It failed, of course, with a majority of the vote. Fifty-three voted to proceed with the bill, and 33 senators voted no. The $6.9 billion in funding was attached to a non-controversial bill renewing sanctions on the government of Burma. Only one senator bothered to argue against the bill before a small minority quietly blocked it.

“Has anybody given any serious thought to that? “asked Sessions. “Seven billion dollars? The state of Alabama’s general budget is $2 billion. Seven billion is a lot of money. We have not looked at it, we have not thought about it.”

“I strongly oppose adding another debt spending bill that we haven’t carefully examined every penny of it to make sure it’s all necessary and appropriate,” Sessions continued.

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Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Craig Fugate tells CBS's "The Early Show" a drawdown in assistance funds will have no negative impact on the agency's efforts to help stricken Eastern Seaboard states.

Fugate says "we're going to do what we're supposed to do." He says FEMA "will work with the White House on funds needed to recover from this and other disasters." The agency has less than $800 million left in its disaster coffers.

Fugate says FEMA's current focus is on Hurricane Irene recovery efforts and says it must also gird for any new disasters.

"We don't know what's coming down the line," he says.

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For some on the right, it's all about the relentless expansion of Big Government -- the "federalization of fairly routine disasters," as Matt Mayer, the president of the conservative think tank Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, wrote in a blog post for the Heritage Foundation website.

We can leave it to residents of Vermont to decide whether the flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene qualifies as "routine" or not, but there's also another explanation: 2011 has been a banner year for disasters, period. By mid-year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2011 was already one of the most extreme -- and costly -- years on record. And that was before Hurricane Irene.

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With less than $800 million in its disaster aid coffers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been forced to freeze rebuilding projects from disasters dating to Hurricane Katrina to conserve money for emergency needs in the wake of Irene. Lawmakers from states ravaged by tornadoes this spring, like Missouri and Alabama, are especially furious.

The shortfalls in FEMA's disaster aid account have been obvious to lawmakers on Capitol Hill for months -- and privately acknowledged to them by FEMA -- but the White House has opted against asking for more money, riling many lawmakers.

"Despite the fact that the need ... is well known," Reps. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., and David Price, D-N.C., wrote the administration last month, "it unfortunately appears that no action is being taken by the administration." The lawmakers chair the panel responsible for FEMA's budget.

FEMA now admits the disaster aid shortfall could approach $5 billion for the upcoming budget year, and that's before accounting for Irene.

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"We're in the news business," Scarborough said wryly. "We deal in doom."

This becomes vividly clear during the run-up to big storms -- especially storms that threaten to make landfall in New York City, North America's media center. The motto of all news, TV news especially, is "The worse the better." Informative, detached, rational coverage is a snooze-fest and a ratings bust. Weather porn is ratings gold.

Plus, as news stories go, storms are in a special class, with unique potential for exploitation.

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The storm left millions without power across much of the Eastern Seaboard, left at least two dozen dead and forced airlines to cancel about 9,000 flights. It never became the big-city nightmare forecasters and public officials had warned about, but it still had the ability to surprise.

Many of the worst effects arose from rains that fell inland, not the highly anticipated storm surge along the coasts. Residents of Pennsylvania and New Jersey nervously watched waters rise as hours' worth of rain funneled into rivers and creeks. Normally narrow ribbons of water turned into raging torrents in Vermont and upstate New York late Sunday, tumbling with tree limbs, cars and parts of bridges.

"This is not over," President Barack Obama said from the Rose Garden.

Hundreds of Vermonters were told to leave their homes after Irene dumped several inches of rain on the landlocked state. Video posted on Facebook showed a 141-year-old covered bridge in Rockingham swept away by the roiling, muddy Williams River. In another video, an empty car somersaulted down a river in Bennington.

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As of noontime on Saturday, all flights in or out of the three major airports serving New York City -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- had been suspended. Multiple airport closings for any reason are very rare, and this was the first such closure since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Entirely shutting down the country's busiest air corridor might have seemed overly cautious, and perhaps the decision came a little sooner than was necessary. But with Irene approaching it was bound to happen at some point.

For pilots, the upper-altitude hazards of a hurricane are bad enough -- embedded thunderstorms and widespread areas of heavy turbulence. But the real menace is down low, where powerful gusts can spawn dangerous windshear, and/or exceed the operational limitations (crosswind limits, tailwind limits and so on) of almost any commercial aircraft.

The best way to deal with such weather is, simply enough, not to deal with it.

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After a lunch speech today, Ron Paul slammed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and said that no national response to Hurricane Irene is necessary.

"We should be like 1900; we should be like 1940, 1950, 1960," Paul said. "I live on the Gulf Coast; we deal with hurricanes all the time. Galveston is in my district.

(Galveston is in his district! Not that he spends a lot of time there.)

Paul doesn't support FEMA because of "moral hazard." The fact that people will receive help should a natural disaster strike encourages people to live where natural disaster happen. (Like "North America.") Paul is mostly talking about the National Flood Insurance Program, which definitely has glaring flaws as public policy, but abolishing the federal agency in charge of responding to natural disasters instead of fixing the problems with one program that agency oversees seems like overkill.

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Think Progress links to the words of NOAA administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco:

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Swells from Irene and 6 to 9-foot waves were showing up and winds were expected to begin picking up later in the day, said Hal Austin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Meanwhile, the hurricane warning area was expanded and now covered a large chunk of the East Coast from North Carolina to Sandy Hook, N.J., which is south of New York City. A hurricane watch extended even farther north and included Long Island, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, Mass.

For hundreds of miles, as many as 65 million people along the densely populated East Coast warily waited Friday for a dangerous hurricane that has the potential to inflict billions of dollars in damages anywhere within that urban sprawl that arcs from Washington and Baltimore through Philadelphia, New York, Boston and beyond.

Irene weakened slightly Friday, dropping down to a Category 2 storm with maximum sustained winds near 110 mph (175 kph). But some re-strengthening was possible and the storm was expected to be near the threshold between a Category 2 and 3 storm as it reached North Carolina's coast, the National Hurricane Center said.

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Meanwhile, officials from North Carolina to New England are looking at what they need to do prepare for the first major hurricane to hit the East Coast in seven years.

As of 8 a.m. EDT Thursday, the Category 3 hurricane was centered about 65 miles (105 kilometers) east-northeast of Nassau in the Bahamas. A hurricane warning remains in effect for the central and northwestern Bahamas.

Also Thursday, a hurricane watch was issued for the coast of North Carolina along with a tropical storm watch for South Carolina.

And in Virginia, the U.S. Navy's Second Fleet has started moving ships away from Norfolk Naval Station to keeps them safe from the approaching storm.

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The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami says Irene's maximum sustained winds have increased Wednesday to near 115 mph (185 kph) with additional strengthening forecast during the next day or so.

Meanwhile, evacuations have begun on a tiny barrier island off North Carolina early Wednesday in a test of whether people in the crosshairs of the first serious hurricane along the East Coast in years will heed orders to get out of the way.

Irene is centered about 335 miles (540 kilometers) southeast of Nassau in the Bahamas and is moving west-northwest near 9 mph (15 kph).

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As a new hurricane season begins Wednesday, FEMA is working to determine how much money it overpaid or mistakenly awarded to victims of the destructive 2005 hurricane season. The agency is reviewing more than $600 million given to roughly 154,000 victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and is poised to demand that some return money.

FEMA already has sent letters to thousands of victims of other disasters, asking them to return more than $22 million. Letters to victims of the 2005 hurricanes could go out in a matter of months, but it's too soon to tell how many people will be told to repay or how much money is at stake.

The effort isn't sitting well with victims who spent the money years ago and who could need help again if another powerful storm hits. It's of little consolation that FEMA says procedural changes since 2005 mean future disaster victims aren't likely to have to deal with large recalls of cash.

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Leger and his parents scrambled down the staircase, but the house shook violently, sending 83-year-old Francis Leger tumbling down the stairs. The family finally made it to a small room on the ground floor, where they rode out the ferocious storm that slammed into the already flood-ravaged Queensland state Thursday.

"We're just thankful," David Leger said later as he slogged across the drenched carpet of their ruined home, water pooling around his sandaled feet. "This is only material."

Residents and officials were amazed and relieved that no one was reported killed by the monstrous Cyclone Yasi, which roared across northern Queensland with winds up to 170 mph (280 kph). Tidal surges sent waves crashing ashore two blocks into seaside communities, several small towns directly under Yasi's eye were devastated and hundreds of millions of dollars of banana and sugarcane crops were shredded.

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The eye of Cyclone Yasi roared ashore at the small resort town of Mission Beach in Queensland state, battering the coast known to tourists as the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef with heavy rain and howling winds gusting to 186 mph (300 kph).

Yasi compounded the suffering for Queensland, waterlogged by months of flooding that killed 35 people and inundated hundreds of communities. It struck an area north of the flood zone, but the Bureau of Meteorology said it would bring drenching rains that could cause floods in new parts of the state.

Witnesses reported roofs being ripped off, buildings shaking and trees flattened under the power of the winds. Officials said the storm surge would flood some places to roof level.

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The department's finding, initially reported Tuesday by Louisiana broadcaster WAFB-TV, was confirmed by current interim chief Charles Mondrick and former chief Jeff LeDuff. Their statement said they were pleased but not surprised by the federal finding.

Public records showed New Mexico and Michigan state police raised accusations after withdrawing troopers who briefly assisted Baton Rouge police dealing with thousands of evacuees from flood-ravaged New Orleans, 70 miles to the southeast, in 2005.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

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In his new book, "Leadership and Crisis," Jindal repeats a favorite story that first drew scrutiny when he told it last year. And subtle but telling shifts in the way Jindal recounts the story suggest that the original version was less than accurate.

This gets a bit complicated, so bear with us. The story of the story begins in February 2009, when Jindal was selected for the plum assignment of giving the Republican response to President Obama's first State of the Union address. A central anecdote in that speech involved Jindal, at the height of Katrina in 2005, supposedly helping the sheriff of Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans to beat back an unnamed bureaucrat who was trying to block boats from rescuing stranded citizens because the boats lacked proof of registration. Here is the video of that bit of the speech, with transcript below: 

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Karl made landfall about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east-northeast of the Quitana Roo state capital of Chetumal, with winds of about 65 mph (100 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The storm hit far south of Tulum, a beach town of eco-resorts and cliffside Mayan ruins, but close to the smaller tourist and fishing town of Xcalak.

It was expected to quickly weaken into a tropical depression as it slogs across the flat peninsula before heading back out over the Gulf of Mexico, where it could turn into a hurricane by the end of the week and threaten the central Mexican coast.

Authorities on the Yucatan warned of heavy rains but said they saw no need yet for evacuations. The storm threw doubt over the area's celebration of Mexico's bicentennial anniversary of independence from Spain, although there was no immediate decision to cancel festivities.

Felipe Reyes, a receptionist at Las Ranitas hotel in Tulum, said guests were warned to prepare for heavy rains and winds overnight, but none had chosen to leave.

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Television footage from a Fox affiliate showed firefighters using ladders to reach residents stranded in the upper floors of their homes in a subdivision. Bewildered residents surprised by the extent of the flooding waded through waste-deep water in the streets.

Two mobile homes and a house were swept away north of Austin, and dozens of people sought emergency shelter after state and local authorities performed numerous high-water rescues from Austin to Dallas. Remnants of the storm, downgraded to a tropical depression Tuesday night, appeared to be moving into southern Oklahoma in satellite images and were forecast to move as far north as Kansas in the coming days.

The National Weather Service issued flash flood warnings for many parts of Oklahoma, and the entire state was under a flash flood watch.

At least one person died in a vehicle submerged by water from a swollen creek in Killeen, north of Austin, the National Weather Service reported. Elsewhere, authorities were searching for an unknown number of possible victims, said Williamson County sheriff's Sgt. John Foster.

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The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm came ashore around 10 a.m. EDT, and its maximum sustained winds are near 70 mph (112 kph).

A hurricane watch was in effect for Nova Scotia from Port Lhebert to Point Tupper. A tropical storm warning was in effect for Nova Scotia's coast, Prince Edward Island and parts of New Brunswick.

The storm that was once a hurricane brushed past the eastern U.S. over the past few days with less intensity than had been feared.

(This version CORRECTS APNewsNow. corrects wind speed. Multimedia: An interactive showing a map and photos from affected cities is in the --national/hurricane--earl folder. An interactive showing AP's live global storm tracker is in the storm--tracker folder. An interactive featuring tips for protecting your home; vidgraphic explainers on hurricanes; and a look at recent hurricanes is in the --national/hurricane--season folder. AP Video. This story is part of AP's general news and financial services.)

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