Hurricane Katrina has turned southwestward and sped up a bit, so she will emerge over the Gulf of Mexico in just a few hours. (Radar loop here.) That’s good for south Florida, which will get less rain than expected, but bad for wherever this hurricane heads next. Katrina hasn’t weakened much at all during her brief sojourn over the Florida peninsula; even now, as the center nears the state’s west coast, she’s still at 75 mph. The NHC’s forecast that Katrina would only attain minimal Category 2 strength over the Gulf was based on the premise that she would weaken to 50 mph first. So her failure to significantly weaken is distinctly bad news, and should substantially change the intensity forecast. With steady intensification expected once the center re-emerges over water, I suspect Katrina will be at least Category 3 at second landfall.

UPDATE: Charles Fenwick at Eye of the Storm writes: “More than four hours over land and STILL a hurricane. Remarkable.” (Now it’s more than five hours.) But Fenwick offers a good explanation for why: “Katrina’s southerly course is taking her over the Everglades. The difference between the Everglades and open water is slight.”

Regarding the track, Steve Gregory says “there is is still way too much uncertainty with the exact timing of the turn northward, and the entire Gulf coast, from Louisiana eastward to Tampa could ultimately be at risk for the next and final, landfall of Katrina.” Dr. Jeff Masters says “an area from New Orleans to Cedar Key, Florida at risk. In the center of this risk area lies the U.S.’s very own hurricane magnet, the Pensacola region, where Ivan and Dennis struck.”

I can certainly understand Pensacolans being nervous. What makes me nervous is that Katrina’s southwestward turn and refusal to weaken makes a New Orleans doomsday scenario considerably more plausible than it seemed just a few hours ago. Still unlikely, but more likely than it was.

UPDATE, 12:17 AM: Katrina has finally weakened to a tropical storm as of midnight EST, approximately six hours after making landfall. But that won’t last long. She’s already got her “feet wet” over the Gulf, seven hours ahead of schedule.

The Notre Dame news & information website has an article about Emerson Spartz, the ND freshman who created the Harry Potter fan site MuggleNet, whose web traffic puts this website to shame. In fact, MuggleNet is currently the #2,041-ranked website on the entire Internet. (BrendanLoy.com, in case you’re wondering, is #279,177.)

Regarding Spartz’s introduction to Notre Dame, the article notes, “the University’s ’sorting hat’ has designated him a resident of Knott Hall, and he intends to study business.” It also says Spartz “will no doubt bring his own brand of magic to the Class of 2009.” Hopefully he won’t have any Snape-esque professors (or Malfoy-esque classmates) who resent his celebrity status…

Drudge reports:

Rolling blackouts leave 500,000 in California without power… Rodeo Drive hit; Beverly Hills Jamba Juice forced to give away smoothie inventory, according to witness… Developing…

Oh, the humanity!!!

More here.

BBC Breaking News alert: “At least 16 people have been killed and many others injured in a fire in a building in Paris, the French fire service says.”

More: “French news agency AFP says the dead are African nationals. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has gone to the scene.”

From the NHC’s 8:00 PM EST advisory:

…KATRINA RELENTLESSLY POUNDING SOUTH FLORIDA…CALM OF THE LARGE EYE EXPERIENCED AT THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER…

Heh.

Christian Wilson, a 1L, writes that his family lives next-door to NHC Director Max Mayfield, and “we only shutter [our windows] when he does.” Talk about a personalized forecast! :) As Katrina approached, “He shuttered only the west side of his house because he says the winds are coming from that direction. I found that pretty amusing….a partial shutter situation.”

Katrina is now a hurricane.

UPDATE, 5:57 PM: Katrina has made landfall.

Here’s the latest radar.

Katrina is the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in the last two years. But it, at least, is not a major hurricane. We’ll see what happens on second landfall. (Official track, computer models.)

In every school year, there are various “firsts.” First class… first football game… first night out at The Backer… and of course, first nap on the law-lounge couch:

(Photo by Lisa.)

Tropical Storm Katrina (seen here on radar) is strenghtening as she nears south Florida, with 70 mph winds as of 2:00 PM. She’s expected to be a hurricane (i.e., 74+ mph winds) when the center makes landfall later tonight or early tomorrow. The likely landfall point is near Fort Lauderdale, according to Dr. Jeff Masters.

Here’s a news article from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

After hitting Florida peninsula and slowly inching westward, what then? The official track calls for a second landfall, again as a Category 1 hurricane, on the Florida panhandle Sunday night or Monday morning. But there are lots of different computer model scenarios, ranging from the Mississippi Delta to Savannah.

One of the cases in our initial assignment for Professor Garnett’s Freedom of Speech class, Brown v. California Department of Transportation, was particularly interesting for me because I was living in California when the case was decided, and I wrote an op-ed column about it — more than two years before starting law school — in which I disagreed with the District Court’s ruling (which was later affirmed by the Ninth Circuit in the case that we read). Naturally, I just had to dig up my old article to see what I had written. Here it is. It was published in the USC Daily Trojan on February 13, 2002.

The case revolves around two peace activists who sued the state Department of Transportation (a.k.a. “Caltrans”), and won, after their peace-protest signs were taken down from a state-owned freeway overpass while American flags were allowed to remain up on that same overpass and other overpasses across the state. (This was during the initial months after 9/11, when, as you’ll recall, American flags were spontaneously showing up everywhere. It was also during the Afghanistan phase of the war on terror.) Caltrans claimed it was implementing a viewpoint-neutral safety policy; the court disagreed.

Alas, part of my DT article appears to have been based on a faulty premise: I thought Caltrans’s policy banned “signs” but allowed all “flags,” not just the American flag. According to the case that we read earlier this week, that’s not true; only American flags were allowed. (That’s what I get for trusting the L.A. Times instead of reading the case myself.) So that invalidates some portions of my argument (e.g., stating that the activists could have put up a “peace flag” instead of a sign reading “At What Cost?”). But the latter, and more important, part of my argument still holds water. Excerpt:

Lest we forget, we all live in the United States of America, of which the stars and stipes are the universal national symbol. Waving the flag is not necessarily an endorsement of any particular president, policy, or military action. The flag is the symbol of our republic, its Constitution and its ideals, including the right of the people to oppose their government’s policies. Neither the Bush Administration nor the anti-war movement owns the American flag, and the flag is not, on its face, an endorsement of either.

Certainly, many who favor the war on terrorism use the flag as their symbol. But there is no reason why those who oppose the war could not also wave the flag, and with just as much justification. They are just as patriotic, just as American, as the war’s proponents. They are following the Constitution by exercising free speech and petitioning the government for a redress of grievances. …

But many refuse to accept the flag for what it is. Instead of claiming it as their own–which it is–they read into it everything that they disagree with, and conclude that all flag-wavers are robotic Bush cronies. Every American flag becomes the enemy.

Judge Whyte apparently bought into this logic as well. The premise that underlies his ruling depends on it. After all, if the flag is accepted as a universal symbol of American ideals and the American Constitution, then it is in total harmony with the “At What Cost?” banner. But if it is regarded as a symbol of support for the war, then it is a “viewpoint” in opposition to the banner, and both must be treated equally.

The American flag should not be considered equal to other banners and signs, whether those banners and signs support or oppose the present government. A “Support Our Troops” sign and an “At What Cost?” sign must have the same constitutional standing, but a flag is something else entirely. It is intrinsically neutral in a political debate. The only thing it stands for is the ability of both sides to engage in the debate.

I’m not certain if I would make the same argument today, as relates to the court’s decision. I do personally believe, strongly, that the flag should be a neutral symbol in debates over specific government policies, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that, in the real world, it is, or that it is perceived as such by the majority of the public. So perhaps Judge Whyte (and, later, the Ninth Circuit) was indeed correct to rule that the government’s action was not viewpoint-neutral in this context.

On the other hand, I must admit, the 2005 law-student Brendan still finds the 2002 editorial-columnist Brendan’s argument relatively compelling, if I do say so myself. :) Either way, it’s interesting (for me, at least) to read what I had to say about this case, back when I was a mere news junkie and journalist-in-training, and not yet a law junkie and lawyer-in-training.

Read the whole thing. :)

The 11:00 PM discussion on Tropical Storm Katrina notes:

This forecast is rather difficult since one of the more reliable models…the GFS…shows that the cyclone barely touches the East Coast of Florida before moving northward….while the outstanding GFDL moves Katrina south of due west across extreme South Florida and the Keys as a very intense hurricane. The GFDL scenario would be very dangerous for South Florida. This appears to be unrealistic at this time but because of the good past performance of this model…we must pay close attention to future model runs.

The GFDL track is the green line on this map. Here’s the official track.