Free Republic

NEW ORLEANS – More than four years after Hurricane Katrina, the single-story brick rancher in Pontchartrain Park where Lisa Perez Jackson grew up stands empty. Floodwaters long ago ate away the walls of her corner bedroom, where the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency once hung Michael Jackson and Prince posters and studied her way to the top of her high school class. Faded spray paint, left by search teams to indicate that no bodies were found, serves as a reminder of the day Jackson evacuated her mother, Marie, to Bossier City ahead of the approaching storm. Katrina was...

Fort Lauderdale's status as a city of the rich received official confirmation Friday from the federal government. The Census Bureau ranked Fort Lauderdale fifth in the nation in percentage of homes worth $1 million or more -- news that won't shock anyone who has seen the Rolls-Royces cruising Las Olas Boulevard or the mansions rising in Victoria Park. The city had 765 homes worth at least $1 million, 3.3 percent of the total homes in Fort Lauderdale, according to information from the 2000 census. Ranked first is Cambridge, Mass., with 11.6 percent of total homes worth at least $1 million....