KARL ROVE MUST HAVE ARRANGED THIS: Just as John Roberts is being quizzed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, another court declares the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional.

MELANIE PHILLIPS:

In the September 11 post below, I wondered how the media would respond to the revelations in Sunday’s newspapers of extreme anti-Jewish bigotry and Holocaust denial among Muslim advisers to the government on combating Islamist extremism. As I feared the reaction has ranged from silence to indifference, with more than one report even appearing to endorse some of the most poisonous prejudice at the core of the Muslim demand.

There is now a real feeling of siege among the Jews of Britain.

Read the whole thing.

DESPITE ALL THE MEDIA CRITICISM, Bush’s poll numbers seem to be improving. Interesting.

UPDATE: On the other hand, here’s a WSJ poll that shows Bush’s numbers falling. I don’t know which one is right, but I can guess which will get more coverage!

EUGENE VOLOKH says that Tony Blankley is leaving things out.

JEFF TAYLOR HAS STILL MORE ON THOSE BUSES:

Had there been a futures market on buses in New Orleans, the value of the buses would have skyrocketed as Katrina approached, signaling their increased utility in the emergency. But even without such an overt market signal, any private owner of the vehicles would have exhausted all opportunities to save his or her property. Nobody who owned such a potentially valuable product would have done what New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin did: let it all go to waste on the assumption that drivers would be impossible to find. Greyhound, after all, did not leave hundreds of its buses to be destroyed. And, of course, this very fact caused Nagin to scream for “every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country” to come to the aid of his city. And it should go without saying that no private employer would long tolerate a workforce that, in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s memorable description of New Orleans public sector workers, has trouble coming to work even on sunny days.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Reader Ross Booher notes this from CNN:

In the aftermath, the questions grew sharper: Why did aerial shots of the flooded city show hundreds of school and city buses window-deep in water? Why hadn’t anyone used those buses to move people out? Did Amtrak really offer residents seats on trains the company moved out of harm’s way? And if so, who refused that offer and why?

Of course, Booher adds:

CNN does not connect the dots by noting that if the City had evacuated citizens using the buses, trains, etc. as set forth in the City’s Disaster Plan, there would have been no need to rescue those same people from roof tops, the Superdome, the Convention Center, overpasses, etc. The city’s failure started a cascading effect.

Yes. And although it wasn’t at fault in the pre-storm failures, I think that the collapse of the NOPD’s radio system played a substantial role in the unrest after the flooding began.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Harry Shearer emails:

Sunday’s lonnnnnng Washington Post piece on Katrina makes it clear, as I suggested to you last week, that, by the time Nagin declared his evac order (and even Haley Barbour warned of “Hurricane fatigue” from previous evacuations), getting people on those buses and SAFELY out of town was a very chancy proposition. Every plan published indicates that it would take up to 72 hours to fully evacuate New Orleans, and 72 hours in advance Katrina was not posing the lethal threat it turned out to be….

“Fully evacuate?” Yes. As Brendan Loy noted, even 48 hours is really too late — though Nagin waited much later than that. (I’ve seen people doing math to the effect that you could have gotten everyone out in 24 hours, but I doubt that New Orleans could have mustered the necessary degree of organization for that.) But certainly a lot of people could have been evacuated who weren’t, and that would have improved conditions for the rest, and reduced the burden on relief services. And if Nagin had gotten the buses out, they would have been available for further evacuations after the storm had passed, instead of him having to call for Greyhounds.

This is, of course, all water over the dam in the most literal sense, but given all the finger-pointing going on, it’s hard to ignore this issue. Had more people been evacuated, as they should have been, before the storm hit, conditions in the city would have been better, and relief services less stressed, afterward.

MORE: Reader Michael Pate emails:

Your post http://instapundit.com/archives/025165.php may not have been 72 hours ahead but it was 60. Brendan Loy has been posting for hours http://www.brendanloy.com/page2.html. Apparently, the Bush Administration had been talking to the Governor all that afternoon. If the plan had been implemented, and they had run slightly behind, a lot fewer than 100,000+ would have been in the city.

I guess public officials should read more blogs. Or at least pay attention to the stuff Brendan Loy was paying attention to.

Various readers, by the way, want to know if it’s “that” Harry Shearer. Yes.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES turns three today.

READER A.L. HARRIS EMAILS: “After watching the Senatorial Tour de Force during the Robert’s confirmation, if you know anyone that is thinking about restarting the term limits crusade, tell them now’s the time.”

HERE’S AN INTERESTING PIECE BY DECLAN MCCULLAGH, saying that the Internet has done better than government with regard to hurricane response. That’s a bit strong, I’d say, but the piece is worth reading.

A PREDICTION THAT “the post-Kass bioethics council will be just as obnoxious.”

THIS IS SURELY THE DUMBEST STATEMENT OF THE WEEK, which is no small accomplishment given that the Roberts hearings are underway:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an “ongoing victory,” and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

Give it to me, Tom. I’ll find some things to cut. Starting with your salary, which you don’t seem to be earning . . . .

UPDATE: Okay, I take it back. The dumbest statement of the week comes from Andrew Sullivan, who doesn’t seem to get the difference between “today” and “yesterday” in a post from this morning criticizing something I quoted last night, but which he attributes to “today” as, I guess, evidence of my obliviousness to this morning’s terror bombing in Iraq.

Sorry Andrew, but I’m not capable of precognition. On the other hand, I can read a clock. Jeez. I confess that I don’t understand why Sullivan is so desirous of scoring cheap points at my expense these days, but this is pretty lame. As Jeff Goldstein put it in a different context: “Andrew Sullivan is completing his transformation into a Kos Diarist.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Matthew Cook thinks that Tom Delay is smarter than he looks:

Delay set up the entire congress, (R) and (D)! No one in congress can come forward and say that Delay is false without offering up some examples. I think you will notice the silence from both houses. Note that Delay also said “My answer to those that want to offset the spending is sure, bring me the offsets, I’ll be glad to do it. But nobody has been able to come up with any yet,”.

A few readers seem to think that DeLay was being sarcastic. I guess that’s possible, but here’s a quote from one of his colleagues, in the same story: “‘This is hardly a well-oiled machine,’ said Rep. Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican. ‘There’s a lot of fat to trim. … I wonder if we’ve been serving in the same Congress.'” If it’s sarcasm, it misfired rather badly.

Meanwhile, I think today’s news proves my emailer right, and undercuts Andrew’s chronologically-challenged point: Yesterday, at a press conference with the Iraqi President where good news was presented, all we heard from the press was Katrina news that might make Bush look bad.

Today, there’s bad news from Iraq, and it’s splashed all over the front page of the NYT’s website. Because, I suspect, the press hopes it will make Bush look bad. Andrew used to be cognizant of such issues, but lately he seems to have joined the herd himself.

LATER: Sullivan admits “a failure of editorial sloppiness on my part,” but somehow suggests that he didn’t mean what the post said. That’s sloppy. As for the “diarist” bit, well, I think the shoe fits. Sorry if it pinches.

LORIE BYRD is Ophelia-blogging.

IN THE MAIL: David Heenan’s Flight Capital: The Alarming Exodus of America’s Best and Brightest.

Read this post from Daniel Drezner, too.

UPDATE: Jonathan Gewirtz emails: “The phenomenon of non-US students returning to their countries of origin is alarming only if it is mainly a function of problems in the USA. If it mainly reflects, instead, improving opportunities in other countries, it is great news.”

Excellent point.

ROBERTS LIVEBLOGGING CONTINUES via Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog and Matt Margolis.

PIETER DORSMAN’S PEAKTALK blog has a link-filled primer on the upcoming German elections.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS IN JAPAN:

I write, of course, from Japan. You know, the Japan that makes social-democrat/third-way types feel all warm and fuzzy? The Japan in which enlightened technocrats, enshrined in the federal ministries in Kasumigaseki and insulated from elections and politicking and evil market forces and stuff, guide the nation toward a bright nationally-insured future? Yeah, the bloom is somewhat off the economic rose, but in social policy terms, a lot of my left-leaning acquaintances still swoon over the degree of ministry control here.

Well, I will tell you as someone who has lived here for a decade: what you hear about disaster preparedness ALWAYS involves local intiatives. . . . In Japan, what we’re told is this: A disaster may render you unreachable. It may cut you off from communication networks and utilities. The appropriate government agencies (starting at the neighborhood level and moving upward depending on the magnitude of the damage) will respond as quickly as they can, but you may be on your own for days until they do. Prepare supplies. Learn escape routes. Then learn alternate escape routes. Know what your region’s points of vulnerability are. Get to know your neighbors (especially the elderly or infirm) so you can help each other out and account for each other. Follow directions if you’re told to evacuate. Stay put if you aren’t. Participate in the earthquake preparation drills in your neighborhood.

If that’s the attitude of people in collectivist, obedient, welfare-state Japan, it is beyond the wit of man why any American should be sitting around entertaining the idea that Washington should be the first (or second or fifteenth) entity to step in and keep the nasty wind and rain and shaky-shaky from hurting you. Sheesh.

Read the whole thing (Via Virginia Postrel).

UPDATE: Reader Peter Murphy emails from Madrid:

Your post on Japanese disaster preparation reminded me an experience I had last year with some Japanese workers in my office building. I work in a seven story building in Madrid, Spain and each year the mangement conducts the standard fire drill which consists of someone sounding the fire alarm and everyone in the building exiting by way of the staircases. I timed it and it took me 10 minutes to exit from my office on the sixth floor. “Not good” I though as I exited only to find the majority of the office workers from the lower floors loitering about the exits, smoking cigarettes, hindering my “escape” and blocking the firefighters’ entry. As I struggled to get through this crowd of ambivalent Spaniards I looked across the street and see three small groups of Japanese workers (presumably from the Japanese bank office in my building). They are ALL wearing miner style helmets with attached flash-lights and fluorescent vests. They were separated into groups of 10 or so and one from each group was conducting what appeared to be a head count as another member diligently rummaged through a well-stocked first aid kit conducting what appeared to be an inventory check. As my co-workers took delight in mocking our Japanese friends I thought to myself “if there is a real disaster I know who will be getting the last laugh.”

Indeed. There is an ant-and-grasshopper aspect to this subject, which doesn’t get enough attention.

A PRAIRIE HO’ COMPANION: Garrison Keillor threatens to sue blogger for parody? I never thought Keillor had much of a sense of humor.

SHOULD NEW ORLEANS BE REBUILT? Popular Mechanics has an online poll, which at the moment is running pretty heavily toward “no.”

HEY, MAYBE THE SINGULARITY REALLY IS NEAR! My TechCentralStation column is up.

NIGHTLINE: “Amid Katrina Chaos, Congressman Used National Guard to Visit Home.”

EVEN MORE ON THOSE BUSES, as Bill Hobbs debunks an attempted debunking by ThinkProgress.

I UNMASK KARL ROVE’S SECRET PLAN over at GlennReynolds.com.

JAMES PINKERTON: “The Old Media Empire is striking back.”

UPDATE: Some further thoughts from Jeff Goldstein on how it may impact the war.

DARTBLOG notes some things from Bush’s press conference today that most people missed.

UPDATE: Vincent Flynn emails: “Iraq must be a smashing success, when Bush can hold a presser with Talabani and field only Louisiana disaster relief questions.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Barbara Skolaut emails: “I agree with Mr. Flynn, but his sentence is not complete. It should read, ‘Iraq must be a smashing success – and it’s obviously driving the press absolutely crazy – when Bush can hold a presser with Talabani and field only Louisiana disaster relief questions.'”

FROM GOOGLE-BOMBING to Technorati-bombing.

UPDATE: N.Z. Bear is not amused.

HERE’S ARTHUR CHRENKOFF’S FINAL good news from Iraq roundup. But he’s passing the flag on to a new team who will keep up the good work.