Federalism For Beginners
Hugh Hewitt, realizing that some people have no clue how their own country works, talks about the police power.

Apparently aware that the public isn't buying the "blame Bush" movement, the Washington Post's Terry Neal ups the ante by attacking the Sceretary of State, whom we all know to be at the center of domestic natural disaster response... The better question than "Why was Secretary Rice shopping?" is "Wouldn't we have been better off if Governor Blanco had been?"

It is possible that Neal doesn't know basic American government. It is obvious quite a few folks don't....

For starters, the police power resides in the states. There is no general federal police power. It is the power to take care of a citizenry's health, safety and morals....

"To the extent of its dominion," is the key phrase. For the federal government to act in the face of a natural disaster, it's help must be requested and its guidance accepted by the state and local officials...

Every effort to blame Bush (or laughably Secretary Rice) is simply demagoguery, and whether born of ignorance or malice, injures the very people it purports to be offered on behalf of. My mail box is full of angry denuciations of the agenda journalism of Bush opponents dressed up as journalists --like Neal-- who are swearing off assistance in this disater because of their anger of its twisting by amoral partisans seeking to score points off a natural disaster combined with towering incompetence of state and local officials....

That refusal to help is just as wrong as the agenda journalism of the MSM lefties and the posturing pols. The scale of the storm ought to have blown away all attempts at assigning culpability, but as the left shows no sign of recognizing what most of America has already figured out, then answers to their fake questions asked through crocodile tears should be given.

Yes, they should. The saddest part is that the people spreading this around absolutely are informed enough to know the truth, they just hope that the people they're trying to convince aren't. I'm tempted to release some kind of "Liberal Lies About Katrina" guide after all this is over with.

An easy way to explain this to a foreigner (like Pierce Brosnan, I like you but educate yourself Pierce) or, apparently, a hardcore liberal, since so many seem to be roughly as informed about it, would be to emphasize that our federal government is a federation of fifty sovereign states, kind of like the Federation of Planets on Star Trek: Every state governs itself in it's own interest, by it's own traditions, but the original thirteen states created a higher government power that negotiates with foreign powers, wages war, runs the post office, protects interstate trade and does a few other things on our collective behalf, because it is to our mutual benefit to pool resources on those issues. Hence, "united states". When the tornado siren down the street blasts me out of my home office at 10:00 AM on the first Tuesday of every month, that's something that the State of Illinois and local officials make happen, not some lonely FEMA guy sitting in a bunker somewhere. "Government" is not one entity controlled by President Bush, and the President is not merely the next rank up from a Governor. They're heads of two entirely different organizations that do entirely different things.

Much as with education, however, there is no obvious benefit to the federal government having a primary role in disaster management, since if a state's resources are overwhelmed, there's nothing preventing the Governor from going to neighboring Governors and saying "we need help". In fact, that's exactly what the Emergency Management Assistance Compact is for. Numerous Governors reported standing around, ready to deploy National Guard and other resources, waiting for a call from Blanco that never came until it was far too late.

It's entirely possible that Blanco had no idea how government works, and she may have actually believed that FEMA exists to manage emergencies for her, rather than help her manage them. As I said a few days ago:

Unfortunately, this kind of "it's everyone's job but mine" buck-passing bureaucrophilia is the kind of crap that happens when you start blurring responsibilities by creating federal agencies to take over things that the federal government has no business fiddling with in the first place, like education and disaster management.

On the other hand, considering some of the totally oblivious statements she's made about being shocked at looting, etc, it's rather more likely that she's just a really bad governor. The blurring of federalism is just what let her get away with it for so long, because it appears the federal government has been picking up the slack for Louisiana on a number of issues for some time, like when they had to take over the New Orleans police department.

This debacle may be the best case for obliterating quasi-constitutional federal bureaucracy in decades. It's also why people need to take local elections seriously. The buck stops at the chief executive's desk, but to paraphrase future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts from many years ago, there already has been a conference to decide which chief executive's desk any given buck stops at. It took place in Philadelphia's Constitution Hall in 1787, and someone should tell Governor Blanco about the "report" that it issued.