Why Bush is to blame....

[Wordie]

President Bush himself transferred ultimate responsibility for responding to disasters such as Katrina to the director of Homeland Security in a 2003 Presidential Directive. So the RW babble about how state and local authorities failed to make specific requests and so forth is nonsense.

Uh, maybe he forgot.

<snip>
(4) The Secretary of Homeland Security is the principal Federal official for domestic incident
management. Pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the Secretary is responsible for
coordinating Federal operations within the United States to prepare for, respond to, and recover
from terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies. The Secretary shall coordinate the
Federal Government's resources utilized in response to or recovery from terrorist attacks, major
disasters,
or other emergencies if and when any one of the following four conditions applies: (1) a Federal
department or agency acting under its own authority has requested the assistance of the
Secretary; (2) the resources of State and local authorities are overwhelmed and Federal
assistance has been requested by the appropriate State and local authorities; (3) more than one
Federal department or agency has become substantially involved in responding to the incident; or
(4) the Secretary has been directed to assume responsibility for managing the domestic incident
by the President.

#2 happened as early as Aug 26, according to what I've read. At that point, HS, and FEMA (which was under HS), according to the PRESIDENT, himself, were authorized to act. Maybe he just doesn't read the things he signs.

You can find a link to the pdf file with this info here: http://www.nrt.org/Production/NRT/NRTWeb.nsf/PagesByLevelCat/Level2Directives?Opendocument

It's under "Management of Domestic Incidents"