The Agonist - USA

Court respite for Blackwater guard

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:01:05 -0800

Associated Press | November 21

Al Jazeera -
The US justice department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, according to court documents.

A one-paragraph notice filed on Friday says only that prosecutors have asked that the case against Nicholas Slatten be dropped.

The government's detailed request to the court was filed with the judge and with the defendant, but was not made public.

The shooting in Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.

Five cities that will rise in the New Economy

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:08:52 -0800

Ron Scherer | Fort Collins, CO | Nov 20

CSM - From Seattle to Huntsville, Ala., five cities are poised to prosper in the New Economy because of exports, innovation, clean technology, and healthcare.

In Houston, the Texas Medical Center is expanding so quickly that it will soon become the seventh largest downtown in the US. By itself. The hospital complex brims with restaurants, shops, and hotels, and employs 100,000 people – the population of Billings, Mont.

In Seattle, the erector-set cranes along the waterfront and big forklifts at the airport are loading exports into containers with the constancy of a piston: plywood to Beijing, halibut and crab to Tokyo, Granny Smith apples to Moscow. Last year, Washington was the only state to ship more goods to China than it receives.

In Fort Collins, Colo., town fathers are aggressively transforming the heart of the city into a zone that generates as much electricity as it consumes – making it a showcase for the city’s quest to become the Silicon Valley of clean energy.

As the United States emerges from the worst recession in 80 years, a new economy is taking root that will help create the next tier of powerhouse cities in America. Just as the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s and the Information Age of the past 40 years helped shift the urban and regional balance of power in the US, forces are now at work that will shape who prospers in the economy of tomorrow.

No one yet knows the exact contours of the New Economy. It is more Monet than Rembrandt. But experts say that certain characteristics are already visible on the canvas that will give cities advantages in attracting new jobs and industries.

UC Berkeley protest ends with 41 arrests

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:22:12 -0800

Sandra Gonzales | Berkeley, CA | November 20

San Jose Mercury News - In a striking scene of civil disobedience, dozens of students barricaded themselves inside a UC Berkeley building for more than 11 hours Friday to protest a 32 percent increase in student fees.

The dramatic display ended Friday evening with dozens of arrests, climaxing a week of civil unrest mirrored at other campuses around the state, including Davis and Santa Cruz, where hundreds marched for the third day Friday to decry one of the biggest fee hikes in UC history.

But it seemed unlikely that the protests are having any impact. Repeated budget cuts to the 10-campus system forced UC regents this week to raise the cost of an undergraduate education above $10,000 a year by next fall, triple the cost of a decade ago. The move followed a 10 percent hike earlier this year, employee furloughs and other cuts that UC leaders say are necessary because of a 20 percent drop in state funding.

Still, students continued to try to make their voices heard.

"We have tried going to Sacramento, we've tried less direct and less confrontational ways of getting our voices heard," said UC Davis student Laura Mitchell of Palo Alto, who on Thursday joined a march of hundreds of students to the campus administration building, Mrak Hall. On Wednesday, police arrested 51 protesters there.

Philip Morris ordered to pay $300 million to smoker

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:05:33 -0800

Gina Keating & Carol Bishopric | Los Angeles | November 20

Reuters - A Florida jury on Thursday ordered cigarette maker Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million in damages to a 61-year-old ex-smoker named Cindy Naugle who is wheelchair-bound by emphysema.

The Broward Circuit Court jury assessed $56.6 million in past and future medical expenses against the company, part of Altria Group Inc, as well as $244 million in punitive damages.

The verdict is the largest of the so-called Engle progeny cases that have been tried so far, both sides said.

Philip Morris will seek further review of the verdict because of "numerous erroneous rulings by the trial judge," Philip Morris spokesman Murray Garnick said in a statement.

"We believe that the punitive damages award is grossly excessive and a clear violation of constitutional and state law," Garnick said.

House Financial Services Committee Passes Paul-Grayson Amendment to Audit the Fed

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:33:48 -0800

Michael Smallberg | Nov 20

POGO - The House Financial Services Committee voted 43-26 yesterday afternoon in favor of an amendment introduced by Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Alan Grayson (D-FL) that would remove restrictions preventing the GAO from auditing the Federal Reserve. The amendment was modeled after Rep. Paul’s long-standing bill to audit the Fed, which was co-sponsored by over 300 Members in the House and supported by POGO and many other groups.

The vote on the final passage of the financial regulatory package to which the Paul-Grayson amendment is attached has been delayed until after Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, yesterday’s vote signals a defeat for Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), who had introduced an alternative amendment that would have limited the scope of the GAO’s audits.

Kudos to FDL: FDL Statement on the Committee Passage of H.R. 1207, the Paul-Grayson Bill to Audit the Fed

Can Nuclear Terrorists Be Deterred?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:39:18 -0800

THE DEPROLIFERATOR -- As you no doubt know, deterrence is the product of a balance of power -- nuclear arsenals, in other words, that are roughly equal. Constrained by the eye-for-an-eye principle, but to the umpteenth power, states armed with nuclear weapons, such as the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and India and Pakistan today, keep their nukes holstered.

But terrorists, according to conventional thinking, are immune to deterrence. If they ever obtained nuclear weapons, they'd suffer few qualms about using them. First, they're secure in the knowledge that they're ostensibly stateless. It's unlikely that the state which they've attacked with nuclear weapons, such as the United States, would retaliate against the state which served as their command center for the attack. (Can't speak for another possible target, Israel, though.)

Second, not only don't they fear retaliation, were it to occur they'd welcome it. To terrorists, runs this line of thinking, an apocalypse is just an expressway to heaven for their martyred souls. Thus, according to these scenarios, turning their back on deterrence and mounting a nuclear attack is a win-win proposition for terrorists.

More likely, if terrorists were to obtain nuclear weapons, they would be as domesticated by their acquisition as states are that develop them. The better part of the power of nuclear weapons lies in their potential, not their kinetic energy. Intact, they can be used to bargain for goods, respect, and security.

For instance, Islamic terrorists might offer to turn over their nuclear weapons if Israel turned over its half of Jerusalem. Of course, when they're inevitably denied, they'll find themselves painted into a corner as sure as the United States and the Soviet Union did during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

We in the West think of terrorists, especially Islamic, as a homogeneous mass. But as with any such group, there are those on the margins of, say, al Qaeda or maybe Lashkar-e-Taiba (the Mumbai attackers), who are almost as crucial to their operations as those on the inside. Among them are individuals who provide transport and shelter; nuclear scientists and technicians, should their services be sought, fall under the same category. Since any ideological motivations on the part of the outsiders may be secondary to the financial, they may be more vulnerable to deterrence that threatens their families and people.

In fact, some believe, a deterrent to the command structures of terrorist groups does exist -- and it's self-imposed. . .

For terrorist organizations that would want to take credit for a nuclear event, failure, not discovery, is likely to be the main deterrent. … Present evidence shows that [they] prefer to carry out actions where the odds of success are high even if those actions are less destructive than they might prefer. [Emphasis added.]

That's from Nuclear Forensics: Role, State of the Art, and Program Needs, an undated (most likely 2007 or 2008) report by the Joint Working Group of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Wait, what does forensics have to do with a nuclear attack? Setting off a nuclear weapon isn't like stabbing a stranger in an alley. Isn't the perp even more self-evident than a criminal who has an ongoing beef with someone who turns up dead?

While that's true of a state, what makes a nuclear attack by terrorists unique is not that we wouldn't know who pulled it off or why. Chances are they'd be willing to be the bearer of both those glad tidings. Instead, the question becomes: "Who supplied them with the weapon?"

CSI: Ground Zero

Nuclear differs from criminal forensics in not only its emphasis on the chemical, but in that it's working for much higher stakes: attempting to prevent or solve the greatest mass murder in history. Specifically, according to the Joint Working Group paper, it determines questions such as:

Was the event really a nuclear explosion? What was the yield. … Were [substances] present, which would denote the presence of [shudder -- RW] thermonuclear reactions? … What can be inferred about provenance and history? … What was the most probable device design?

Much of this, the paper explains, depends on the creation of a "comprehensive international database of nuclear material fingerprints." Even better would be an international program for making "the nuclear materials more easily identifiable by tagging them with distinctive markers."

It's not easy to convince states that are understandably "hesitant to internationalize the most sensitive parts of their nuclear infrastructure" to take part in these programs. But those that don't would be the first towards which suspicious eyes were cast in the event of an incident.

An alternative means of encouraging reluctant states to cooperate could be the implementation of a "negligence" doctrine. In another work on the subject, "Nuclear Attribution as Deterrence" (not online) in the March 2007 Nonproliferation Review, Michael Miller reports on a writer named Anders Corr. He argues that the U.S. Cooperative Threat (Nunn-Lugar) program, which helps secure loose nukes in Russia, as well as dismantle designated Soviet era nuclear weapons, is a double-edged sword.

Some of its funding, Corr believes, is siphoned off for corruption. Thus, lest the flow dry up, Miller writes:

. . . there is very little incentive within [Russia] to actually secure material. [Corr advocates] a harsh form of deterrence where those who permit nuclear theft, especially the leaders of the state, would be held completely accountable. … A negligence doctrine dealing with nuclear weapons material is necessary for deterrence [lest] a negligent state. . . think that it will pay only a small price for 50 kg of lost HEU.

But, with a ploy straight out of a spy thriller, nuclear forensics could conceivably be thwarted. Here's the Joint Working Group on what it refers to as "spoof," though the term hardly does justice to its gravity:

States or terrorist organizations, for reasons that might range from protecting secrets to preventing attribution, may attempt to spoof any later investigation by mixing material from different sources.

Also, as Steve Hynd of Newshoggers points out, a spoof could conceivably by used by one state, such as Pakistan, to frame another, such as India (or vice versa), in order to invite retaliation against its enemy. Miller again:

How easily could [nuclear] signatures be falsified? It would be relatively simple for an expert nuclear weapons designer to create a weapon that looked improvised or that was made of reactor fuel instead of an alloy designed for weapons. The tradeoff would be settling for a larger chance of failure and a smaller yield.

Finally, to improve the odds that "the perpetrators of a nuclear terrorist act will fail and be apprehended and prosecuted," the Joint Working Group writes, credible forensic capability must be "demonstrated by successful attribution of intercepted materials." [Emphasis added.]

In other words, proving the provenance of interdicted nuclear materials can serve as a trial run that demonstrates how nuclear forensics might succeed in the event of a nuclear explosion. It's true that nuclear forensics suffers from staffing and funding problems. But the greatest obstacle to its effectiveness deterring states that are either careless about their nuclear materials and know-how or that are willing to trade them with terrorist groups may be a simple lack of publicity. Miller writes:

While recent academic treatments have begun to explore the technology, few government documents describe any of the specifics of post-explosion attribution. This may be intentional, to make the attribution more difficult to spoof, but it can also give the impression that the technology is less-than-ready. [But attribution capabilities] are probably good enough to publicize the technology with the aim of deterring state leaders.

Besides, "More important than technology [is its] perception. … Thus, rather than worry that the technology will not be successful, the United States should fear that it has not been demonstrated well enough."

In the long run, in tandem with international cooperation and spelling out exactly what retribution awaits the offending state, nothing is more critical than advertising the capabilities of nuclear forensics to determine the origins of a nuclear bomb.

The emergence of a sophisticated form of deterrence that doesn't rely on that most blunt of all forces -- "mutual assured destruction" -- is a hopeful development for the future of humankind. But, however encouraging nuclear forensics is, the sheer bulk of the infrastructure and apparatus dedicated to deterring or determining a perpetrator has come to resemble those surrounding domestic crime, which costs the United States over $100 billion a year.

Some day we may learn that it's a lot cheaper to make humankind economically and, thus, psychically secure. Perhaps then we'll stop looking for security in all the wrong places -- such as in weapon systems poised to blow up in our faces at a moment's notice.

First posted at the Faster Times.

Senate OK’s David Hamilton to be US appeals court judge

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:45:45 -0800

Warren Richey | Washington | November 19

CSM - Judge David Hamilton is elevated to the US appeals court, after GOP effort to stall a vote failed. Republican resistance signals more political fights are likely over Obama's nominees to the federal bench.

The US Senate voted 59 to 39 on Thursday to elevate Judge David Hamilton from his current job as chief judge at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis to a seat on the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals.

The vote comes eight months after Judge Hamilton was nominated to the Chicago-based appeals court.

Hamilton drew the first significant Republican opposition to a judicial nominee by President Obama. An attempted filibuster on Tuesday failed, with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama able to muster only 29 votes. Seventy senators agreed to allow the nomination to move forward to Thursday’s vote.

The Hamilton nomination was being closely watched for indications of whether the kind of fiery confirmation battles waged by Democrats against Bush nominees would now be waged by Republicans against Obama nominees. The answer is yes.

GOP Filibuster Fails Badly, but Jeff Sessions & George Bush May Get Last Laugh

Crooks And Liars, By Josh Glasstetter, November 19

On Tuesday, Senate Democrats beat back Jeff Sessions’ filibuster of Obama’s first judicial nominee – Judge David Hamilton – by a reassuring margin of 70-29. Sessions lost ten of his fellow Republicans, including conservatives like Hatch, Cornyn, and Thune, and Hamilton will be confirmed Thursday afternoon to the Seventh Circuit.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the GOP is winning the battle for the federal courts.

Just a few short years ago, right-wing Senators denounced filibusters of President Bush’s nominees in the strongest possible language and threatened to employ the “nuclear option.” Sessions went even further – he claimed Democrats were violating the Constitution by blocking any Bush nominee (no matter how extreme). But some time after November 4, 2008, his interpretation of the Constitution must have changed dramatically.

Now a Democrat is in the White House, and – hypocrisy be damned! – Sessions is vehemently pro-filibuster and pro-obstruction. And the worst part is that he’s been successful. Judge Hamilton was nominated in March to general acclaim. He received the highest possible rating from the ABA, both his home-state Senators strongly endorsed him (including senior Senate Republican Dick Lugar), and even the head of the Indianapolis Federalist Society backed him. It doesn’t get much better than that.

House Panel Votes to Advance Paul Plan on Fed Audits

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:12:10 -0800

Scott Lanman | Washington | November 19

Bloomberg - A U.S. House committee advanced a proposal to remove a three-decade ban on congressional audits of Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions, a measure backed by a lawmaker who has called for the abolition of the central bank.

The House Financial Services Committee today, in a 43-26 vote and a second voice vote, attached the amendment for a broad audit of the Fed to legislation creating a council of regulators to monitor systemic risk. The proposal was offered by Representative Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, and based on a bill with more than 300 co-sponsors.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has opposed the Paul legislation, saying it may result in interference with monetary policy. The panel’s vote increases the possibility that Congress will reverse the ban on audits of interest-rate decisions. The broader bill on financial regulation is subject to a vote by the committee, then must be approved by the House and Senate and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

“It’s going to be seen as weakening the independence of monetary policy with consequent negative implications,” Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the committee, told reporters after the vote. “People are going to be worried about the impact on the dollar, on the interest rate.”

Frank, who opposed the Paul measure, said the issue “may be revisited” when the legislation reaches the House floor.

h/t Zero Hedge: Paul-Grayson Amendment To Audit The Fed Passes Overwhelmingly By 43-26
Grayson Remarks On The Passing Of The Paul-Grayson Amendment As Well As A Full List Of Voters

The real reason Obama is not making much progress

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:55:56 -0800

Johann Hari | Nov 20

The Independent - Before you can appeal to America's voters you have to appeal to the corporations

Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of his supporters are bemused. His healthcare bill is a hefty improvement but it still won't provide coverage for all Americans, and may not provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies - if it passes at all. His environmental team is vandalising the vital Copenhagen conference by saying the US – the single biggest emitter of warming gases – will not sign up to any legally binding restrictions there. He has placed the deregulation-fanatics who caused the New Depression, like Lawrence Summers, in charge of the recovery. Despite the real improvements on Bush – such as the end of torture, the resumption of stem-cell research, and opposition to the coup in Honduras – many people are asking: why he is delivering so little, so slowly?

A pair of seemingly small stories about the forces warping American politics can help us to answer this question. At first glance, they will seem like preposterous caricatures, but the facts are plain. The institutions that are blocking progress on all these issues – Republicans in the Senate, and the mighty corporate lobbying machine that bankrolls both parties – have rallied over the past few months to defend two causes with very little popular support in the United States: rape and slavery. No, really. If we begin to explain how this came to pass, then we might see why the American political system is malfunctioning so badly, even after a landslide victory for change.

Child burned in bizarre 'redneck flamethrower' incident

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:32:19 -0800

James Halpin | Anchorage | Nov 18

adn.com - Two Anchorage men who told investigators they were horsing around with a "redneck flamethrower" set a 5-year-old boy's head on fire and have been charged with felony assault and reckless endangerment, according to police and court records.

Jonathon Michael Miller, 29, and Stephen Ray Dilley II, 32, were jailed Tuesday after inflicting second-degree burns to the boy's head and singing his hair with an aerosol sprayer and lighter, according to Alaska State Troopers. The child, who was injured Friday, did not receive medical treatment until arriving at school near his home in Anchor Point on Monday.

"It was described to the troopers as an accident," troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said. "I mean a child, two guys, can of Quick Start, Bic lighter: How could this not go wrong?"

According to a troopers' affidavit filed in court, Miller told investigators he's been trying to toughen the boy up and the best way to do it is to "scare the s--t out of them when they don't see it coming."

Asked why the child had not gotten treatment, Miller told investigators, "Why go make bills for yourself over little things," according to the affidavit.

The child, identified only by his initials in court documents, suffered burns to the left side of his face, nose, eyelid and ear, according to troopers. Most of the hair on the left side of the boy's head was singed, along with some on the right side.

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The boy told troopers he had not been in trouble and described the incident as a "practical joke gone wrong," Trooper Ryan Browning wrote in the affidavit. The child said he was playing in his room over the weekend when the incident occurred.

The boy's mother was away for the weekend and had left the boy with her current boyfriend, Miller, and Dilley, with whom the mother has a child, according to troopers. Although she has a restraining order against Dilley, he has been living in a motor home on the property where she lives, at Mile 162 of the Sterling Highway, and helping her take care of her five children, according to troopers.

The men told troopers they were out on the porch smoking when they went inside and Dilley grabbed a can of compressed starter fluid and a lighter, troopers said.

"You know what would be funny?," Dilley said, according to the affidavit.

"Do you know how much trouble I could get in for this?" Miller replied.

Miller then called for the boy, who opened the door as Miller unleashed a ball of flames, according to troopers.

"Dilley stated it only lasted for about a half second and then they saw (the boy's) head was on fire," Browning wrote. "They ran to (the boy) and doused the flames with their hands, then tended to his burns. Dilley stated he didn't think the spray would go that far."

The men denied drinking, saying it was a very "sober day," according to the affidavit.

Christian Charity in Our Times

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:34:59 -0800

And people wonder why I am not a Christian anymore:

Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message “Pray for Obama – Psalm 109:8” on the highway, only to look up the verse and find, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” …

Anyway, now it’s a real thing: CafePress is selling T-shirts and bumper stickers . . .

However, as a number of commentators have noted, the wording that follows this bumper-sticker appeal is somewhat more disturbing:

Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labor.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

Love thy neighbor, indeed.

Senate Democrats introduce $849 billion healthcare reform bill

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:11:56 -0800

Brad Knickerbocker | Washington | November 18

CSM - Though the congressional debate and legislative sausage-making are far from over, the Senate took a major step Wednesday in putting forth a $849 billion healthcare reform bill.

The bill, launched by Senate majority leader Harry Reid – and vigorously opposed by Republicans – aims to provide health insurance for 94 percent of all Americans, including 31 million people now uninsured.

The measure reportedly would require most Americans to carry health insurance, require large companies to provide coverage for their employees, and prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of preexisting medical conditions.

A senior Democratic leadership aide told the Associated Press that Congressional Budget Office analysis showed the bill would reduce federal deficits by a total of $127 billion over 10 years.

[...]

A key subject of debate – in addition to a public option and the impact on the federal deficit – is abortion. The House-passed bill includes the so-called “Stupak amendment” offered by Rep. Bart Stupak (D) of Michigan, which tightens current restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion services.

Newsweek reports that abortion language in the Reid bill is less restrictive than Stupak. But it could well reappear as House-Senate negotiators try to work out their differences in conference committee.

[...]

Reuters reports that the debate is expected to begin on Nov. 30, after the Thanksgiving holiday next week, and last for at least three weeks.

'Afghan quagmire negates US-Iran war'

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:08:37 -0800

Nov 19

Jerusalem Post - The US is too bogged down in Afghanistan to engage Iran militarily over its nuclear program, an ex-CIA South Asia expert and current adviser to US President Barack Obama said in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.

Bruce Riedel, a senior Brookings Institute and Saban Center fellow for political transitions in the Middle East and South Asia, addressed scholars and journalists at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.

He warned that the US was fighting a losing battle against Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, and that Washington would soon have to make difficult choices on beefing up troop levels there.

"Israelis need to understand that there's going to be a huge drain on resources, attention and capital, and that will have implications," Riedel told The Jerusalem Post before his talk.

He acknowledged that those implications would primarily affect the Iran question.

During his address, Riedel referred to the US's commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said, "We've got two wars. You've got to be bold to say, let's start a war against a third party, particularly when the third party can hit you in the first two fronts."
The US has learned that it "can't fight two medium-sized wars simultaneously," he said (h/t Bernhard)

Studs Terkel went from FBI applicant to suspect

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:18:43 -0800

Kristen mack | Chicago | Nov 19

LA Times - Studs Terkel, the American storyteller, author, radio host, actor and activist, sought a job at the FBI, according to recently released documents.

Terkel, who died last year at 96, applied for a job in the FBI's fingerprints division in the 1930s. "It's a non-agent position," FBI spokesman Bill Carter said. "You would have to go through a background investigation, the same as you would for an agent, but you don't have arrest powers."

Instead of hiring Terkel, the agency ended up amassing a file on him. The FBI spent 45 years tracking him as a suspected communist, according to the 147 pages released from his 269-page dossier. The file was obtained by the New York City News Service under an act that requires the FBI to release certain documents to the public after an individual has died.

Terkel's paper trail started in 1945. It references Terkel speaking at a Paul Robeson rally in Chicago and quotes a source who questioned Terkel's "loyalty to the United States" because he worked with the BBC on a piece about the "sordid side of life in Chicago."

His file ends in 1990, when agents cut and pasted a Wall Street Journal article quoting his reaction to financier Michael Milken's junk-bond scandal.

"We live in a corrupt, amoral moment," Terkel said. "There are a million Milkens. He's reflective of our society at this time. People have lost their sense of outrage."

Army Corps of Engineers blamed for Hurricane Katrina levee breaches

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:11:48 -0800

Richard Fausset | Atlanta | Nov 19

LA Times - A federal judge says the agency showed 'gross negligence' in the years before Katrina. The ruling could leave the government open to billions in claims.

In a ruling that could leave the government open to billions of dollars in claims from Hurricane Katrina victims, a federal judge said late Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had displayed "gross negligence" in failing to maintain a navigation channel -- resulting in levee breaches that flooded large swaths of greater New Orleans.

U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval peppered his 156-page decision, issued in New Orleans, with harsh criticism of the Army corps, at one point citing its "insouciance, myopia and shortsightedness" in failing to maintain the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, known locally as MRGO.

For more than 40 years, the judge said, the corps had known that a crucial levee protecting suburban St. Bernard Parish and the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood would be compromised by the deterioration of the channel. The corps had "myriad" ways to address the problem, he wrote, but failed to do so.

Duval awarded a total of $719,000 to a small group of flood victims that sued the government in April 2006.

But according to Pierce O'Donnell, the lead plaintiff's counsel, roughly 100,000 New Orleans-area residents and businesses who have filed flood-damage claims with the Army corps were now potentially eligible for payment.

"The judge agreed with us that Katrina was not a natural disaster," O'Donnell said. "Katrina was a man-made disaster caused by the Army Corps of Engineers."