Here is an excellent (in my opinion) column from Howell Raines I read in The Seattle Times Today. It's Title is The Crescent City blues. Here is an excerpt:

"Certainly, the sacrifices of New Orleans need a kind of national reckoning, one that would enable the people to see the president who forgot to care for what he is. Every great disaster — the Blitz, 9/11, the tsunami — has a political dimension. The dilatory performance of George Bush during the past week has been outrageous. Almost as unbelievable as Katrina itself is the fact that the leader of the free world has been outshone by the elected leaders of a region renowned for governmental ineptitude."