Cindy Sheehan, the grieving military mother whose vigil outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX, focused the nation's attention on the human cost of the Iraq war, will be arriving in Covington, LA, joining the ongoing national volunteer effort to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Immediately after Sheehan's vigil at "Camp Casey" in Crawford ended on Aug. 31, veterans who'd participated in the vigil drove all leftover supplies from the campsite -- toilet paper, medicines, water, and food -- to Covington, La., for distribution to hurricane victims. Since Sept. 2, they have been in Covington, operating a relief operation out of "Camp Casey III."

In a Sept. 13 update for the Village Voice, Sarah Ferguson reports that Houston mirco-radio activists have sidestepped FEMA bureaucracy to broadcast relief info to Katrina survivors:

After a week of wading through FEMA red tape, media activists finally fired up a low-power radio station to serve Hurricane Katrina evacuees still living in the Houston Astrodome and adjacent Reliant convention center.

KAMP (Katrina Aftermath Media Project) 95.3 FM, Dome City Radio went live at noon today, broadcasting from a donated Airstream trailer in the Astrodome’s parking lot.

Kristen Lombardi in the Village Voice Sept. 6 remembers 9-11's forgtten victims—who continue to suffer in silence:

"Vasean's Law" is a step in the right direction, but too bad it couldn't be applied retroactively. In the USA, it seems having a driver's license is literally a license to kill. From New York Newsday, Sept. 13:

Drunk driver who inspired Vasean's law released from jail
The drunken driver who mowed down two boys last year, killing one of them, is a free man after serving 38 days of his two-month sentence.

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post reports Sept. 11 that the Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to pre-empt an attack by a nation or terror group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.

The document, written by the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs staff but not yet approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, would update rules and procedures governing the use of nuclear weapons to reflect a pre-emption strategy first announced by the Bush White House in December 2002.

Al Garza, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, confirmed on Sept. 7 that his group is beginning operations in Texas sooner than expected, bringing about 50 volunteers to Brownsville this month for "Secure Our Borders," a campaign targeting undocumented immigrants along the border. The campaign was slated to begin Oct. 1, but was moved up a month--it began on Sept. 2--after hundreds of federal Border Patrol agents were redeployed away from the border to Gulf Coast areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. Garza said the border is now even more short-handed and his volunteers are "picking up the slack."

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, VA, ruled unanimously Sept. 9 that Jose Padilla, held for more than three years as an "enemy combatant," can be detained indefinitely without trial. Judge Michael Luttig wrote the decision for a three-member appellate court panel. He is considered to be on President Bush's short list of candidates for a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Padilla's attorneys plan to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

"The court's ruling effectively declares the entire world, including the United States, to be a battlefield subject to military jurisdiction, where American citizens can be stripped of their constitutional rights," said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the U.S. Law and Security Program at Human Rights First, a rights advocacy group in New York and Washington.

Reports Sarah Garland of Newsday Sept. 9:

Michael Dardar lost his home when Hurricane Katrina flooded his trailer in Boothville, La., but that is the least of his worries. For Dardar, 43, a Houma Indian, the loss of his land and culture could be far worse.

"An indigenous existence is about people and about place; it's not like we can go buy land in Arkansas," he said from a friend's house in Lafayette, La.

Most of the 15,000 Houmas live in isolated towns dotting the edges of the bayou southeast of New Orleans, an area hard hit by Katrina, and Dardar estimates up to 3,400 could have lost their homes.