Cursor's Media Patrol: 08/30/05

Martial Law Declared With the city said to be 80 percent underwater, New Orleans residents described "whitecaps on Canal Street," a month after an ABC affiliate reported that "when members of the Louisiana National Guard left for Iraq ... they took a lot of equipment with them ... and in the event of a major natural disaster, that could be a problem."

The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg finds that "the reticence of so many Democrats is rooted as much in perplexity as in timidity," while noting that "9/11 did nothing to change ... the Bush Administration’s top priority ... the use of the tax code to transfer wealth to the rich and, especially, the superrich." Earlier: Hertzberg on mud people.