Disclosure: I worked for the Lamont campaign doing web design and production and some writing for the official blog (from 9/5/06 to 11/07/06).

Thursday, April 27, 2006

 

Joe Flip-Flops on FEMA

As Atrios notes, Joe can complain about FEMA's performance all he wants, but it was his own Homeland Security legislation introduced in October 2001 (and soon co-opted by the Bush Administration) that called for FEMA to be folded into DHS in the first place.

Update: And lest anyone forget, Lieberman chaired the rubber-stamp hearing which confirmed the highly underqualified Michael Brown as head deputy of FEMA without any tough questioning back in 2002.

Joe needs to account for his own mishandling of the oversight of FEMA.

Update 2: When asked about his failure to ask any real questions in Michael Brown's confirmation hearing, Joe responded in an NPR interview right after Katrina in September 2005 (audio):

Our committee conducted a hearing on the nomination of Michael Brown to be Deputy Director of FEMA. And in the normal course, honestly, for deputy positions, you normally say, well, the president, if this person passes all the normal checks, has the right to choose who he wants, so long as the person is in an acceptable range....


Sen. Lieberman may have thought this was just the "normal course" of action for the confirmation of an unqualified official in an agency where competence and leadership are absolute necessities. But everyone else could see at the time that this - as well as the complete neutering of FEMA under Lieberman's DHS and Bush - was a complete failure of the Senate's oversight responsibilities, a failure for which Lieberman should take some personal responsibility.
Comments:
Yeah but aren't you impressed Lieberman finally criticized Bush for something?

"For Hurricane Katrina, the president failed to provide critical leadership when it was most needed, and that contributed to a grossly ineffective federal response," he said.

I wonder if he's just trying to appear more liberal since he's facing a primary challenger this year. Ya think?

http://www.joementum.com/2006/04/27/flash-joe-criticizes-bush/
 
Yeah, read the post above. It's hardly impressive, but it is interesting.
 
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