Hurricane season starts now. The levees in New Orleans still are not up to snuff. The City works under no plan, no strategic vision . . . actually, worse, three competing visions that all are not completed (that's just the "vision" part). FEMA has a new director, Chertoff remains, and what about those pesky investigations?

The three major post-Katrina investigations -- the White House, the House Republicans (basically), and the Senate Collins/Lieberman report -- all, in the end, have a lot of interesting things to say. I don't agree with some aspects, think they (particualarly the WH and House) white-washed the Bush Administration's culpability, for example, but as far as thinking about DHS, FEMA, the White House, communication, preparation, prevention, etc., they have some very useful points.

And, guess what? Almost all the focus has been on FEMA reforms. Otherwise, not much has happened. Not surprising, but none of the reports really went anywhere beyond fix FEMA (in the Senate report case, abolish FEMA) and so, for the most part, at least from the homeland security perspective, we are basically back to where we started. In particular, and something that interests me as we see the military being invoked more and more often on most major public policy issues (immigration, homeland security, etc. -- I like to call it "the we love a man in a uniform" response), we still have no clear idea what the military ought to do in cooperation with Governors, majors and FEMA in the event that the big one comes again. Katrina was not all FEMA's fault.

Having read the Vanity Fair piece by Anderson Cooper, I don't know if I could handle another Hurricane season with him. But, I live in Massachusetts, and worry more about blizzards.