NOTE: Corrections and update to this post can be found here.

Ann Althouse points to the following WaPo piece (Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting) which contains the following remarkable passage:

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state’s emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. “Quite frankly, if they’d been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals,” said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

Ok, I may be missing something, but how does taking over the responsibility for the operation lead to the ability to blame the locals? If the administration had been successful, surely that would have led to increased culpability, not reduced exposure.

If, in fact, the feds were trying to act as early as Friday, but the locals didn’t issue the evacuation orders until Sunday, then it puts a different spin on interepreting responses. Although, as I noted this morning, it will be impossible to really know what did and did not happen until this all passes.

More from the article:

A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.

The following makes no sense and, it seems to me, borders on the criminal:

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

How can either of those facts be?

And this only has one of two interpretations, either Blanco is seeking help apart from the federal government for personal politics reasons, or she is seeking help because the Bush administration’s officials have been utterly incompetent. Either way, it is most odd, given the situation:

Blanco made two moves Saturday that protected her independence from the federal government: She created a philanthropic fund for the state’s victims and hired James Lee Witt, Federal Emergency Management Agency director in the Clinton administration, to advise her on the relief effort.

In this situation, is is really wise to seek independence from the federal government?

This is most odd.