What the President Meant to Say

"Bush, in an interview with Reuters aboard Air Force One while en route from Washington to Nashville a day after his annual State of the Union address, said, 'We've got to examine what laws are necessary to prevent people from, you know, taking advantage of the system.' . . .

"Bush said, 'In terms of political consequences, I think a close scrutiny will show that people in both parties have been involved in lobbying, being lobbied and therefore people in both parties must come up with the solution. That's why last night I praised people in both parties for working on a solution.' "

Both parties do get lobbied, of course, but the Abramoff scandal -- which has already resulted in the indictment of one White House aide, former chief procurement officer David Safavian -- revolves exclusively around influence-peddling allegations involving Republicans.

Hurricane Watch, Part I

Spencer S. Hsu and Amy Goldstein write in The Washington Post: "Responsibility for the government's bungled response to Hurricane Katrina extends widely but begins at the top of the Bush administration, which failed before the storm to name a White House, homeland security or other senior aide to take command of disaster relief, congressional investigators reported yesterday. . . .

" 'A single individual -- directly responsible and accountable to the president of the United States -- should be dedicated to act as the central focal point to lead and coordinate the overall federal response,' [Government Accountability Office] chief David M. Walker said, summarizing the preliminary findings of 30 pending Katrina-related studies. . . .

"Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who asked Walker to report to a House investigation whose work is due to be completed on Feb. 15, said Bush aides including Vice President Cheney, Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend 'were just not prepared for a storm of this magnitude.' "

Lara Jakes Jordan writes for the Associated Press: "The White House had no clear chain of command in place, investigators with the Government Accountability Office said, laying much of the blame on President Bush for not designating a single official to coordinate federal decision-making for the Aug. 29 storm. Bush has accepted responsibility for the government's halting response, but for the most part then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, who quit days after the hurricane hit, has been the public face of the failures."

Here is the GAO's preliminary report .

Hurricane Watch, Part II

Anne Rochell Konigsmark writes for USA Today: "Many Gulf Coast residents spent Wednesday angrily counting the words President Bush devoted to their storm-battered region in his State of the Union speech.

"The tally: Bush addressed 165 of his 5,300 words to disaster recovery in the Gulf, and he never used the word 'Katrina.'

" 'I waited until the bitter end,' Dottie Tabor, a New Orleans retiree, said as she bought food at a city market. 'There was not enough at all about New Orleans, and he promised a lot when he was down here.' "

Missing E-mails

Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: "Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is raising the possibility that records sought in the CIA leak investigation could be missing because of an e-mail archiving problem at the White House.