Food held up for Bush visit

AMERICAblog points to a piece on the Daily Picayune website, with some opinions: "Whoever halted the food delivery should be fired and brought up on charges of criminal negligence. We need to know who ordered the air traffic stopped, did they know they were stopping the food deliveries, who else knew the food deliveries were being stopped, did anyone object to or know about them being stopped, if so who objected and to whom did they object and what response did they get?

This isn't just a 'sad' story, this is criminally negligent. Someone had to affirmatively tell that food to stop. We need to know who, and we need to know if anyone associated with the White House or Secret Service or any other government official knew about this.

From the Times-Picayune (the story was on a breaking news page, it's now moved off, so I'm taking down the link, but it's for real, I copied it off the newspaper's web site)"

Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer

Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.

“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.

The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.