Anne Linehan is to be commended for this apt post at “blogHouston.net” for taking the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board to task for rationalizing the MSM’s gross distortions, hyperbole, and egregious misinformation in its post-Katrina coverage of New Orleans’ travail after the levees broke.

The “Houston Chronicle” (registration required) identifies yet another travail attending the unprecedented evacuation of a major American city — home and business burglaries while Houstonians fled Rita’s wrath.

Law enforcement officials interviewed this week said there were increased reports of burglaries of residences and businesses between Sept. 23 and Tuesday. They also arrested an above-average number of burglary suspects, many of whom were caught in the act after alarm systems and alert neighbors notified police.

Harris County deputies recorded at least 201 burglaries of residences and businesses between Sept. 23 and 25.

“That’s not normal. Those numbers are high,” said Sgt. Terry Wilson of the sheriff’s office burglary and theft division.

Many residents of the Lakecrest Village Apartments at 9393 Tidwell in northeast Houston returned home this week to find that burglars had kicked in doors to take children’s clothes and food, televisions and videogame consoles.

“We used our rent money to pay for gas and food to evacuate, and we come home to see our (televisions) had been stolen and our food eaten,” Tameko Wilson said.

And the crime statistics could get worse:

Houston police said they arrested at least 74 suspects, but they will not know how many residences were burglarized until they can compile statistics next month.

But at least the Houston Police Department made arrests after the city emptied out pre-Rita; the New Orleans Police Department saw their role in a different light post-Katrina.

Hallelujah!

Betsy Newmark delivers some great news. And kudos to Governor Pataki.

I signed an online petition urging that the so-called International Freedom Center idea be killed and I’m pleased as punch that the groundswell against this liberal-inspired travesty was heeded.

Compare this all too flattering article, which damn near deifies Texas district attorney Ronnie Earle as an unsullied “corruption hunter” of the first rank — a veritable knight in shining armor (who’s made it the “capstone of his career” to nail Tom Delay to the wall) — with this NRO piece that serves to tarnish the sheen of this Lonestar Sir Lancelot.

SOURCES: National Review Online and Financial Times

HAT-TIP: Matt Drudge

Mark Tapscott reports in this post that Federal District Court Judge Richard J. Leon ruled Tuesday of this week that “the privacy rights of illegal aliens convicted here of crimes, including the most serious felonies, are more important than the public’s right to know data needed to assess how the government is complying with the law that requires such aliens to be escorted out of the country upon their release from jail.” I’m not a lawyer, but isn’t that tantamount to a violation of the Freedom of Information Act?

Juxtapose Judge Leon’s ruling with a similarly egregious ruling this week that got Bill O’Reilly in a justifiable lather last night during the opening segment of his “O’Reilly Factor” (scroll down and view Bill’s “Talking Points” video) — namely, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein’s ruling, in a case brought by the ACLU, that 74 additional, incendiary Abu Ghraib photographs must be released by the federal government, because the Freedom of Information Act requires that the government do so, and regardless of what impact their release may have on Americans in uniform fighting terrorism overseas.

So black-robed activists secure liberties for lawbreaking illegal aliens (forgive the redundancy), while at the same time showing no compunction about putting our men and women in uniform in harm’s way! Just two more examples of a federal judiciary that’s out of control.

Are you angry yet?

SOURCES: The Associated Press (AP) and “The O’Reilly Factor.”

Is the worm turning at the “Los Angeles Times?” First, the Left Coast’s liberal media stalwart endorses the confirmation of John Roberts and now this morning it takes to task those Democratic senators, Hillary Clinton among them, who voted against Roberts’ ascendancy to the United States Supreme Court as its Chief Justice.

Well now, I think I’ll go fetch a third cup of coffee and re-read the editorial and savor it for awhile. What must Patterico and Hugh Hewitt be thinking! It’s just 6:00am PDT in California. They may not have even seen the LAT yet.

HAT-TIP: Lucianne

Be a participant. Click here and follow the yellow brick road to cast your vote(s) in Patrick Ruffini’s September Straw Poll.

Tomorrow Patrick will be compiling results.

NOTE: ACSOL is sure generating a lot of votes!

If agreeing with Frank Laughter and Peggy Noonan qualifies me as a Libertarian, than I guess I am one (or becoming one), although I’ve never thought of myself in those terms, content, as I am, with being a self-described Reagan Republican.

I know this: government has become too intrusive and too all-encompassing in our lives, and far too many people turn to it with overweening expectations for their every need and blind rage when any among them goes unfulfilled.

Katrina and Rita survivor/evacuees in the Houston area were sent to a venue where (after waiting in horrendously long lines in stifling heat) they could do some one-stop shopping for relief aid by selecting to talk to one or more representatives from 90 federal government agencies on hand to assist them.

What’s wrong with that picture?

This post from The Anchoress is priceless! (She marvels at Peggy Noonan’s writing, but I marvel at hers!).

The Anchoress has refused the Republican National Committee a telephone request for donations, because of the soft glove treatment Republican Senators gave Lousiaina’s woefully inept democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco. The Anchoress is understandably outraged.

Ironically for me, in separate conversations this week with my brother, one of my two sisters, and my father, each expressed varying degrees of dismay with President Bush, the Republican Party, and House and Senate republicans over their failure to deal with our country’s porous borders and an illegal immigration problem that has reached egregious levels.

My wife and I live in Texas. My parents, brother and two sisters live in California. The family sees firsthand what an indifferent president and a do-nothing, GOP-controlled Congress have failed to do vis-a-vis a wholesale invasion of this country by lawbreakers and the resulting effects and implications.

Each, along with me, refuses to provide the GOP with any more contributions until vigorous action is taken and by that we don’t mean amnesty.

It would appear that the GOP is finding multi-faceted ways to disappoint its conservative base these days.

Anyway, good for you, Anchoress!

Michelle, last time I owned one Cadillac’s had air-conditioning! You sure there was a meltdown and not a too-cool cool-up?

(PS: O’Reilly should use this as the “Ridiculous Item of the Day”)

SOURCES: Michelle Malkin and Mark In Mexico

Nice post by Kevin Whited at “blogHouston.net” on the early reticence of the Houston Chronicle’s editorial writers to expound on the indictment against local Congressman Tom Delay.

Kevin observes:

Every major newspaper in the state managed to comment on the DeLay indictment today, except of course the major newspaper that actually serves DeLay’s district. How embarrassing for the Chronicle. Perhaps the editorial idealists will get rested up enough from the hard work of putting out a newspaper during a big news event to work up an opinion for tomorrow’s newspaper. In the meantime, here are editorials from the Dallas Morning News, Austin American-Statesman, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and San Antonio Express-News.

In the aftermath of the George Soros-funded, Cindy Sheehan-led, monthlong anti-war protest and rank, liberals’ love-fest, circus and roadshow outside of President and First Lady Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch, local officials have passed ordinances prohibiting parking and camping along country roads, including those in proximity to the Bushes’ property, as well as against “sewage receptacles,” which I take to mean porta-potties.

Now then, I must ask, if lawmakers can move so swiftly and efficiently to shield the Bush household outside of Waco, Texas, from the unwashed masses yearning to assault the president’s quietide, then why can’t Congress protect the rights of American property owners along the contiguous U.S.-Mexico border from illegal aliens, their weapons-carrying smugglers, and the kinds of marauding gangs that jump the border and terrorize American citizens?

Ah, if only the president had bought ranchland in south Texas (or, say, along the New Mexico-Mexico border). If only … if only it were so.

Then things might have been finally looking up for those Americans neither the president, nor the U.S. Congress, has heretofore sought to protect.

SOURCE: Associated Press (AP) report carried in the “Houston Chronicle” (registration required for online edition).

An so it is done. John Roberts will be sworn in as Chief Justice at 3:00pm EDT today at the White House, as a result of a favorable 78-22 confirmation vote in the United States Senate.

As the “Washington Post” (registration required) reports (excerpts follow):

Justice John Paul Stevens, the senior associate justice who has been performing the chief justice’s duties since Rehnquist died, will swear in Roberts at 3 p.m. today at the White House. Roberts will participate on Monday — the first Monday in October — in a Supreme Court investiture ceremony as the justices begin their new term.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters after the confirmation, “I believe that there’s a very decisive bipartisan flavor to this vote. Judge Roberts — soon to be Chief Justice Roberts — got half of the Democrats and Senator Jeffords,” an independent. “And to come away with 78 votes, considering where the Senate was in such contentious straits earlier this year, I think is really remarkable.”

Roberts, 50, will be the youngest person in the exalted position of chief justice since John Marshall, an appointee of President John Adams. Marshall took office in 1801 at the age of 46.

Roberts, who also becomes the official head of the federal judiciary itself, is 17th in a line that includes such historic figures as John Jay, Marshall, Roger Brooke Taney, Charles Evans Hughes, Harlan Fiske Stone and Earl Warren.

Here’s how the confirmation vote unfolded.

Democrats voting against President Bush’s nominee were the “usual suspects,” Hillary Rodham Clinton among them:

Akaka, Hawaii; Bayh, Ind.; Biden, Del.; Boxer, Calif.; Cantwell, Wash.; Clinton, N.Y.; Corzine, N.J.; Dayton, Minn.; Durbin, Ill.; Feinstein, Calif.; Harkin, Iowa; Inouye, Hawaii; Kennedy, Mass.; Kerry, Mass.; Lautenberg, N.J.; Mikulski, Md.; Obama, Ill.; Reed, R.I.; Reid, Nev.; Sarbanes, Md.; Schumer, N.Y.; Stabenow, Mich.

The story, of course, is all about former and formidable House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) of Surgar Land, Texas, indicted yesterday by a Travis County grand jury on one count of felony criminal conspiracy for allegedly being involved in an exchange of corporate cash funneled to Texas House candidates back in 2002. The mainstream media and the blogosphere are awash in Tom Delay stories and commentary. Just turn on any 24/7 cable news channel, or read any of today’s front page headlines of major metropolitan newspapers, or look at “Tom Delay” in Technorati’s search engine pecking order to know this to be true.

But a story within the story may well be the rebuff given southern California Congressman (and House Rules Committee Chairman) David Dreier (R-CA), as reported in the “Houston Chronicle”:

Several officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an aide to Hastert contacted California Rep. David Dreier on Monday about assuming the majority leader’s duties in the event DeLay was indicted. Several lawmakers said such a change would have made it easier for the Texan to eventually regain his post.

But by Tuesday, as the grand jury completed its work in Austin, Texas, Blunt forcefully asserted his claim to the job in conversations with the speaker, according to several GOP officials.

At the same time, conservative lawmakers quickly made known their unhappiness with Dreier as a potential stand-in for DeLay.

At a private midday meeting, several conservative lawmakers argued that Dreier’s voting record was too moderate. According to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, some participants in the meeting said the Californian had voted in favor of expanded federal funding for stem cell research and against a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. There also was grumbling that the Californian favored a less restrictive policy on immigration than many conservatives.

“There was a lot of discussion in that room about will … he advance the conservative agenda?” said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who attended the meeting and said he personally would have been comfortable with Dreier in the post.

Other officials said a show of hands near the end of the session showed support for a postponement in selecting a temporary majority leader if it were to be Dreier. A delegation was dispatched to inform Hastert, who in the meantime had decided to recommend Blunt instead.

Blunt, of course, is Representative Roy Blunt (R-MO), who will succeed Tom Delay as House Majority Leader, at least for the interim, as a result of the indictment against Delay and the political scandal in its wake, and owing to his backing by House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL), who read the tea leaves astutely in terms of his party’s conservative base’s displeasure with the prosepect of Dreier.

As a center-right, conservative blogger and one who focuses, in large part, on the porous borders/illegal immigration issue, I have long followed David Dreier’s rise in the halls of Congress, aware that up until his difficult re-election in 2004, in which he did a rather disingenuous about face, he’s long been soft on the burgeoning illegal immigration problem, both in California and nationally. Indeed, widely popular southern California area radio personalities John Kobylt and Ken Chiampo of the “John and Ken Show” on radio station KFI waged a highly successful campaign to expose Congressman Dreier during his re-election bid in 2004.

This from their webpage in August 2004:

Two popular radio talk-show hosts are planning the “political human sacrifice’ of a Republican they deem weak on illegal immigration, and they’ve got a longtime area representative in their sights. Rep. David Dreier, R-Glendora, is on the short list of potential targets for John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou – hosts of “The John & Ken Show’ on top-rated Los Angeles talk station KFI- AM – who say Republicans in Congress are standing idly by as undocumented immigrants wreak havoc on the state’s economy and clutter up freeways, prisons, hospitals and schools. Read the story here.

Here’s evidence of just how intense the “defeat Dreier” campaign waged by that radio show became.

And this from the “Washington Post”:

Rancor over illegal immigration has become a staple on conservative blogs and talk radio, with much of the wrath directed at Bush. Stein, of the immigration reform group, said the president has dragged his heels on security improvements and “is not leading the American people on this issue.”

The outcry may be resonating. House Rules Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) got a jolt during his 2004 reelection campaign, when radio hosts in his outer Los Angeles district decided to make him a “political human sacrifice” for his immigration views, Dreier said, accusing him, among other things, of advocating Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants.

“I said to myself, nobody’s going to believe I want to give Social Security checks to people who are here illegally,” Dreier recalls. Then he polled voters and found that people not only believed the allegation but had resolved “to never vote for David Dreier again.” He won with 54 percent of the vote, a lower proportion than previous years, and has since taken a prominent role in advocating the Sensenbrenner measures, although he also supports guest-worker programs.

And here’s how “Americans For Better Immigration” rates David Dreier’s voting record on immigration.

I would suggest to readers of ACSOL rightly fed up with the national security threat our nation’s porous borders pose and the deleterious impact of 11+ million illegal aliens afoot in America, that David Dreier’s belated epiphany vis-a-vis immigration reform and border security was likely more about getting re-elected in a campaign made infinitely more difficult by the pounding he took on these issues from the “John and Ken Show” and that we’re better off that he will not be stepping into the powerful position held by Tom Delay.

After all, isn’t it bad enough that George Bush — an apologist for open borders, amnesty, and liberal Guest Worker programs — is in the White House and permitting a wholesale invasion of our country! Let’s not flank him in the House chamber with yet another high-ranking, pro-illegal immigration seed pod carrier.

OTHER BLOGGERS WEIGH IN: The American Mind; Ace of Spades HQ; and, Michelle Malkin. Oh, and What Attitude Problem? should be read, as well.

Since I published this post on Tuesday of this week the Hurricane Rita-related death toll associated largely with the evacuation of Harris and its neighboring counties (and not the hurricane itself) has trebled.

The “Houston Chronicle” (registration required for online edition) is reporting now that a total of 109 lives were lost in Rita’s aftermath, a number of which resulted directly from a mass exodus in stifling heat and disastrous gridlock, compounded by egregious fuel shortages.

Cindy Horswell and Edward Hegstrom of the Chronicle write (excerpts follow):

A Chronicle survey of Houston-area counties and those along major evacuation routes to the north and west indicates that at least 107 people were killed by last week’s hurricane or died in accidents or from health problems associated with the evacuation of 2.5 million people from their homes.

One day before the expected announcement of a state-county-city task force to examine the problems that plagued the exodus, which doubled or tripled the travel time between Houston and other Texas cities, Mayor Bill White conceded, “I don’t think the evacuation should be a disaster in itself.”

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, whose wife spent more than 12 hours in a U.S. 290 traffic jam, called for a careful review of the evacuation. “People are downplaying the fact that people died in the evacuation and that is not right,” he said. “Is the chance of dying greater in the movement than in the storm? That’s the question we need to consider.”

The reporters continue, describing a bleak, desperate situation, as motorists and their passengers fled the Rita-threatened area:

Law enforcement officers not prone to tears said they often wept openly as they dealt with the repercussions of the flight from Rita.

“It was horrible,” said San Jacinto County Sheriff’s spokesman J.J. Stitt.

Stitt helped provide a police escort for a charter bus filled with elderly residents from the Houston area en route to a local hospital. Earlier, the bus driver had made a 911 emergency call to authorities as his passengers sickened. By the time officers arrived, two were dead.

At Conroe Regional Medical Center, spokesman Fritz Guthrie said 600 patients arrived at the hospital during the evacuation — about 25 percent more than normal.

“Most of them arrived with effects of the heat — heat exhaustion and heat stroke,” he said. Others came in with heart problems or blood clots in their legs from sitting too long. “We had people walking over from the freeway having babies.”

La Marque resident Mary Lou Bourgeois, 92, became another Rita evacuation victim when she reluctantly joined her family fleeing via clogged I-10.

“She would never run,” said her granddaughter Sheronda Bourgeois, 30. “She always said, ‘If God is going to get you, he’s going to get you.’ “

After about 12 hours on the road Thursday — the family had gotten only as far as west Houston — the elderly woman began having difficulty breathing. She then lost consciousness. She died Friday at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital.

“We all have our self-doubt about evacuating,” her granddaughter said. “No one wanted to die like those people in New Orleans and we thought we were doing the right thing by taking our grandmother with us. It’s hurt the way she left us.

“We would rather her be at home, surrounded by her children and great-grandchildren.”

This blogger examined the evacuation and the underpinnings of the evacuation plan in this post, published back on September 26th, and wrote:

In a city built largely on reclaimed swampland (Houston is called, after all, the “Bayou City”), large portions of it fall in flood plains and widespread flooding is a fact of life here after significant rainfall — witness Tropical Storm Allison in June, 2001.

That’s why the evacuation plan for the greater Houston area was grounded on mandatory evacuation from flood plain zones and areas that would be subject to storm surge and never contemplated a city-wide evacuation. A post-Katrina apprehension seemed to drive people from Houston who needn’t have left and that apprehension was compounded by what some regard as ambiguous, CYA signals from local officials.

I continued:

Katrina and its horror stories, particularly those reported in the overweening 24/7 cable news coverage of the grotesque disaster that was the levee breaks in New Orleans and the subequent horrific flooding of the Crescent City, spawned a palpable fear in people who only weeks later were staring at a Category 5 hurricane swallowing up the Gulf of Mexico and bearing down on a huge population center in southeastern Texas. It is altogether understandable that the calls for voluntary evacuations in advance of mandatory evacuations were heeded beyond the expectations of local officials and emergency planners. That was no doubt part of the equation.

But the other part is that hurricane planning must be communicated better by the media and made public by government officials. This sort of information should be widely disseminated and made intelligible before each hurricane season, so citizens can best assess their personal situations and know in what instances they’re to run and in what instances they’re to hide.

Fact is, people who needed to evacuate flood-threatened, well-defined zones in greater Houston were impeded in their exodus by people who chose to flee who were not. We can do better next time around and we must.

Ironic, isn’t it? The post-Katrina story out of New Orleans was that thousands stubbornly failed to heed the evacuation call and thousands more were unable to do so owing to age, infirmity, or lack of transportation, made worse by the local and state governments’ purposeful indifference to getting their citizens out of harm’s way. By contrast, the emerging post-Rita story here in the Galveston-Houston area is of needless deaths owing to an evacuation too vigorously complied with and of the failure of officials to assure that 2.0+ million evacuees had available fuel (and water!) at roadside services along the designated evacuation routes.

The greater Houston area’s Local 2 News, whose website is “Click2Houston.com,” is reporting that power outages continue in their viewing area and will likely persist for another couple of weeks. That’s bad news for thousands of homeowners and business people whose lives have been disrupted by Rita.

Meanwhile, the rolling blackouts, which this blogger and his wife have been experiencing firsthand, should be over and done by the weekend. Yesterday’s blackouts here in the Lake Conroe area were by far the worst to date. Power at our home went off around 12:00 noon and, except for coming back up for frustratingly short periods of 10 to 15 minutes or so several times mid-afternoon and early evening, was not restored until approximately 10:00pm CDT last night. Yesterday was blazingly hot — over 100 degrees — and the house heated up and became very toasty.

What’s particularly annoying is that the blackouts are not scheduled, so they cannot be anticipated. Moreover, there’s been a complete lack of direct communication from the utility company, which in our case is Entergy. The media was told by Entergy spokespeople that the blackouts would last for approximately an hour, but that’s anything but true and truth (or something approximating it) is what customers expect and deserve. I don’t know how the elderly are coping through this and especially those with special needs. And it must be difficult for the schoolchildren to concentrate in classrooms without benefit of air-conditioning during what has been a record-setting heat wave in September here in southeastern Texas.

Robert Stanton of the “Houston Chronicle” (registration required for online edition) reports the following in this morning’s edition, painting a grimmer picture than the Local 2 News report:

The blame for the misery can be placed squarely in the lap of Hurricane Rita, which ripped through the region over the weekend. High winds sent trees into power lines, cutting power to thousands of residents.

“We have never suffered a crisis as bad as this one,” said Entergy-Texas spokesman Mike Rodgers. “This is the worst thing that has happened to the Entergy-Texas system.”

Rodgers said Entergy customers can expect three to four weeks without power.

Stanton continues:

As of midweek, about 370,000 homes and businesses in Texas were without electricity. The numbers included 254,000 customers of Entergy-Texas and another 70,000 customers of CenterPoint, which serves much of the greater Houston area.

Entergy-Texas dispatched 10,000 linemen, tree trimmers and support personnel from as far north as Ohio and as far east as the Carolinas, also part of a mutual aid agreement.

“We’re making progress, but we’re severely hampered by the serious damage to our transmission system,” Rodgers said. “No transmission ties are functioning between the eastern half of our service territory, Beaumont and Port Arthur, and the western half, Conroe and The Woodlands.

“We’re still getting our distribution lines restored, but we need the transmission lines to bring the power in to the distribution lines (along public streets),” he said.

Complicating matters, many returning residents are cranking up air conditioners in the near-record heat, taxing an already strained system, he said.

To prevent a total blackout, Entergy-Texas has implemented rolling outages for about 142,000 customers in Montgomery, Grimes, Walker and Liberty counties, Rodgers said.

The rolling outages were initially supposed to last an hour, but now they’re lasting several hours.

“We regret that (longer outages),” Rodgers said. “We’re sorry because we know how miserable that makes people.

The “several hours” claim is bogus, I assure you. And that’s the very thing that has Entergy’s customers in an uproar. The information being given the media is inconsistent and departs, oftentimes in wholesale fashion, from reality. We went about 10 hours without electricity yesterday here in our portion of Montgomery County!

So, I don’t know if blogging today will be light owing to ongoing power disruptions. I trust readers of ACSOL will understand.