AUSTIN, Texas -- Here's a good idea: Consumer groups and progressive congressfolks have joined in an effort to stop hundreds of thousands of victims of Hurricane Katrina from being further harmed by the new Bankruptcy Act, scheduled to take effect Oct. 17. This law was notoriously written of, by and for the consumer credit industry, and is particularly onerous for the poor.

The bill was passed with massive support from the Republican leadership in Congress and from a disgusting number of sellout Democrats. While it was being considered in committee earlier this year, Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee offered an amendment to protect victims of natural disasters. It was defeated, without debate, on a party-line vote.

Now, Congress has a chance to rethink some of the most punitive parts of the bill. Katrina victims who were planning to file before the new law goes into effect are s.o.l. -- where they gonna find a lawyer, let alone an open courthouse?

President George W. Bush has consistently maintained that there is a link between the events of September 11, 2001 and the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, contrary to all available evidence. This has been the consistent White House fallback position since the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. And now that Hurricane Katrina has devastated the Gulf Coast and in particular New Orleans, Bush is making a political though not causal connection between the destruction caused by four human-hijacked airliners and an act of nature. The usual liberal Democratic response is to strongly deny all such associations. This is a massive mistake, for undeniably there is a strong correlation between all three events. That statistical link is the incompetence of George W. Bush.

Bush was given an intelligence briefing in August of 2001 which clearly outlined the possibility and immanence of terrorists flying airliners into tall buildings in a major American metropolis. He ignored this warning in favor of clearing brush down on the ranch. He was advised that no WMD's were likely to be found in Iraq, and that the program which

Weather can wipe out cities forever. It's what happened to America's first city, after all, as a visit to Chaco Canyon northeast of Gallup, N.M., attests. At the start of the 13th century, it got hotter in that part of the world, and by the 1230s, the Anasazi up and moved on. As the world now knows, weather need not have done to New Orleans. There are decades' worth of memos from engineers and contractors setting forth budgets for what it would take to build up those levees to withstand a Force 4 or 5 hurricane. The sum most recently nixed by Bush's Office of Management of Budget -- $3 billion or so is far less than what the Pentagon simply mislays every year, even before it's gone to the trouble of converting the appropriated cash into cruise missiles or boots.

New Orleans has bounced back before. Though after the Civil War, the city never really returned to its former glory. According to Lyle Saxon's "Fabulous New Orleans," the last great social season came in 1859 with the largest receipts of produce, the heaviest and most profitable trade the city had ever done. The total river trade that year was valued at $289,565,000.

Today marks four years that George W. Bush has been a complete flop as a “War President,” the worst Commander in Chief in US History.

On September 11, 2001, Bush’s incompetence -- at very least -- allowed Osama bin Laden’s attacks on America to happen. Imagine the howl from the bloviating right wing if those disasters had happened on Bill Clinton or Al Gore or John Kerry’s watch.

Since then, Bush’s four-year mismanagement of military operations has been every bit as incompetent, dishonorable and gratuitously destructive as his performance in New Orleans. One can only shudder at what comes next.

At a speech just before Katrina, Bush had the astonishing gall to compare his war leadership to that of Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, if Bush had been in office instead of Roosevelt in 1941, we’d all be speaking German and Japanese.

Lets do the math: On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, killing nearly as many Americans as bin Laden killed on 9/11/01. The Pacific fleet was crippled, and Japan appeared as unbeatable in Asia as did the Nazis in Europe.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.), 1980 independent presidential candidate John Anderson (who now heads Fairvote), Melanie Campbell of the Coalition for Black Civic Participation, and other leaders in the movement for election reform will speak at."A Call to Protect and Democratize U.S. Elections: A Panel Presentation on the challenges to American elections."

"The numerous allegations of manipulation in the 2000 and 2004 elections and the change of personnel on the U.S. Supreme Court have raised questions about the future of American democracy," said Dean Myerson, executive director of the Green Institute. "The September 16 panel will feature political and activist leaders with a lot to say about barriers to voting, problems with computer voting machines, and challenges posed by our at-large, winner-take-all election system."

The event will take place at the National Press Club on Friday, September 16, 1-4 p.m., and is sponsored by the Green Institute, the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution, and Fairvote.

Also on the panel will be 2004 Green Party presidential candidate David