New Orleans drowns, Bush strums.

A hurricane hit the Gulf Coast on Monday. I'm sure you heard, but judging by the president's actions, perhaps he hadn't: he was strumming his guitar on a naval base on Tuesday, and only today has he packed up and headed back to Washington to address the problem. To his credit, Bush did cut his five-week vacation two days short (after giving a speech linking Iraq with 9/11 and World War II).

But long before that, he did the real disservice to the people of hurricane-stuck Louisiana: for fiscal 2006, Bush and the GOP cut $71.2 million in federal funding to the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, funds earmarked for hurricane and flood protection projects. At the time, Sen. Mary Landrieu said, "I think it's extremely shortsighted. When the Corps of Engineers' budget is cut, Louisiana bleeds. These projects are literally life-and-death projects to the people of south Louisiana and they are (of) vital economic interest to the entire nation." With New Orleans 80% under water, untold dead, and damage estimates soaring past $25 billion, we'll soon see how right Landrieu, unfortunately, was.

Race and reporting: How come white people find, but black people loot?