnl=1&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&adxnnlx=1126236989-fSoeMZQuZ+3iSeSg1ozCcQ

Next: relief organizations complain about individuals taking the initiative to bring relief supplies into the region. Part of me wonders if they haven’t caught the same “we are professionals and you aren’t, so butt out” mentality from DHS.
How many times have you chewed on a dollar bill when you’re hungry?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702070_pf.html

And rebutting the “Bush didn’t fund the levees” nonsense:

over the five years of President Bush’s administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large…..For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations……the Bush administration’s funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration’s for its past five years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702462.html

Transcript of Special Report with Brit Hume from Wednesday night