MARK TAPSCOTT ON KATRINA FRAUD: I TOLD YOU SO!

Remember the news photo of Bush flying over New Orleans and looking down on the devastation? He got lots of grief for not going there and being physically on the ground in the aftermath of the storm.

I told colleagues at the time that the attitude embodied by that picture could cost the Republicans control of Congress because I knew the billions in disaster aid that would follow would become a nightmare of waste, fraud and abuse unless the whole thing was done out in the open.

It was that same attitude of resistance to openness that led the GOP congressional majority to refuse to come clean on earmarks and to their view that they could buy their way to re-election with boondoggles and billions of new federal spending just like the Democrats had done for 40 years before them.

But have they learned their lesson yet?