Alaska's Mt. Redoubt erupts, Bobby Jindal said volcano monitoring is wasteful

Associated Press

Now that Alaska's Mount Redoubt has blown its top, erupting six times since Sunday night, sending plumes of ash several miles high, does Gov. Bobby Jindal still think volcano monitoring is wasteful spending, as he indicated last month?

Jindal, the Republican governor who gave the GOP's response to President Obama's state of the union address last month, said in his response speech that "wasteful spending" in the stimulus bill included "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'"

Some of that funding would go to support volcano monitors in Alaska, who correctly predicted an eruption at the volcano, which last erupted 20 years ago, the AP reported.

Jindal was immediately criticized for the remark after his speech (did Sarah Palin give him a call?), along with criticism of other things in his speech that had a questionable basis in fact.

At TPM, which broke the story of Jindal's tall tale about having a role in sending out boat rescuers during Katrina, the blogger Zach Roth reports that Jindal is not commenting on the eruption (at least not to those liberals at TPM).

Roth writes that Jindal came under withering criticism for his poor speech performance and was mocked for his volcano monitoring blunder:

As a slew of observers -- from local officials to geologists to bloggers to Paul Krugman ("the intellectual incohernence is stunning") -- pointed out at the time, volcano monitoring is crucial work. At the risk of stating the obvious, using advanced technology to predict when a volcano might erupt, at the most basic level, allows local officials to, um, save people's lives by evacuating them. It's hard to think of a better use of government money.

 Update: The volcano has now erupted six times since Sunday, according to reports.

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