Neutral GAO Report: "No One In Charge" of Fed Effort in Katrina

Broken record here, but as I keep saying: Conservatives oppose big government. Liberals oppose bad government. Bush is giving us big bad government. And incompetence is something no American -- lib or con -- should tolerate in the government that serves it. It's the primary NeoProg plank, at least these days, when incompetence is so common.

So more fuel on the fire: a Government Accountability Office report criticizing the federal response to Katrina (which puts the lie to the Administration's efforts, just yesterday during Congressional hearings, to put the main blame on the (Democratic, of course) New Orleans and Louisiana governments).

Highlights:

No one from the federal government was clearly in charge of the response to Hurricane Katrina, Congressional investigators said Wednesday, and in the absence of clear leadership the general federal approach was "to wait for affected states to request assistance."

In a preliminary report, the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, criticized Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, for waiting until Tuesday, the day after the storm hit, to designate Hurricane Katrina an "incident of national significance," a status that more clearly put his department in charge.