The wonderful Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn on the real fallout from Katrina.

Unlike other dead horses flogged by the media - Cindy Sheehan, torture at Guantanamo, etc - this was at one point a real story: an actual hurricane, people dying, things going wrong. But that wasn't good enough, and the more they tossed in to damage Bush, the more they drowned any real controversy in the usual dreary pseudo-controversy. After watching Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu threatening to punch out the President, a reader e-mailed me Kipling: 'If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.'
That's all Bush had to do. The storm has passed.

When the MSM controlled the presses and the record of what they had written, they could get away with tainting a story. No one could examine what they said a week later, let alone a year later. No one could reconstruct what Mary Landrieu said or Governor Blanco did or did not do or the ravings of the idiot mayor of New Orleans and his plan to send the entire police force to Las Vegas for counseling. It made hiding the truth a lot easier. It gave the MSM unlimited opportunity to be the final record and supress all evidence to the contrary.

But those buses in New Orleans were spotted by a blogger. Not by the New Yawk Times. The Emergency evacuation plan that was never used in New Orleans to take the most vulnerable population out of the city, the plan that was never implemented - that was linked to by a blogger. Not the New Yawk Times. Bloggers will reproduce Nagel's hysteria long after the flood waters recede. And the blogosphere will remember and link to Governor Blanco's sobbing press conferences and quote her in her own words and demonstrate - her cluelessness. While the New Yawk Times plans her next election.

No one can cover up the MSM over-reaction and hype (including FOX's drama queen performances by Shepard Smith, Geraldo Rivera and Steve Harrigan.) And no one can cover up the callousness of the Democrat governor and mayor who panicked and spread that hopelessness to their constituents. (Imagine Pataki at a press conference dabbing his eyes and looking woeful or Guiliani screaming and swearing about wanting someone else to do his job.) No one can hide the fact that it took one day for the military to do what an entire state and city failed to do - evacuate the city and bring law and order. To bring a sense of control.

To act like grownups.