Tropical Storm Rita

ENOUGH ALREADY, OKAY!

Max Mayfield, head of the National Hurricane Center, just finished an interview in which he said Rita will be a Cat 1 hurricane when it hits the Florida Keys tomorrow. Then, it will pass over the same warm water in the Gulf of Mexico that Katrina did, intensify and become another major (Cat 3 or higher) hurricane.

Unlike the Mayor of New Orleans, "Naggin'" Nagin, and his state's Goobernor who both waited and waited and . . . , Jeb declared a(nother) state of emergency for the Keys yesterday.

Meanwhile, Nagin is -- against the recommendations of those he's tried to blame for not doing the job he was elected and paid to perform when Katrina was on the way -- already allowing some of New Orleans' residents to return home.

I'm torn about letting people return to a disaster area before the all-clear is given.

The libertarian-leaning part of me says that government doesn't have the right to deny people access to their homes or businesses. That assumes, of course, that those individuals are also willing to accept full personal responsibility for whatever happens to them in doing so.

But with Nagin in charge we know that's not going to happen. Nagin will expect if those whom he is allowing to return are injured or become sick, that burden will also be borne by personnel currently busy with rescue and recovery. You can be sure he'll hype any failure to respond instantaneously.

Especially, if those he's letting back in now have to evacuate again in the next few days.

Unlike the dropped-spaghetti (link fixed) projections for Ophelia's path that were provided by the computer-generated guesses models, this go-'round they're fairly consistent, even this far out.

UPDATE: Mayor Nagin has suspended the return to New Orleans and warned that those who already have should be prepared to evacuate by Wednesday if not sooner.