A heck of a resignation

With 63 percent of Americans saying the federal government's response in Hurricane Katrina's immediate aftermath was poor, it was only a matter of time before a Bush administration official was out of a job.

Today, that someone turned out to be Michael Brown, who somehow became the Federal Emergency Management Agency's director two years ago despite little prior background in emergency response and some discrepancies in his online profiles.

Brown's resignation comes about a week and a half after a truly disturbing sequence of events in which he said on Sept. 1 that the federal government didn't know about the thousands of hurricane survivors in New Orleans' convention center until three days after the city flooded. Then he claimed those survivors were receiving at least one meal a day despite on-the-ground reporting that clearly disproved that assertion. The next day, President Bush said Brown was "doing a heck of a job."

No, he wasn't. Brown's resignation is a good start, but if our nation is to be more prepared in the event of another catastrophe, the federal housecleaning in Katrina's wake can't stop there.