In his book, State of Emergency, Pat Buchanan argues for an “immediate moratorium on all immigration.” The purpose of moratorium, according to Buchanan, is for Americans to “debate and decide whom we wish to come and whether we wish to alter, or preserve, the ethnic religious composition of American.”

Today on CNN, John King asked Buchanan if he “wants to set a policy where only white english-speaking people can come to America.” Buchanan said that “the American people should decide who comes.” Buchanan added that he believes “we should favor folks from cultures and civilization that have been assimilated before,” i.e. white Europeans.

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Last week, Katrina survivor (and former right-wing politician) Rockey Vaccarella visited the White House and said, “I just wish the President could have another term in office.” Subsequently, Rockey was plastered on the White House website homepage and featured in President Bush’s weekly radio address.

Now, the President’s preferred representative of Hurricane Katrina is lashing out at other victims. Today on Fox, Rocky said that victims of the Hurricane should stop “sitting around and complaining” about the Bush administration and instead “be thankful for what we got.” Watch it:

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Vice President Cheney — “the man running the country” — is now working on an official biography.

But don’t hold out any hope that the biography will offer any revealing insight into “Dick Cheney’s dark, secretive mind-set.” The author of the book, according to U.S. News, will be Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes:

We hear that the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes is hot on the case and plans to publish a bio titled, naturally enough, Cheney as early as next spring. “I’m not a historian,” Hayes fesses up.

No, Hayes is not a historian. What are his qualifications? He’s a journalist who has cultivated close ties within the White House and has become the go-to source for insiders seeking to peddle false claims on Iraq. Here are some highlights of Hayes’ record:

1. This January, Cheney was asked by then-Fox News radio host Tony Snow, “Were there links to — between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?” Cheney answered, “Well, I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections.” Hayes wrote an article entitled “Dick Cheney Was Right” about the Vice President’s effort to connect Saddam to 9/11. But even President Bush said most recently that Iraq had “nothing” to do with 9/11.

2. In 2003, Hayes declared “case closed” in an article purporting to show the links between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cheney recommeneded it to the Rocky Mountain news as the premier source of information on the issue. (“[Y]ou ought to go look is an article that Stephen Hayes did in the Weekly Standard here a few weeks ago…That’s your best source of information.”) Hayes relied on a classified Defense Department memo produced by Douglas Feith. The Defense Department shot down Hayes’ article, stating the Feith memo was “not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.”

Each and every one of Hayes’ attempts to link Iraq to 9/11 have been thoroughly discredited, but he continues to push the argument. It’s quite fitting that Cheney chose him to be his official biographer.

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“A suicide car bombing and clashes between Shiite militia and Iraqi security forces left at least 50 people dead Monday in a brutal contradiction of the prime minister’s claim that bloodshed was decreasing…The dead included eight American soldiers, one of the U.S. military’s deadliest weekends in months.”

Ben Adler and Jason Zengerle both note Joe Biden’s odd theory as to why he can do well in the South as a presidential candidate:

You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state. My state has the eighth-largest black population in the country. My state is anything from a Northeast liberal state.

Atrios also chimes in. In Biden’s semi-defense, the article is a little unclear, but I think that was in answer to a question about whether or not Biden thought he could win primary elections in the South against the region’s native sons. Biden is arguing that the electorate in Democratic primaries in Dixie is heavily African-American and that, in light of Delaware’s large black population, he has experience with appealing to that demographic.

Three further points. One is that if Biden genuinely thinks he’s going to be president some day, he’s seriously deluded, but that sort of delusion is widespread in the Senate. Second is that Atrios and Zengerle are agreeing about something! Third is that I just looked it up and, interestingly, Delaware really was part of the Southern political bloc throughout the 19th century. By the end of World War I, however, that had ceased to be the case and the state regularly went GOP notwithstanding the existence of the “solid South.” Maryland has made a similar transition from being politically Southern to politically non-Southern, and a similar process is maybe taking place in Virginia as we speak.

Standing in Jackson Square on Sept. 15, President Bush stated, “This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina” and promised to “get the work done quickly.” But on the eve of Katrina’s one year anniversary, here’s a look at the current state of New Orleans:

– Less than half of the city’s pre-storm population of 460,000 has returned, putting the population at roughly what it was in 1880.

– Nearly a third of the trash has yet to be picked up.

– Sixty percent of homes still lack electricity.

– Seventeen percent of the buses are operational.

– Half of the physicians have left, and there is a shortage of 1,000 nurses.

– Six of the nine hospitals remain closed.

– Sixty-six percent of public schools have reopened.

– A 40 percent hike in rental rates, disproportionately affecting black and low-income families.

– A 300 percent increase in the suicide rate.

Eighty-four percent of New Orleans residents rate the government’s recovery efforts negatively, while 66 percent believe the recovery money has been “mostly wasted.”

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“Forecasters issued a hurricane watch Monday for the southern peninsula of Florida. A hurricane watch remained in effect for all of the Florida Keys.” Follow Ernesto’s path with the AP Hurricane Tracker.