Blanco Releases Katrina Records
Sunday, December 04, 2005
(SNN Shreveport) Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco released, on Friday night, 100,000 pages of records hoping to shed new light on clashes between state officials, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, and administration and FEMA officials.
The 100,000 pages seem to support Governor Blanco's version of events.
The 100,000 pages of e-mails, memos and communiqués seem to support Governor Blanco's version of events. The documents show the Governor Blanco firmly in command attempting to marshal her forces while large quantities of aid from FEMA officials failed to show up.
Within the documents, there is a surprisingly scathing commentary by Representative Charlie Melancon, who describes the attitude of the president's handling of the situation as nonchalant. As many may remember, the President, during the early days of the catastrophe, was playing guitar, eating cake, and calling Governor Blanco "the other big easy". In addition, the president said that Governor Blanco has a nicely rounded "tushy".
The Washington Post article is actually a little bit better
The documents were originally prepared in response to requests by two congressional committees investigating the federal response to Katrina. White House spokesman Dana Perino said that she had not seen the documents. Perino said that it was more important at this point to "take stock of what happened, act on it, and then make sure it doesn't ever happen again."
Admittedly, it's hard to blame the White House for not looking through 100,000 pages of documents. We NewsBlog 5000 looked at the hundred thousand pages of documents and then decided to just write a story based on the Washington Post article, which is actually a little bit better at covering these issues and well you know they are a big news organization. We have, like, six guys so it's not like we have time to just sit around reading documents all day, really.
