According to a new Department of Homeland Security report, New Orleans is still unprepared for another catastrophic hurricane more than 10 months after Katrina. Washington, D.C. and New York don’t meet guidelines for responding to major disasters. The shortcomings in emergency planning, including antiquated and uncoordinated response guidelines, are cause “for significant national concern,” Homeland Security’s analysis concluded.

ThinkProgress has documented several critical errors in the National Review’s June 5 cover story on global warming, “Scare of the Century.”

In the new issue of National Review, Steorts owns up to one of his errors in a “clarification” letter to the editor. Here’s an excerpt:

CLARIFICATION

My article “Scare of the Century” (June 5) quoted University of Virginia climate scientist Patrick J. Michaels as saying that “Antarctica has been gaining ice,” and, based on Michaels’s view, called 2002 a “high-water mark for Antarctic ice.” Michaels cited a study by Curt Davis to support his position. Davis subsequently noted that his study did not measure ice changes over all of Antarctica. It showed that a large part of the East Antarctic ice sheet was growing while much of the West Antarctic ice sheet was shrinking. Davis wrote in his study that, if the observed growth pattern held for all of East Antarctica, it would outweigh estimated ice loss in West Antarctica; but he did not conclusively prove this to be the case.

Steorts’ “clarification” also contains an error. Davis’ study is for the interior of Antartica only. The fact that Davis wrote that growth in the Eastern interior may outweigh losses in the Western interior can’t be used to suggest that Antartica is gaining ice overall. The study doesn’t cover losses on the costal areas, where loses are known to be substantial.

Steorts tries to argue his error was irrelevant:

The argument in “Scare of the Century,” however, did not depend on Davis’s study; in fact, it noted that research subsequent to Davis’s shows a current net ice loss for Antarctica.

Steorts, however, dismissed that subsequent research out of hand, relying on the same false claim 2002 was “a high water mark for ice.” Steorts wrote that “Alarmism over [that] study is on the order of going to the beach at high tide, drawing a line at the water’s edge, and fretting a few hours later that the oceans are drying up.”

The lesson here is simple. On global warming issues, the National Review can’t be trusted.

“The Internet for the Left”¦has served as a way to mobilize hate and anger “” hate and anger, first and foremost, at this President and Conservatives, but then also at people within their own party whom they consider to be less than completely loyal to this very narrow, very out-of-the-mainstream, very far Left-wing ideology that they tend to represent.”

“For more than two decades,” conservatives “have used ballot initiatives to create wedge issues and whip up excitement among core voters,” while progressives “remained largely on the defensive.”

2006 is different. For the first time, progressives have a coordinated national ballot initiative strategy, focusing on our priorities like the minimum wage, renewable energy, stem cell research, and privacy. (Of course, we’ll also be working to defeat several conservative measures.)

In the coming months, ThinkProgress will focus on ballot initiatives across the country. Here’s a taste: Read more

The House votes 256-153 on a resolution linking Iraq to the “war on terror,” and opposing a timetable. “42 Democrats broke ranks and joined with all but three Republicans to support the resolution.”

In an interview with a right-wing website, Ann Coulter said that Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) is “the reason soldiers invented ‘fragging.’” Fragging is a term “most commonly meaning to assassinate an unpopular member of one’s own fighting unit by dropping a fragmentation grenade into the victim’s tent at night.” Meanwhile, Coulter’s media blitz continues.

Earlier this week, the House Appropriations Committee voted to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour by 2009. The increase passed as an amendment to the Labor-HHS spending bill after seven Republicans — Reps. Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), John Sweeney (R-NY), Ray LaHood (R-IL), Don Sherwood (R-PA), Mike Simpson (R-ID), James Walsh (R-NY), and Bill Young (R-FL) — broke ranks to pass the increase.

The right wing objected to the move on the grounds that the committee “shouldn’t be legislating on an appropriations bill.” (They forget how Sen. Frist (R-TN) and Rep. Hastert (R-IL) did exactly that last year when they slipped liability protections for vaccine makers into a defense spending bill.)

The “next step” for the bill would have been for the House Rules Committee “to decide whether to ‘protect’ the amendment as part of the bill,” followed by a floor vote on their ruling.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who offered the amendment along with Rep. George Miller (D-CA), told ThinkProgress he was planning to fight attempts to take the increase out of the bill. “If there is an attempt to strip the amendment on procedural grounds,” he said, “we will fight back for the American people. The minimum wage is now at its lowest level in 50 years, and hardworking American families deserve a fair, livable wage.”

But now it looks like the vote will be delayed indefinitely. CongressDaily reported yesterday that “the bill would not reach the floor next week” and “there is a chance it would not come up even the following week, and possibly not at all.”

Conservatives are clearly afraid to be on the record opposing a minimum wage increase at a time when 83 percent of Americans support such a move.