In tonight’s interview on ABC, Bush revealed how detached he was from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina:

VARGAS: When you look back on those days immediately following when Katrina struck, what moment do you think was the moment that you realized that the government was failing, especially the people of New Orleans?

BUSH: When I saw TV reporters interviewing people who were screaming for help. It looked “” the scenes looked chaotic and desperate. And I realized that our government was “” could have done a better job of comforting people.

According to Bush, he didn’t realize there was anything wrong with the administration’s response until almost four days after the hurricane. The first time he saw newscasts of the situation on the ground was on the morning of Sept. 2, when White House “Counselor [Dan] Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.”

“I think the U.S. is better prepared than woefully unprepared.” Full transcript here.

Scooter Libby “has hired a renowned memory-loss expert to assist him with his legal defense. Harvard psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter tells NBC News he has been retained by Libby as a consultant.” Libby’s lawyers have suggested that memory loss will be one of the “central themes” of Libby’s defense.

A story by Minnesota Public Radio reveals a disturbing new way that a political party is secretly grabbing sensitive personal information about voters.

This week the Minnesota Republican Party is distributing a new CD about a proposed state marriage amendment. Along with flashy graphics, the CD asks people their views on controversial issues such as abortion, gun control, illegal immigration, and so on.

The problem – the CD sends your answers back to headquarters, filed by name, address, and political views. No mention of that in the terms of use. No privacy policy at all. The story concludes: “So if you run the CD in your personal computer, by the end of it, the Minnesota GOP will not only know what you think on particular issues, but also who you are.”

These practices fall way below the standard for today’s polling firms and web sites. The norm for polling firms is to anonymize the data and report only statistical totals. The norm for commercial web sites is to have a privacy policy, with Federal Trade Commission enforcement if the web site breaks its privacy promise.

Without a privacy policy, the state party can tell your views to anyone at all. If you give the “wrong” answers on abortion or other issues, they can tell your boss, members of your church, or anyone else. In fact, these answers could get distributed to campaigns in your town during get-out-the-vote efforts – precisely the place where “wrong” answers can be most damaging.

The right answer here is simple. If you are collecting data and keeping it in identified form, then you should tell people. If you are selling your lists or sending them to other groups, you should tell that as well. That goes for all political parties.

– Peter Swire

“A public-interest group has sued the Secret Service for access to White House visitor logs that the group says would show how often lobbyist Jack Abramoff met with President Bush and his staff. Judicial Watch filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington under the federal Freedom of Information Act…”

Yet another report has come from inside the Bush administration revealing that there was very little planning done for post-war Iraq. In response to such reports, President Bush has previously offered two myths:

1) He simply made a miscalculation about what the conditions in post-war Iraq would be. “Mr. Bush also acknowledged for the first time that he made a ‘miscalculation of what the conditions would be‘ in postwar Iraq.”

2) The intelligence agencies got it wrong. Bush: “It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As President, I’m responsible for the decision to go into Iraq — and I’m also responsible for fixing what went wrong by reforming our intelligence capabilities.”

While the intelligence agencies did make certain mistakes with regards to Iraqi weapons programs, they were on the mark about Bush’s incompetent pre-war planning. Bush did not make a “miscalculation”; he simply ignored report after report warning of future perils that would result from an Iraq invasion. The evidence is below: Read more

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) on Sen. Russ Feingold’s (D-WI) lone vote against the Patriot Act.