Tsunami photo galleries here and here.

President Bush, today:

I suspect if you were asking me questions 18 months ago and I said there was going to be elections in Iraq, you would have had trouble containing yourself from laughing out loud at the President.

Actually, we’d still be laughing if the consequences of your policies weren’t so tragic.

Kevin Drum: “One way to cut down on medical malpractice suits is to cut down on medical malpractice.
Funny, we aren’t hearing much about that side of the equation. Perhaps America needs a “Hospital Patients for Truth” group to run some TV ads.

This is hardly a testimony for equal justice, but I’m thinking the alleged victim in this case didn’t suffer as much “harm” as the victim in this incident, if you know what I mean.
Should that be a factor in sentencing?

Herbert:

There are few things more dangerous than a mixture of power, arrogance and incompetence. In the Bush administration, that mixture has been explosive. Forget the meant-to-be-comforting rhetoric surrounding Mr. Gonzales’s confirmation hearings. Nothing’s changed. As detailed in The Washington Post earlier this month, the administration is making secret plans for the possible lifetime detention of suspected terrorists who will never even be charged.
Due process? That’s a laugh. Included among the detainees, the paper noted, are hundreds of people in military or C.I.A. custody “whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts.” And there will be plenty more detainees to come.
Who knows who these folks are or what they may be guilty of? We’ll have to trust in the likes of Alberto Gonzales or Donald Rumsfeld or President Bush’s new appointee to head the C.I.A., Porter Goss, to see that the right thing is done in each and every case.
Americans have tended to view the U.S. as the guardian of the highest ideals of justice and fairness. But that is a belief that’s getting more and more difficult to sustain. If the Justice Department can be the fiefdom of John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales, those in search of the highest standards of justice have no choice but to look elsewhere.

Krugman:

Apologists for the administration would like us to forget all about the Kerik affair, but Bernard Kerik perfectly symbolizes the times we live in. Like Rudolph Giuliani and, yes, President Bush, he wasn’t a hero of 9/11, but he played one on TV. And like Mr. Giuliani, he was quick to cash in, literally, on his undeserved reputation.
Once the New York newspapers began digging, it became clear that Mr. Kerik is, professionally and personally, a real piece of work. But that’s not unusual these days among people who successfully pass themselves off as patriots and defenders of moral values. Mr. Kerik must still be wondering why he, unlike so many others, didn’t get away with it.
. . .
As White House counsel, Mr. Gonzales was charged with vetting Mr. Kerik. He must have realized what kind of man he was dealing with – yet he declared Mr. Kerik fit to oversee homeland security.
Did Mr. Gonzales defer to the wishes of a president who wanted Mr. Kerik anyway, or did he decide that his boss wouldn’t want to know? (The Nelson Report, a respected newsletter, reports that Mr. Bush has made it clear to his subordinates that he doesn’t want to hear bad news about Iraq.)
Either way, when the Senate confirms Mr. Gonzales, it will mean that Iokiyar remains in effect, that the basic rules of ethics don’t apply to people aligned with the ruling party. And reality will continue to be worse than any fiction I could write.

Indeed.