New partisan storm erupts over Katrina. Here we go again. A government video has been obtained and publicly released by the Associated Press, allegedly showing that President Bush was warned by federal disaster officials about the possibility of the New Orleans levees being breached by Hurricane Katrina. First of all, that's not true (see this post). But Democrats are naturally trying to spin this as proof that Bush did not care about the situation and that he did not make the proper preparations to respond to the coming disaster. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are predictably calling for a new investigation into the federal response, with Reid accusing the Bush administration of "hiding what really happened" and "systematically misleading the American people". And, of course, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and Senator Mary Landrieu (D, La.) are trying to portray this video as proof that the federal, not city or state, government was responsible for all of the failures.

This, of course, is all nonsense. Since I hate to have to cover old ground, I will refer you to two blog posts I made on this subject in September:

Mandatory evacuation was ordered for New Orleans

The federal response to Katrina was not as portrayed