MY DEAN INFORMS ME that the University of Tennessee Law College will be accepting 50 refugee law students from Tulane and Loyola. More info here.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS is accepting students from damaged areas for the duration.

EUGENE VOLOKH to the ACLU-haters: Bring it on!

TED FRANK on shooting looters:

I fully acknowledge that shooting looters is an inappropriately disproportionate response if one views looting as mere larceny. But one doesn’t shoot looters to protect property, one does so to protect order. Somebody is going to suffer unjustly when society breaks down. I don’t understand why Muller thinks it preferable for the law-abiding citizens to be the cost-bearers. History has shown repeatedly that the way to stop an anarchic riot is an early display of substantial force.

Normally, you don’t shoot people for stealing because we value life over property. But when people are, as Frank notes, looting hospitals for drugs at gunpoint and the like, things are out of hand and life-threatening violence looms.

When I was on Grand Cayman last month, several people told me that looting became a problem after Hurricane Ivan, but quickly stopped when the police shot several looters. That’s because looters usually value life over property too.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think that people helping themselves to emergency supplies are to be blamed, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. Those who don’t get this are either sadly uninformed or deliberately obtuse.

A BLEAK REPORT FROM NEW ORLEANS: A colleague sends this email. (Click “read more” to read it).

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JAMES LILEKS: “Last time I checked the French weren’t helping much, either – odd. The one place in the country where their guys could read the signs, and they don’t bother to pitch in.”

HELICOPTER VIDEO of Gulf Coast damage, from WLBT. Three different segments on their website.

MICHAEL SILENCE reports on the Katrina Flood Aid effort in the Knoxville News-Sentinel. And here’s his roundup of posts from Tennessee blogs.

NICE STORY ON MICHAEL YON in the Boston Herald.

NEW YORK TIMES: Owners Take Up Arms as Looters Press Their Advantage.

If you’ve got a week’s supplies, and a gun, you’ll usually do okay after a disaster. If you don’t, you’re in much bigger trouble, because it generally takes that long for some sort of order to be restored. We saw that after Andrew, and we’re seeing it again.

REGISTERING TO VOTE: New American citizen Jigsha Desai videoblogs the whole thing.

READER GREG BROOKS EMAILS:

You don’t know me – just another faithful instapundit.com reader here. But I trust your judgment so I thought I’d ask: Beyond donations, is there good to be achieved by driving down to New Orleans (I live in Kansas City) with a car stuffed full of bottled water, vitamins, antibiotics and stuff? I’m not trained in anything useful (just a public relations guy here), but it seems like a healthy person armed with a car could get some good done. Armed with a car and hip waders? Maybe even more good.

Your thoughts? Many thanks in advance for your perspective.

I’m no expert. My guess is that the authorities don’t want people coming on their own like that — but that if you show up, they’ll find something for you to do. If you go, though, be sure to be self-sufficient for at least a week, so you’re not a drain on rescue resources.

And be sure you’ve had your shots.

UPDATE: FEMA says do not self-dispatch.

GOOD IDEA: Eric Muller has set up blogs for the Tulane Law School and Loyola New Orleans Law School communities.

A BAD REVIEW for New Orleans’ Mayor Nagin:

During the last interview with the Mayor – I did not hear one word of ANY plan for the people who can not drive to get out of New Orleans. I assume there are some on the ground plans, but they certainly are not being adequately communicated to the press,

And just now a WDSU reporter is reporting seeing kids, as young as six and seven year old – on their own – with all their belongings in a plastic bag – begging drivers to take them out of the city. And when his news team left on the one bridge still open, there saw a line of the very old and the very young – people in wheel chairs – even more incredible – people being pushed on hospital gurneys – fleeing for their lives over the last bridge out of New Orleans.

The same reporter also gave an account of the gangs roaming and terrorizing the city.

We should all be asking – after all this time – why have buses and trucks not been commandeered to get the poor out of the city?

Why are the residents of New Orleans not being told HOW to get out of the city instead of just being told that they must get out of the city?

I’ve been wondering about this myself. The City’s response has seemed too-late and too-weak from the beginning.

UPDATE: FreeWillBlog: “I’m not ready to jump on Nagin just yet.”

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE offers a caution about donations to charity. And remember that you can — and should — check out any unknown charities at the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving site, Give.org.

MOXIE READS THE HUFFINGTON POST on Katrina, so you don’t have to! Thanks, Moxie!

UPDATE: Related post here. I want one of those flying cars. And they’d have been handy for people trying to escape the flooding, too . . . .

GAS PANIC IN ATLANTA: We’re seeing some of that here, too. Remember — even when supply isn’t under pressure, if everyone rushes to top off their tanks it’ll exhaust the supplies at stations.

UPDATE: Here’s a report that bogus rumors led to gas lines in Columbus, Georgia.

ANOTHER UPDATE: This, on the other hand, is not a rumor:

The price of regular-grade gasoline soared as much as 50 cents a gallon overnight as Hurricane Katrina forced suppliers to ration the fuel sent to filling stations and convenience stores. . . . “I would hope that all consumers recognize the really catastrophic event that occurred with Hurricane Katrina,” said Dan Gilligan, president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, in an interview yesterday. The Arlington, Virginia-based group represents about 8,000 marketers across the U.S.

“If consumers want to help, they need to find a way to conserve if they can,” he said. “Find a way to carpool for the next couple of weeks. If everyone would just decide to conserve a little bit, I think the industry can cope. If people are going way for Labor Day, maybe try to cut back the travel by 100 miles.”

Dartblog notes that high prices will encourage that. And reader Gerald Dearing reports from Atlanta:

Just returned from a short drive around the neighborhood (Norcross). EVERY gas station has lines out into the street, even the stations on the back roads. Except the Chevron (Peachtree Industrial & Medlock Bridge), which has shut it’s pumps down. Out, most likely. But I didn’t ask. Wasn’t anything like this at lunchtime when I stopped in for a fishwrapper.

WSB-am is devoting it’s programming to the crisis, mostly rumor control. Trying to calm the panic.

Governor Sunny has declared a “Gas Emergency”, whatever the hell that is. Radio said “State of Emergency”, radio reporters aren’t good at subtle distinctions.

Me? I think the panic is silly. But then I don’t need gas today. Or even diesel. I’m in for time off, and doing as little driving as possible.

Who knows what set off the rumors? But they spread quickly. Oh, well.

Things should settle down by next week, but gas will be expensive for a while. Glad I didn’t buy that SUV!

TERRY TEACHOUT HAS LOADS OF NEW KATRINA LINKS: Just keep scrolling.

JAMES JOYNER is publishing at his backup site because of the same sort of problems that InstaPundit has been having.

FROM SUPERDOME TO ASTRODOME? I guess that’s an improvement, but only a temporary one. People need to be spread out to real housing, not concentrated in temporary quarters.

BAD NEWS ON HURRICANE KATRINA RELIEF:

But mainstream Web sites that had jumped to pull in money for the tsunami victims showed no evidence of repeating it here in the U.S. for Katrina’s. Amazon.com, which raised more than $14 million for the American Red Cross in January via a donation link on its home page, didn’t have one as of mid-day Monday. Nor did Google, Yahoo, MSN, or eBay, all of which hustled earlier in the year to put up donation links on their portals. (Google slapped up an “Information about Hurricane Katrina” link on its Spartan home page, but that led to news sources and stories.)

An Amazon spokesperson said that the online retailer had no plans to post a donation link on its site. “Each case is different,” she said. “The Red Cross has essentially given over its entire site to donations. The tsunami came out of the blue, so it was an ‘all hands on deck’ situation, but the Red Cross has been getting ready for this and getting its message out there for several days.”

Maybe they’ll change their minds.

UPDATE: Yahoo now has an aid link on its page.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some readers are emailing them. That’s fine, but be polite. This is a bad decision that they can make right easily. Encourage them to do so, but also give them the chance to do the right thing. Name-calling, in my experience, seldom encourages people to do the right thing.

MORE: From Hugh Hewitt: “At 2:45 Pacific, we heard from Amazon that the company has changed its mind. Some one must have gotten around to asking Jeff Bezos.”

Bravo.

JAMES GLASSMAN looks at people who are exploiting Katrina for political purposes.

They’re also scientific illiterates. More here.

UPDATE: Steven St. Onge isn’t so sure that Glassman has the numbers right, though (see the link above) experts do seem to share Glassman’s view. Mark Kleiman also sends a link to this letter in Nature, though it seems to be a bit speculative, and conflicts with the New York Times article quoted earlier. On the other hand, it’s not like a NYT article is the last word.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Nick Gillespie is siding with Glassman and offers more links in support.

USING THE MILITARY in cases of civil disturbance and looting. Donald Sensing has an interesting post.

I’VE BEEN THE VICTIM OF A MASS DE-LINKING because I said that “demonizing the ACLU is a bit silly.” So much for suggesting that the critics lack perspective. That’ll show me!

Here, by the way, is the brief I worked on with them last. Related background here.

UPDATE: As in New Orleans, it doesn’t take long for the vultures to appear! Is this “link-looting?” Heh.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh. And this is funny, too.

BEYOND CHARITY: Wizbang has some suggestions for bloggers.