Bill McKibben: “Our rulers have insisted by both word and deed that the laws of physics and chemistry do not apply to us. That delusion will now start to vanish. Katrina marks Year One of our new calendar, the start of an age in which the physical world has flipped from sure and secure to volatile and unhinged. New Orleans doesn’t look like the America we’ve lived in. But it very much resembles the planet we will inhabit the rest of our lives.” (Tomgram)

“We are now learning that in the hours following Katrina’s landfall, FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, now a part of the Department of Homeland Security — rightly encouraged Americans to make charitable donations, but wrongly placed Pat Robertson at the top of that list.

Making matters worse is that as soon as this insult came under scrutiny, after millions of Americans had already been urged by FEMA to give to Robertson, FEMA began covering its tracks — erasing any sign of its actions from its Internet site.” (National Jewish Democratic Council [thanks, Seth])