The President signed declarations enabling Federal disaster relief
before Katrina hit the Gulf coast. Unless you expect him to be driving a
Humvee full of water into town, it really doesn't matter where he is
located as he always retains full Presidential authority.

"Philip S." wrote in message
news:BF3E495D.151315%

Okay, if it'll stop you obfuscating the matter with semantics, I'll
clarify
my remarks:

Nobody expects the President to prevent a natural disaster. What
reasonable
people should expect from the President (especially one who ran on a
platform of "homeland security") is a competent, timely response to
perhaps
the worst natural disaster to ever strike this country. They should
expect
that he not wait until two days after the scope of the disaster became
apparent to end his vacation. They should expect that the Secretary of
State
(who happens to be in charge of coordinating relief efforts from other
countries) not spend Wednesday evening taking in a Broadway show and
Thursday shoe-shopping. They have a right to expect that the head of
FEMA
know more about the situation than a CNN reporter.

Oh, and this just in--a Senate Republican is co-sponsoring a full
investigation into the whole thing. Good. The apologists are rapidly
dwindling, and I'm thinking most of them can be found on this
newsgroup.