Don't be fooled by the difference between unfiltered science and a legal rebuttal. After the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers issued a report than unequivocally placed the fault of this destruction on the failure of the levees, which was declared to be the fault of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Funny how the powers that be allowed this report to become public knowledge when it was believed that the federal government was immune from litigation stemming from the damage caused by their faulty work (sad as Louisiana tort law doesn't apply to the federal government, but the cornerstone our tort law is that "Every act whatever of man that causes damage to another obliges him by whose fault it happened to repair it ... Every person is responsible for the damage he occasions, not merely by his act, but by his negligence, his imprudence, or his want of skill." La. Civ. Code arts. 2315-16). However, the federal courts have altered this blanket exemption from such ordinary liability.

Clever lawyers, finding a loophole in liability, found a way to enable persons to sue the federal government for negligence that led to the failure of the levees. Basically, it involves not the work done on flood protection (levees themselves), which remains exempt from liability, but the work done on commercial waterways (canals) constructed for other purposes, which negligently weakened the city's flood protection. And it was the finding of this loophole, which I firmly believe led to the report issued yesterday.

Nowhere is there scientific honesty, but rather a politicized retraction, claiming that the levee failures could not be traced to any one agency or group, and rather should be allocated over fifty-odd years of decisions made by a variety of agencies and persons throughout city, state, and federal governments. Listen, this is no different than when I cut my head on a quick-swinging door at a Bruins hockey game after being kicked out (as a 29-year-old) for giving Sarah (a 24-year-old) a beer -- it's a long story, but trust me, true -- and Sarah wrote a letter complaining of their treatment of us. Her focus was on their service and treatment of out of state persons (especially Katrina refugees) and the Bruins' response was mainly to deny liability for me injuring my head. It wasn't a real response but a legal form letter already written to get the average ignorant person to drop the issue.

This current denial of responsibility is the same. And it honestly boggles me. It's our federal government spitting legalese instead of doing the right thing. They're acting like the cheating man from Eddie Murphy's Raw. The joke was that you could practically be caught cheating in your woman's bed, but as long as you denied, denied, denied, it would go away and she would forgive you. True or not, joke or not, the Bush administration is the same way. There's no problems, there's no problems, there's no problems. Look at something else!

Because of such actions, it is incumbent upon each of us as American citizens to call bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Our federal government fucked up, they admitted it, so in all fairness they should make restitution. For a government willing to spend $12 billion a month (see recent news articles) on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for a total of over half a trillion dollars, it is mind-boggling that they refuse to spend money to save a struggling American city. Any funds they do allocate are swept up in red tape and slowed by a mind-numbing skepticism that the money will be spent properly.

If only I could convince our president that Katrina was caused by a new form of Al Queda technology and that the struggles of New Orleans are proof that the fight for freedom is a lost cause unless the city is rebuilt, maybe then he'd do something. The sad thing is, maybe that's what it would take to get our own country to fix something that was their own fault. Or maybe a republic governor.

In closing, let me be clear. No naturally occurring hurricane destroyed New Orleans. Had the levees NOT broken, the city would have been all but fine. It was the levees breaking, i.e. human failure, that led to the massive destruction of New Orleans. Fight anyone that tells you otherwise. It's the truth. Remember it.