Back on March 7^th of this year, Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in the Washington Post:

"The House schedule for 2006, the second session of the 109th Congress, has a grand total of 71 days when votes are scheduled to take place, along with an additional 26 when no votes will occur before 6:30 p.m. The total of 97 calendar days, counted generously, is the smallest number in 60 years and the days of what Harry Truman derided as that "do-nothing 80th Congress."

Now that we are upon election season, some of Ornstein’s points present a startling contrast with the Congresses of our past:

"Of course, days in session and days voting don't give a full picture of Congress and its work. Committees and subcommittees hold hearings, do oversight and mark up bills. Still, the average Congress in the 1960s and '70s had 5,372 committee and subcommittee meetings; in the 1980s and 1990s, the average was 4,793. In the last Congress, the 108th, the number was 2,135. We do not have final figures yet for 2005, but they are likely to be lower yet, and with oversight practically nonexistent."

Among other reasons for this lower tolerance for the work ethic, Ornstein cited this mindset:

"Another is the visceral distaste of current members, especially the majority Republicans who set the schedule, for Washington. Service in Congress is not a privilege and an experience to be savored so much as it is like taking castor oil -- an unpleasant necessity, and one indulged in as little as possible."

Norman Ornstein concluded:

"A part-time Congress in a country with a $13 trillion economy and federal budget near $3 trillion, in a globalized, technologically sophisticated world, is itself a danger to the checks and balances built into American democracy, and to high-quality, careful policymaking and oversight. It's not too much to ask Congress to commit to spending at least half the year -- 26 weeks -- working full-time, five days a week, thus providing at least a measure of the deliberation and attention to detail that are so lacking now."

The serious purpose of popular representation is now reduced to a "Tuesday-to-Thursday Club" more worthy of a state legislature than the most influential and powerful nation on earth. And least the Republican majority should forget it; we are at war.

Obviously, we are now experiencing the resultant catastrophes that ensue when Republicans with fixed blinders deem government to be such an unpleasant necessity.

Harry S. Truman once said, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." Considering that the Republican tome of personal responsibility has been shattered and exposed by their continual non-adherence to accountability, Truman’s words now present as an innate form of common sense.

“Only when we have lost them do we become sensible of their value; for the want, the privation, the sorrow, is the positive thing communicating itself directly to us.”

Arthur Schopenhauer - “Counsels and Maxims”

I would be far too venturesome to attribute the above quote as a maxim of public sentiment on 9/11. Many years ago, I encountered a series of quotes concerning the long anticipated moment when Americans would drop all references to ethnic identity or heritage and adopt the word that is in essence the vocabulary of our equal worth.

Instead, five years after, we have hastened a retreat to incipient ideological madness.

Lest we ever forget this tragic catalyst, or likely aspect of an event that defies all sense of acceptance and form fits our sense of denial. A denial that every rational and reasonable American mind can only adhere to without definition or want of cause.

In many respects, this lone thought of denial is constructive in purpose and seeks a closure that is wanted yet not attained. It cascades in our minds to inevitably inform us that what we are experiencing is not a common quality but a question of individual determination.

In our time, the lingering doubt may best be expressed as fragile. We have this attained notion that the American experience is written in stone and consigned to a presence of mind that lingers among solid fundamentals. The twenty first century tone of my country reeks with indecision and suffers a paralysis of ideological sentiments:

Fragile as the lady of the harbor,

Fragile as her torch that glows.

Nanci Griffith - Fragile

This concept of fragility is new to me.

If there was ever was single word that defines the nature of the American history, it is solely expressed in our continuity. Break that cohesive band and it all falls to a wayside of shattered fragility. To me, it is a concept of within that suddenly gives us this sense of without–less the concepts exemplified by right or left, but more consigned to the inevitable soul of a true believer waylaid to sights unseen, and privy to a certain regret mired in an unaccountable destiny of malaise.

Americans just may be the globe’s best futurists whose sense of the timeline turned dark and gray, removed to a sense of indiscretion, captured in a realm of limited possibilities, consigned to a substance of intangible worth, soured in an atmosphere where the median is the realm, and the extraordinary is relevant to some pre-consequential pipedream.

We are better than this–the world is better than this. There is never, ever a concept expressed in our worldly view that sanctions neo-humanism, much as the procedural evidence rations a concept for any “writer” to strongly finish, but inevitably close as completely spent.

Drudge has a lead to this Mother Jones article about Paul Hackett’s withdrawal.

Today’s events revolved around the opening of Jefferson Parish. As stated last night, my oldest niece was going on a journey. At first, it seemed a reasonable one. She would accompany some bonafide homeowners to Jefferson Parish and just help load things up. Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard had allowed a reentry to the parish on a general "get in, get out" basis. The route of reentry was U. S. 61, which runs south from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Parish President Broussard simply wanted to alleviate the anxiety of homeowners.

Enter Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee, who while loyally following his Parish President, offered several reasons why it wasn’t such a good idea. So as we watched WDSU, her father (my brother) reached a similar conclusion. At that point, my niece called in and said they were returning as the line was way too long and too slow. We tried to talk her out of going as the return period will last another two days.

The Broussard factor is evident, the simple need, irrespective of what might be found, to go home. In the case of my nieces, it has all to do with Orleans Parish.

I’m falling well below the line of optimism for New Orleans. My sense is that there were more left behind than what is being generally assumed. It is almost a general rule that we underestimate populations, most especially in urban areas. We have entered into a uncharted territory where even the best efforts may prove wanting. The evacuation of New Orleans likely has surpassed the theoretical evacuation of a major American city. Yet the most vulnerable were left behind, and the most predatory left to dwell.