A teenager stole one of those buses, drove it around his neighborhood, picking up people who had no way to evacuate, and then drove them out of town. He was legally in the wrong on many accounts but from a practical point of view, he did what needed to be done to save at least one bus load of people.

The federal response should have been just that, a response afterwards. The efforts before Katrina hit should have been mostly the responsibility of the local and state governments with the feds helping out with the logistics of the evacuees once they were out of the path of the storm.