Forcible evacuation

• The remaining citizens of New Orleans are to be forcibly evacuated say the headlines Much like the forcible exacuation of the Israeli citizens in Gaza. Or the forced deportation of Elian Gonzales. Is there another way? Maybe. Not everyone involved seems eager to carry out the order. "We personally will not force anyone out of their homes," said Art Jones, a senior official in the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. Let us wait and see.

• The Interdictor won't be dragged out at gunpoint. "Everyone keeps asking if we're going to comply with the mandatory evacuation order," says the site. "We're exempt."

• "This is a disaster the likes of which we are only beginning to understand." Once again that leitmotif is heard, that the immensity of this disaster in the midst of a first world country is utterly unlike anything seen before, the likes of which, the causes of which, and th eblame for which (if any) we are only, perhaps, beginning to understand. This time it is heard in a plaintive email from one of the volunteers at the Houston Astrodome, trying to come to grips with the tragedy, heartbreak and just pure out-of-this-world abnormality of what he's seeing before him.

  I fear that my three day trip to Houston, Texas, to help in the early stages of this relief effort, is only a glimpse into what our nation faces next.

  Mark has the email.
  
  
• Cox and Forkum, cartoon above, have some links on the blame game.