They went to sleep Monday night, as Secretary Chertoff said, thinking New Orleans had dodged the bullet. Meantime, in New Orleans, the poor people are drowning.

Did you tell Mr. Hagin in that phone call that New Orleans was flooding?

The people of the area that have been damaged by Hurricane Katrina cannot wait any longer. And I expect this to be done momentarily. And, if it's not, there's going to be hell to pay this day.

Senator John McCain says he'll introduce legislation next week to move toward a la carte cable.

There were some lobbyists down there, actually. It was very creative of them, to get locked down there with us.

Oh, it was a nice chance to visit with everybody and those of us who are Senators, were able to tell which of our staff worked late.

I don't want to believe that anybody would ever put a cost to human life. That's me speaking. That's the state of West Virginia speaking. I can tell you how much a roof boulder costs. I can tell you how much a continuous miner costs. I can…

Another political fallout from Hurricane Katrina. The White House will shortly begin providing more documents to the Senate committee investigating what went wrong.

Republican Susan Collins, chair of that committee, and Joseph Lieberman, its ranking Democrat wrote to the White House weeks ago to complain that most of the documents the panel requested had not been provided.

We can't find any evidence of a request to FEMA to get supplies to the Convention Center.

In West Virginia, Governor Joe Manchin is urging all coal mining operations to shut down, asking the companies to stop operations until safety checks can be conducted on the mining facilities.

So here we are, after the worst natural disaster in modern times, and no one was in charge.

There shouldn't be any partisanship associated with that.

I think there's a system here that breeds corruption. That's why you have Congressman Cunningham who has pled guilty already and other scandals which we're going to hear more about. It's a system where this, quote, 'earmarking,' which is…

I don't believe so. I think the president is staying the course. And I do believe that he stated very clearly when he said troop withdrawals would be dictated by conditions on the ground.

I really believe that if there's one proposal the president resonated outside the foreign policy issues is this dependency on foreign oil.

It's bitter, and it's angry, and it's unnecessary.

I was pleased that he talked about the need for honesty and integrity in government. He talked about that. He also did bring up the so-called earmarking, which is the pork-barrel projects, and his opposition to it.