Is it not ridiculous that a sheriff can't call citizens to help rescue OTHER citizens because some government official is concerned about insurance and legal BS? Note, it doesn't say whether the "beaurecrat" was Republican or Democrat (probably Republican since it was during the Bush administration). So its a criticism of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT? Can you not agree with that?

I don't know anything about the sheriff, so I'm not going to defend or condemn him, but it seems you're insinuating he closed a bridge so black people could die. Okay, Kanye....

(clasping hands together like Montgomery Burns), it will be most humourous asking Republican Chairman Micheal Steele about this fine Southern sherriff & then comparing & contrasting his remarks with Rush & Hannity, etc. & then ensuring our black & latino voters hear all about the sherriff's enlightened racial views.

Should be quite fun.

Wasn't a government agent? Yes, it was local government, but government nonetheless...he was acting on behalf of voters and the local government. For Jindal to have any point about self-relience, the story should have been about a church or boyscout group or some NGO that ran into the mythical bureacracy. BTW, I note that he didn't specify which Bureacracy. It suggests that it was Federal...but it could have been state. Further, let us remember that it was a Republican "small government" (big lie) president running the Federal Bureacracy...as in George Bush's "Good-job" Brownie. A well run FEMA -- not the sorry ass haven for hacks that FEMA was under the Bush Administration -- would have focused on the rescue not the insurance.

This story falls apart in so many ways when you scratch just a little of it and doesn't stand for the larger point Jindal was trying to make.

Is he suggesting, for example, that if only the federal government had stayed away (as it practically did) that things would have been better? That is a highly debatable point.

Was he suggesting that local government alone, a'la Jefferson County, could have managed? But other places, such as New Orleans were incapable of handling the situation.

And, if what he means is: government should have stayed away, why not just say it outright? He can't because most sane people believe, especially in the case of an emergency such as Katrina, that the federal government has an important role.

This issue is getting the role right, managing the costs, keeping out of the way when not effective and helping where effective. IT ISN'T keeping the feds. out of the picture or eliminating the role of the feds. He can't sell that, yet he isn't brave enough (or stupid enough) to follow through on the logic of his argument.

I mean, when are the Democrats finally going to come to grips with their own history of racial bigotry, going back to the slave-owning, slave-raping, spiritual founder of their party, Thomas Jefferson? And on through the days of the Jim Crow south, enforced by Democrats, to the Kleagle of the West Virginia Ku Klux Klan, Robert Byrd, to Jesse Jackson's "hymietown," to... you get the idea.

Thank you, Governor Jindal, for being the perfect symbol of GOP mendacity, incompetence and ineptitude last night. This is the best that the GOP has to offer? Yes, actually, it is.

All of you competent, honest and courageous Republican politicians out there? There are a VERY few left. It's time to leave the Goober Party and start over.

If the AIM of old were alive and well Gov. Jindal would be in an obvious world of hurt..

And while I'm not generally into bitchy type comments this Gov. Jindall character is kinda a strange looking little man with an equally poor coherency and delivery.

Makes you wonder what he sees from his back porch too.

Despite plenty of press-conferencing by then-Congressman Jindal in the days immediately following Katrina's landfall, this is the first mention of his story about Sheriff Harry Lee fighting a government bureaucrat to mount a rescue by boat. Lee is conveniently dead and can neither confirm nor deny the story and Jindal, was apparently, the only person in the room, according to him.

Furthermore, Jindal was in Baton Rouge through at least September 1, making it highly unlikely that he was on-scene in the Sheriff's office to mount an immediate post-Katrina rescue.

It sounds like Jindal is combining multiple different events, which occurred in different jurisdictions, none of which involved him.

See:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/2/24/23132/9395/253/701495

and:

http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110007224

"I mean, when are the Democrats finally going to come to grips with their own history of racial bigotry."

Isn't the sheriff in the story associated with alleged racial bigotry a democrat?

And it doesn't always just affect minorities.

You know how Ted Bundy was caught, twice? Because some patrol office noticed a car he hadn't seen before and pulled him over and found items for killing in the trunk, and another time ran the plates, and the car was stolen.

Blacks are mostly the victims of crime by other blacks, and the fact of the matter is that young black men riding around in certain cars or at certain times are far more likely to be engaged in criminal activity that might otherwise be the case.

I've been pulled over being in a black area, because the police want to know why you're there. It's annoying when you aren't committing nor intending to commit any crime, but it's also not the end of the World.

Part of a policeman's job is to notice the unusual, and that sometimes includes racial profiling, but we don't want to admit that. Instead we play this silly and dangerous game of pretending that all people of all ages commit the same crimes at the same rate.

Yet, if walking down a dark street, 99.99999% of us would be far more scared of a young black man walking toward us than a 80 year old white women. While that young black man could be the nicest person in the World, and the white women looking for her next kill.