Half-Staff or Half-Assed Redux

Yesterday, on the same day that a gunman killed and wounded dozens of victims at Virginia Tech, President George W. Bush issued a presidential proclamation that flags should be flown at half staff as a “mark of respect” for the victims.

As I pointed out in September 2005 in posts titled “Half-Staff or Half-Assed” and “Did the Proclamation Have to Be Requested, Too?”, six days elapsed between the time Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and the proclamation honoring the dead in that disaster. This chart from the latter post links to a series of similar proclamations.

This is a compilation of presidential proclamations ordering flags to be flown at half-mast, from the White House’s “Proclamations issued by President Bush”:

Event	Event Date	Proclamation Date	Elapsed Days
Death of Thousands in 9/11 Terrorist Attack	11 Sep 2001 Tuesday	12 Sep 2001 Wednesday	1
Death of Former Senate Majority Leader Michael Mansfield	05 Oct 2001 Friday	05 Oct 2001 Friday	0
Death of Former Supreme Court Justice Byron White	15 Apr 2002 Monday	17 Apr 2002 Wednesday	2
Death of the Columbia Shuttle Astronauts	01 Feb 2003 Saturday	01 Feb 2003 Saturday	0
Death of Senator Strom Thurmond	26 Jun 2003 Thursday	30 Jun 2003 Monday	4*
Death of Bob Hope	27 Jul 2003 Sunday	28 Jul 2003 Monday	1
Death of President Ronald Reagan	05 Jun 2004 Saturday	06 Jun 2004 Sunday	1
Death of Hundreds of Thousands in Asian Tsunami	26 Dec 2004 Sunday	01 Jan 2005 Saturday	6**
Death of Pope John Paul II	02 Apr 2005 Saturday	02 Apr 2005 Saturday	0
Death of Thousands in Hurricane Katrina	29 Aug 2005 Monday	04 Sep 2005 Sunday	6***
Death of Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist	03 Sep 2005 Saturday	04 Sep 2005 Sunday	1
* Apparently, no love for Strom. ** Technically, since the earthquake took place on Sunday morning in the Indian Ocean, the tsunami struck late Saturday (25 December 2005) Washington time. And it didn’t strike US soil, although a number of Americans died in the disaster. *** Katrina hit the coast on Monday morning, but since many of the victims in New Orleans may not have drowned or died from neglect for several days, the number of days elapsed would vary. Some people likely died from results of the storm as he signed the proclamation — and afterward.