U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr. ruled Wednesday that the Army Corps of Engineers mismanaged the maintenance of the shipping channel known as the “Mister GO” (the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, MR-GO), leading directly to the flooding of thousands of homes and businesses in St. Bernard Parish and the New Orleans neighborhood known as the Lower Ninth Ward.

The case directly involves $700,000 in damages to three people and a business, but opens the door to claims by as many as 100,000 residents and former residents of the affected neighborhoods. If upheld, this judgment could lead to damage claims in the $billions.

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There’s quite a remarkable story in today’s New Orleans Times-Picayune. I wish I could cut and paste it in its entirety.

It’s the story of two very different men that we chose to lead our country, and how, in the unlikely setting of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, we have a chance to compare and contrast their characters.

The world knows one as a blue-blooded faux Texan, bumbling idiot, spoiled child of privilege and draft dodger. The other is a compassionate man of the people who will soon join Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer and Nelson Mandela in the Pantheon of recipients of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Amazing.

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If you recall, shortly after the inauguration the Obama team completely replaced whitehouse.gov and gave it the O treatment.  Many of us on the right excoriated them for bashing President Bush on various pages on the site.

Well, it seems they’ve had second thoughts.  In a very clever move, web site ProPublica.org turned on a change tracking system aimed at several key administration web sites, including whitehouse.gov.  Today they spotted a very interesting change had occurred - the text that formerly bashed President Bush’s treatment of Hurricane Katrina had been altered to eliminate the most insulting portions of text.  You can see the changes documented here.

Perhaps it’s a bit of sting from the bungled handling of the aftermath of the Kentucky ice storms, or maybe the Left finally caught a case of conscience.  Or maybe they’ve just forgotten.  But interestingly, they don’t seem to be too worried about Katrina any longer, considering they didn’t include a penny in the so-called “stimulus” bill to stimulate Louisiana.  Hopefully ProPublica will continue to monitor this.

42 people dead; communities iced in and without lifesaving power for heat and cooking; conditions worsening — and FEMA nowhere to be found.

This isn’t a lefty caricature of disaster-response under the Bush administration; it’s real-life unresponsiveness under the leadership of President Obama (whose accession was supposed to mark a “return to competence” in government).

“In some parts of rural Kentucky, they’re getting water the old-fashioned way — with pails from a creek,” writes Associated Press reporter Bruce Schreiner. “There’s not room for one more sleeping bag on the shelter floor. The creative are flushing their toilets with melted snow.”

Schreiner continues:

Local officials were growing angry with what they said was a lack of help from the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In Grayson County, about 80 miles southwest of Louisville, Emergency Management Director Randell Smith said the 25 National Guardsmen who have responded have no chain saws to clear fallen trees.

“We’ve got people out in some areas we haven’t even visited yet,” Smith said. “We don’t even know that they’re alive.”

Smith said FEMA has been a no-show so far.

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