Katrina Brownout

More trouble for Bush - former FEMA chief Michael Brown declared while testifying at a Senate committee that the White House was informed that the levees in New Orleans had broken right after Katrina hit the city, and he revealed feeling abandoned by the administration while he was trying to get things together in Mississippi and Louisiana during the storm's aftermath. Brown was not trying to absolve himself from blame, but he did paint a vivid portrait of the Bush White House's lack of coordination in the crisis. Brown was so exasperated with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he preferred to talk to Bush rather than Chertoff, his immediate superior. Half the time he couldn't even remember whom he was talking to by phone, though he remembered what he said. This has happened even as a new report is coming out that Vice President Cheney all but forced the CIA to come up with information favorable to the White House's case for invading Iraq.

Not good . . .