Joe Lieberman and "Heckuva job, Brownie"

At the end of August 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The result was an absolute disaster for the citizens of that city and as of January 2006, the city was still a complete mess. During the disaster, President Bush visited the city and spoke with the head of FEMA and declared: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Michael Brown's main concern, while the people of New Orleans were trapped on their roofs with no food, clean water or shelter from the late-summer sun was:

Sharon Worthy, Brown’s press secretary, to Cindy Taylor, FEMA deputy director of public affairs, and others, Aug. 31, 2 p.m.:

“Also, it is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner. Given that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy. He needs much more than 20 or 30 minutes. We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choice, followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc.”

What can we say? Here was a guy who knew his priorities! After the crisis, we then heard:

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel published an editorial comment on September 8, 2005: "[N]othing can restore FEMA's full functionality so long as the agency's incompetent director, Michael Brown, remains at the helm. Brown, a patronage appointee with no previous disaster management experience, embarrassed himself last year with his attempts to justify FEMA's waste of more than $31 million in hurricane relief given to areas not affected by a hurricane." (emphasis added)

How is Joe Lieberman involved with Brown's disastrous performance? Well, it turns out that Lieberman was the chairman of the Committee on Governmental Affairs when the Democrats were briefly in the majority in 2002 and he approved Brown's appointment to be Deputy Director of FEMA in a whopping grand total of 42 minutes. What is the point, we can ask, of an opposition Senator who acts as a rubber stamp for the Chief Executive? The President has plenty of Republican Senators who will do that for him. There's absolutely zero need to keep a Democratic Senator around who will simply wave through an obviously unqualified applicant.