Our big conference on terrorism — Terrorism Security and America’s Purpose — starts today at 9 a.m. and will be live on C-Span for those who care to watch. We will also have live, real-time web-casting at the conference website, www.AmericasPurpose.org.

This is Ted Kennedy‘s statement last night on the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist: This is a time of great loss for our nation. Vicki and I join the nation in mourning the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist and we hold his family and friends in our thoughts and prayers.

Just posted this at TPM Cafe. We ought to be helping out all those impacted by Katrina ourselves, and should be grateful for the international concern and support offered — even from Japan. But $200k in cash? Pretty pathetic.

Chief Justice Renquist dies last night. Judge John Roberts’ Supreme Court appointment hearings begin Tuesday (but may now be delayed).

There will be live web-cast of the Terrorism, Security and America’s Purpose conference on this website all day and evening Tuesday next week — and most of the day on Wednesday. C-Span has just informed us that they will be airing the conference all day Tuesday live — but we will hear tomorrow about Wednesday….

I am beyond disgusted by Pat Robertson and have been for years. Josh Marshall posts two items — here and here — on Robertson that just further reinforce everything I disdain about the man. I have an admission to make about this reprehensible fraud.

This is an important article that suggests that while hurricanes may not be preventable, there is much that should have been done to protect infrastructure and lives in the Gulf Coast states that was preempted by other priorities the Bush administration had.

Tonight, I will be on “The Majority Report” with Sam Seder talking about the big terrorism conference, the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the National Guard, John Bolton and the U.N. Millennium Summit, and other topics.

The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus joined us yesterday for a lunch that the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation hosted with Richard Clarke and wrote this article which appears today. Clarke made some excellent points — but among those not covered in the Pincus article was that “four years is a long time.

Sorry for being AWOL the last few days. I have been deep in conference-planning messiness and am only now able to surface. In between calls, I have been following the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina. The National Guard has been called out in New Orleans — and I would imagine in Mississippi and Alabama.