While FEMA was trying to respond to probably the largest natural disaster in the history of this country, a catastrophic disaster that the president has described covering an area the size of Great Britain -- I have heard 90,000 square miles -- unless you have been there and seen it, you don't realize exactly how bad and how big it was -- but in the middle of trying to respond to that, FEMA’s press office became bombarded with requests to respond immediately to false statements about my resume and my background.

Ironically, it started with an organization called horsesass.org, that on some blog published a false, and, frankly, in my opinion, defamatory statement that the media just continued to repeat over and over. Next, one national magazine not only defamed me, but my alma mater, the Oklahoma City University School of Law, in one sentence alone leveling six false charges.

*****

But I guess it’s the media's job. But I don't like it. I think it's false. It came at the wrong time. And I think it led potentially to me being pulled out of Louisiana because it made me somewhat ineffective.

"I try to keep reminding myself that I don't have to post stuff to my blog. It's my hobby. It doesn't have to take over my life," said Loy, who lives in South Bend, Ind.

The pressure to produce isn't unique to Loy. It's the plight of many popular bloggers, said Dan Gillmor, a San Francisco Bay Area blogger with a focus on media and technology.

"Blogs are hungry beasts that want to be fed," he said. "Readers should realize, however, that bloggers do have lives outside their computers and cut them some slack -- especially the ones who do it for no financial compensation."

Knowing that his new audience is hungry for Rita coverage, Loy has recruited some guest weather bloggers to help him out. "I don't want to lose the new readers. Web traffic is a fickle thing," he said. "But there's no way I can blog Rita like I blogged Katrina."

At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads. Her actions (apparently because she thought reporters were encroaching on the scene) were over the top and she was told. There are automatic weapons and shotguns everywhere you look. It's a stance that perhaps would have been appropriate during the open lawlessness that has long since ended on most of these streets. Someone else points out on television as I post this: the fact that the National Guard now bars entry (by journalists) to the very places where people last week were barred from LEAVING (The Convention Center and Superdome) is a kind of perverse and perfectly backward postscript to this awful chapter in American history.