I'm not one to lawyer-bash, especially since my two lawyer-cousins would take me to task about it, but in light of this paralysis, maybe we shouldn't hire lawyers (Chertoff and Brown) to run the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA?
For days, Bush's top advisers argued over legal niceties about who was in charge, according to three White House officials who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. Beginning early in the week, Justice Department lawyers presented arguments for federalizing the Guard, but Defense Department lawyers fretted about untrained 19-year-olds trying to enforce local laws, according to a senior law-enforcement official who requested anonymity citing the delicate nature of the discussions.
It strikes me that this kind of discussion is one that lawyers are eminently suited to do: ensure that no rules, regulations or laws are broken. But when you're faced with a disaster of this magnitude, I'd argue that many of the rules should be set aside. Apparently the lawyer-managers didn't get that.
The entire article is a good overview of how this mismanaged fiasco occurred.
Posted by Linkmeister at September 5, 2005 01:06 PM | TrackBack