Rick Santorum should be confined to House Arrest in what was the ninth ward of New Orleans for the rest of his life. This evil scumbag earlier this year introduced a bill in the US Senate that would prohibit the National Weather Service from providing weather information free to the public if any private company is also providing that information.

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone?

That information is available for free from the National Weather Service

But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

Accuweather is a company based in Pennsylvania that has contributed substantial sums to Santorums campaigns. Of course Accuweather and Weather Channel and other outlets get all their weather data from the NWS, for free. They of course do not provide that information to people for free. You have to pay in some way, either advertising or your cable bill, etc to get that information from the “private” sector. Of course we have already paid for theis information through our taxes that fund the NWS, so we have a right to get this data for “free” since we paid to compile it in the first place. So scumbags like Santorum would have people pay to generate the information and then pay some company again to actually see it. Welfare for poor people is bad, but welfare for wealthy corporate contributors is just fine.

And now Santorum has the gall to say in an interview that National Weather Service warnings were not sufficient. I posted the following warning from the NWS the day before the storm hit

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO APPROACH THE
MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

He is just like all the other republican leaders, an evil, corrupt, hypocritcal liar. If that warning is not sufficient, I don’t know what is. He is all for savings unborn fetuses but once you are out, Fuck You if you actually need any help from society. Unless you of course you are big contributor to the campaign, then belly right up to the pork bar!