Brown on White House vs. Blanco: "A chance to rub her nose in it"

Michael Brown, the hapless FEMA director during Katrina, is making headlines with a new charge, reported by AP and the Baton Rouge Advocate:

Brown, speaking at the Metropolitan College of New York, said he had recommended to President Bush that all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast affected by the powerful hurricane be federalized — a term Brown explained meant placing the federal government in charge of all agencies responding to the disaster. “Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, ‘We had to federalize Louisiana because she’s a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it,”’ Brown said, without naming names. “‘We can’t do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley’s a white male Republican governor. And we can’t do a thing to him. So we’re just gonna federalize Louisiana.”