CNN has a story up right now called "Brown: Party politics played role in Katrina response". Mike Brown, former FEMA director, is now starting to explain in public why he was able to do such a "heck of a job"! According to Brown, despite his recommendation to federalize all of the areas (~90,000 square mile) hit by Katrina along the Gulf Coast:
"Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking we had to federalize [only] Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor and we have a chance to rub her nose in it," he said.
While this doesn't really "surprise" me---it's been alleged by others before---all I can say right now is: The bastards behind this deserve to rot in jail (or worse) for this. This
is criminal. What else can be said? I should end the diary right now to let that sink in.
Update [2007-1-20 11:42:6 by shock]: From a comment by quaoar below citing this story we find more of Brown's quote (here, Brown is quoting someone else in the administration... probably Rove):
"'We can't do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'"