Whom to Count On

The post-Katrina nightmare is mostly reinforcing our own long-held viewpoints, as Jim Henley notes. That's normal.

But while civil society has repeatedly heartened us by meeting and even exceeding our expectations of what people can do in the face of tremendous odds -- as Radley Balko points out in the case of Wal-Mart, or CNN details in the case of three Duke University students, or the DC Examiner reports in the case of DC residents helping one Mississippi community -- I can't say the same for the federal response.

Maybe it's because that story has yet to be told, or perhaps it's because Karen Hughes is working furiously on a script.