Chez Chesler

The Volokh Conspiracy - Comment on "Armed Response to Looters": Dem and Milhouse suggest that the goods being looted were already abandoned, flotsam, or otherwise lost. I agree. Breaking into a store because the cops are otherwise occupied for the night is looting. Taking stuff that the owners, or their insurance companies, are never going to recover (especially if it's perishable) is very different. Even in times not of crisis, people have made honest livings through garbage picking. Mr. Kopel distinguishes between taking necessities and taking luxury items. If I were in New Orleans and had nothing (because not only was my house washed away, not, by the way, by the storm, but by water from a failed levee, and because the shelter to which I reported didn't have the supplies) I'd rather have cigarettes, or CDs, or jewelry, any of which I might be able to later trade for food or water, than nothing. Anderson writes: I have no clue what we've been preparing for since 9/11, but evidently it wasn't "taking care of a devastated city." Indeed. Levees break, earthquakes happen, people figure out how to use loaded airliners as incendiary bombs, someday somebody will get an actual nuke. The response is not right. Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System allows us to get convoys from anywhere in the country to anywhere in the country in a day or two. Why is it taking this long to get food, water, and medicine down there, by truck, by media van, or by helicopter?