Free Republic

Lee Celano for The New York TimesDylan Langlois, center, and Kasandra Larsen said goodbye to a friend as they prepared to move out of New NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 15 — After nearly a decade in the city of their dreams, Kasandra Larsen and her fiancé, Dylan Langlois, climbed into a rented moving truck on Marais Street last Sunday, pointed it toward New Hampshire, and said goodbye. Not because of some great betrayal — they had, after all, come back after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina — but a series of escalating indignities: the attempted carjacking of a pregnant friend;...

NEW ORLEANS -- Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama blasted the Bush administration Monday for the slow pace of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts and what he saw as a lack of urgency at the White House. "There is not a sense of urgency in this administration to get this done," said the Democratic senator from Illinois. "You get a sense that will has been lacking in the last several months." Obama, the nation's only African American senator, was in New Orleans for a field hearing conducted by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The devastation in New Orleans and...

NEW ORLEANS -- Mayor Ray Nagin unveiled a new evacuation strategy for New Orleans on Tuesday that relies more on buses and trains and eliminates the Superdome and Convention Center as shelters. "There will be no shelter of last resort in the event of a major hurricane coming our way," Nagin declared. The mayor, facing a runoff election May 20, has been widely criticized for failing to get the city's most vulnerable residents out of town as Hurricane Katrina approached. The Superdome and Morial Convention Center became a scene of misery for days after the Aug. 29 hurricane as thousands...

Yep, the "newspaper" which gave us so many drama queen stories about Katrina that turned out to be woefully inaccurate wins the top prize in US journalism. Kind of tells you something, doesn't it?From Saudi-owned Reuters [excerpted]: Jim Amoss (L), Editor of the Times-Picayune newspaper, congratulates publisher Ashton Phelps, Jr. after learning the paper won two Pulitzer Prizes in New Orleans April 17, 2006. The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and The Sun Herald of Biloxi, Mississippi, shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for excellent coverage of Hurricane Katrina. The Times-Picayune also won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting...