Chivalry is not dead. Isn't it comforting to know that the United States Senate is one of the few remaining bastions of chivalry? Where else could Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco go and receive kid glove treatment in the aftermath of one of the most incompetent exhibitions of leadership in American gubernatorial history other than the U.S Senate?

A day after former FEMA Director Michael Brown was excoriated before a senate committee and termed "clueless" by one of its members, Gov. Blanco appeared and requested that the committee "not talk about her performance during Hurricane Katrina." Apparently it mattered not that the Senate committee had issued an invitation to Governor Blanco ostensibly to respond to Mr. Brown's charges that Louisiana was dysfunctional during the emergency response to Katrina.

The kindly senators all agreed with Governor Blanco that it would be more important to discuss the size of the aid package that would be necessary to begin the process of repairing the damage done by both Katrina and the administration of Ms. Blanco and Mr. Nagin.

Couldn't one senator have mustered the nerve to ask Governor Blanco what assurances that the American tax payer would have that the same levels of incompetence and corruption which apparently are the hallmark of Lousiana government won't be displayed in the rebuilding of the state in the same way that it was on display in it's destruction?

Even more importantly than the future how about just a few questions as to what Governor Blanco is doing right now to alleviate the suffering of her constituents who were victimized by the disaster?

No, the primary leader of a state that has just under gone some of the most egregious failures of civil management responsibility got less of an examination than the adoption records of the children of John Roberts by the New York Times.

Phillipn A. Gallagher   9 29 05