Reading about the storm

To be honest, I've spent most of the past week reading every scrap of coverage I can find about Hurricane Katrina. I was born and raised in rural Louisiana. Like many people who live in the state but outside the city, I love New Orleans and visited it often. Its sophistication, its debauchery, its fun, its grittiness -- New Orleans is a fascinating, cosmopolitan beacon rising out of the swamps. (I can't bring myself to write "was." It is and will be again.)
At any rate, the media coverage has been amazing. It sadly seems reporters realized the magnitude of the problem much faster than the federal government.
I could link to lots of coverage of the storm and its aftermath, but I will content myself to link to only one item: An editorial written as an open letter to the President in New Orleans' great newspaper, the Times-Picayune.
It reads, in part in part:

We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame. ...
Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially. ...
We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We're no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

Read the whole editorial here at Nola.com or here via the Editor & Publisher web site.