Michael Brown 'Out of Touch With Reality' and First Female Suicide Bomber In Iraq Kills Six in Today's Details 9/28/05

- Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco will appear before a Senate panel this morning, but she's already come out swinging against former FEMA head Michael Brown. Blanco takes strong exception to a charge by Brown that she waited until the eve of the storm to order an evacuation of New Orleans. She says Brown's comment clearly demonstrates what she says is the "appalling degree" to which he's "out of touch with the truth or reality."

- Never underestimate the brazenness of incumbent politicians determined to sneak unfair rule changes into the game. Incumbent treachery is under way in the Senate, where Republicans are using a big spending bill as cover to try to gut campaign donation limits and give themselves an eight-to-one spending advantage over election challengers.

- Fort Lauderdale police said yesterday that they charged three men in the 2001 gangland style slaying of a Florida businessman who was gunned down in his car months after selling a casino cruise line to a group that included Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

- A woman strapped with explosives blew herself up outside an Iraqi army recruiting center in a northern town Wednesday, killing at least six people and wounding 30 in the first known attack by a female suicide bomber in the country's bloody insurgency.

- The Army is investigating complaints that soldiers posted photographs of mangled Iraqi corpses on an Internet site in exchange for access to pornographic images on the site, officials said Tuesday.

- A white Tennessee lawmaker lamenting his exclusion from the state's Black Legislative Caucus claimed Tuesday the group was less accommodating that even the Ku Klux Klan.

- On Sept. 1, as tens of thousands of desperate Louisianans packed the New Orleans Superdome and convention center, the Federal Emergency Management Agency pleaded with the U.S. Military Sealift Command: The government needed 10,000 berths on full-service cruise ships, FEMA said, and it needed the deal done by noon the next day. The hasty appeal yielded one of the most controversial contracts of the Hurricane Katrina relief operation, a $236 million agreement with Carnival Cruise Lines for three ships that now bob more than half empty in the Mississippi River and Mobile Bay. The six-month contract -- staunchly defended by Carnival but castigated by politicians from both parties -- has come to exemplify the cost of haste that followed Katrina's strike and FEMA's lack of preparation.

- President Vladimir Putin told Russians during a nationally televised call-in show Tuesday that he would vacate the Kremlin in 2008 when his second term ends. But he hinted at some subsequent political role when he added, "As they say in the military, I will find my place in the ranks."

- Dan Rather wants to reopen the investigation into President Bush and the National Guard story that resulted in the Memogate scandal and led to his early departure from the anchor desk.

- The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to reconsider the free-speech rule that allows candidates to spend unlimited amounts of money to win election to public office.