Congress last week passed a new homeland security bill, which included a set of job qualifications for the head of FEMA (obviously in response to the "Brownie" fiasco):
To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency's director in last week's homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has "a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management" and "not less than five years of executive leadership."
Bush signed the homeland-security bill on Wednesday morning. Then, hours later, he issued a signing statement saying he could ignore the new restrictions. Bush maintains that under his interpretation of the Constitution, the FEMA provision interfered with his power to make personnel decisions.
The law, Bush wrote, "purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the president may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office."
It's like the administration's lawyers aren't even trying anymore...
I suppose what this means is that everybody should acquaint themselves with their local shelter of last resort, because you're gonna get to know it REEEEALLY well should a catastrophe happen to strike your community (if, for whatever reason, you do not have the means or opportunity to leave). Personally, I sure am glad the Kingdome is gone, 'cause I couldn't stand to be in there for 3 hours for a Mariners' game, let alone spend 4 days there in a pit o' hell with 40,000 other people waiting for the government to get around to helping us.
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