Kansas governor plays twister

The first Rule of Acquisition is, "If you don't ask, you don't get." We've all heard about how Kansas suffered after the tornado, because the National Guard reserves were in Iraq. Well, first of all, the governor needs to remember the first rule.

...after Sebelius' loud complaints, it turned out she hadn't even asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for help. "If you don't request it," White House Spokesman Tony Snow noted, "you're not going to get it." That, by the way, is the law.

And as it turns out, there were plenty of people she could have asked.

It's become a pattern: Democrats blaming President Bush for their own lack of disaster preparedness. Like Blanco in Katrina, Sebelius claims the federal response to the May 6 tornado that leveled the town of Greensburg was slow. She blames Bush's deployment of Kansas National Guardsmen in Iraq. "States all over the country are not only missing personnel," she told CNN, "they don't have the equipment they need to come in. And it will just make it that much slower." Fact is, she had 4,500 guard troops on call for this town of 1,600 if she needed them. She also had offers of help from other states for any resources Kansas asked for. More than that, Kansas itself is full of resources — like farm equipment, along with private companies and citizen volunteers that can use them as effectively as any military equipment to clean up.