At least they waited until after the second anniversary of Katrina. The powers-that-be behind this website have decided to pull the plug on it this month (the preferred term is "retired") for business reasons. The market giveth, the market taketh away. I regret that the site will be retired, but that's the way the praline crumbles.

I've had a great time writing for bloggingneworleans.com. There have been times when writing for this blog has helped keep me sane. I've blown off a lot of steam about the various impediments and potholes in the road of post-Katrina New Orleans. Documenting what's been going on around town has been a blast, and despite the 'early retirement' of a great site dedicated to a great city, I'll still be writing.

I've been impressed by the quality of comments on our posts. To be sure, there are a few wingnuts out there on every side of the political spectrum, but for the most part our commenters have been thoughtful and civil. I have always enjoyed hearing from folks, especially those who take issue with my opinions or disagree with my points. To all you commenters, I have appreciated your words, and the time you took to comment. Your comments have helped me rethink some of my arguments, and similarly I hope you have found my words to be informative, too.

We gain the most insight into our own opinions when they are challenged by the opinions of others, and despite the fact that our greater political structure is criminally dysfunctional in this regard, we, the people of this great city (and country) understand that it's not always about winning or losing, it's about creating a better world for ourselves and for those yet to come. The kind of scorched-earth, winner-take-all politics that we have seen for years in DC and throughout the land is what has hurt New Orleans since Katrina and long before. This type of politics is filled with hot air, trite slogans, and vapid ideologies. Having seen many examples of blogs and discussion boards that begin on point, but devolve into puerile mud-slinging, I have been most appreciative of the quality of comments (and posts, my fellow bloggingneworleans writers). I will miss this forum.

We've amassed quite a record in our coverage of the happenings in this city-in-recovery. There has never been a shortage of subjects to write about, only a shortage of time in which to write about them. But of course, there's never enough time for doing everything you want.

As for me, I've made inquiries for freelance work at the local alternative newsweekly, and I'll be writing some on the new DIY Life website. I'm making a series of "how to build a bike" entries, which may not be as compelling journalistically as I have tried to make my BNO posts, but should still be pretty entertaining.

In the meantime, you'll find me cruising around the city on my newly rebuilt bike, doing research at the libraries or the courthouse, sipping an iced coffee at Flora's, or having a beer and shooting pool at Markey's.

I guess that's it. Stay well, good people. And thanks for checking out Blogging New Orleans. Peace...

Well, we're just about at the end of the road for Blogging New Orleans. As you may know, Friday the 14th is our last day as a live website. Into every life a little rain must fall, or so it's said, and this is just another example of that truism.

Speaking of rain, it's also said that it never rains unless it pours. This week, New Orleans is being drenched by wandering downpours that soak parts of the city while other parts stay dry. The photo was taken on Tuesday from the railroad tracks at Burgundy and Press Street in the Bywater, those dark columns are sheets of rain falling over the remoter reaches of the Upper 9th Ward, and as you can see, the rest of the area had sunny skies.

Weather here is pretty chaotic sometimes. Rain can fall on you from a seemingly clear blue sky. It can hit like a fist in some neighborhoods while others nearby don't get so much as a sprinkle. I think it's incredible; the idiosyncratic weather is one of the charms of New Orleans, in my opinion. Hyper-localized micro-cloudbursts, my term for these wandering small scale showers, keep things interesting around here.

Sudden, unexpected, and violent, they offer a handy metaphor for life these days. Lately, things for me personally have been substantially rainy (metaphorically), like some kind of existential storm has taken up a position over my head, sending watery sheets of questionable luck down upon me. I won't dwell overmuch on any of this, but since mid-July, I have dealt with a string of misfortunes that make me rethink my skepticism towards voodoo, particularly hexes.

Just a brief rundown: My computer (upon which I rely to write) had a fatal motherboard crash in late July. (It has since been repaired with a new motherboard, and a big THANK YOU goes to Ted C. at Common Ground tech support for his invaluable assistance in this matter.)

Then my bicycle was stolen in the middle of the day from the main branch of the New Orleans Public Library while I was inside. The "security" dude told me there are bike thefts every day there. My question to him should have been, "So then why the hell are you in here instead of out there?"

My housemates were roughhousing one night in late August and hit a table where my digital camera was. It fell and broke, and only the persistence born of my desperation brought it back to life.

Just when I was recovering from my computer and camera woes, my favorite outlet for my writing -- this very site -- was selected for retirement. I'll keep writing, of course, but will lament the loss of this space for community dialogue.

My car's brakes then started going bad, and now the car sits in a shop with an estimated $440 worth of repairs due.

And last night, my cell phone died with finality, taking the phone numbers of hundreds of friends with it. [Note: if you are a friend of mine and you are reading this, give me a call. Same number for me, but brand new phone-MR]

I begin to wonder if someone put a curse on me. New Orleans is, after all, the birthplace of American Voudoun.

I must note that these misfortunes are only manifesting themselves in the material plane; my relationships with friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors are generally wonderful, and it's a rare day that I don't randomly run into a friend or acquaintance whom I might not have seen in a while. Not to mention meeting new people just about every day, too. I am very lucky in ways that the misfortunes of the material world can not dim.

Speaking of dim, the light bulb in my bedroom just popped. I hope there's still a step ladder in the house, 'cos that bulb is 14 feet off the ground.

I managed to get by the International Tribunal for Katrina and Rita a couple of times last week, and sat in on the proceedings. The five-day event was meant to draw accountability for federal and local failures and abuses of power in the immediate aftermath of the storms, and was hardly an impartial hearing. Tears shed on the witness stand were many, as those testifying before the panel of judges found that, even two years after the tragedy, the emotions from those days of grief, confusion, and all too often death, are still very fresh.

The witness's testimonies related to a range of issues that affected people during and after the storms of 2005. Organized by the People's Hurricane Relief Fund and sponsored by dozens of local and international activist organizations, the Tribunal was kind of a political dog-and-pony show insofar as it had no pretense of being an impartial assessment of the facts. On the panel were respected leftist activists, including the notorious Ward Churchill (whose remarks about 9/11 led to his July dismissal from a professorship at the University of Colorado) and others from Europe, Africa, and South America.

The tribunal was predicated on the assumption that the government was culpable for much of the chaos and loss that happened after the storms, and the testimonials from each witness -- with no oppositional questioning -- were very personal and direct. Each was angry about something that has affected her or his life since Katrina, whether it's a lack of public housing, a crushed teachers' union, armed vigilantism in Algiers, police brutality, or de facto voting disfranchismement of New Orleanians. To hear the witnesses was to be reminded anew of the anguish that people endured after the storm, and the hardships that many citizens bear every day in the effort to rebuild.

In truth, the government at all levels is responsible for many of the tragedies of fall 2005. Poorly built levees, relief supplies tied down with red tape, lethargic federal financial assistance, opportunistic seizures of schools and rebuilding contracts; for these and many more, the federal, state, and city governments need to be held accountable and procedures put in place to avoid the recurrence of any such tragedy.

The Tribunal didn't claim to have answers for the questions the testimonies raised. Many of the "justices" on the judges' panel sympathized -- lengthily -- with many of the witnesses whose testimony had been particularly harrowing. Some related, through translation, their own experiences in addressing the problems revealed in the testimonies.

I don't mean to sound as if I thought the Tribunal a waste of time, or too politically skewed to have any value. It was very slanted, but it gave people a chance to relate their experiences to an international audience (make that an international left audience) and it offered something more than simply commemorating the anniversary of Katrina and getting back to work. I learned a good bit about how voting rights have become something of a joke in the area, as the displaced tens of thousands of evacuees still can't cast their ballot, for a number of reasons from the practical to the ridiculous.

In other places, such tribunals often look into delicate times in the past, such as the South African commissions regarding apartheid. In Greensboro, North Carolina, a recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission was empaneled to collect witness testimony regarding the 1979 killing of five labor organizers by the Ku Klux Klan (caught on tape, and for which no Klansman ever went to prison). The effect these commissions have on larger patterns of justice may remain an open question, but I personally support each of them. It's quite easy for those in positions of power to want to forget the past, but for the victims of yesterday, there can be no forgetting.

The men and women trapped for days on the I-10 overpass, denied entry to Gretna across the bridge and kept under conditions of martial law, won't be able to forget their ordeals anytime soon. It behooves us all to remember their stories, though, and to learn from their experiences.

Whether or not the International Tribunal will contribute to a restored sense of justice in New Orleans has yet to be seen. We can always hope, right?

Business as usual at the Orleans Parish Courthouse today, with hundreds of cases moving through the system, ranging from first-offense marijuana possession to attempted second degree murder. Lots of crack-related charges, and a couple "felon with firearm" cases also in the mix.

This morning, before going to the courthouse, I listened to Karen Herman, a representative from Courtwatch NOLA on the radio, discussing the court-watch program. Ms. Herman said that the program trains volunteers to sit in on courtroom actions and document what goes on in the course of certain trials.

One cause for concern, according to Ms. Herman, is the issue of continuances; that is, putting off the resolution of a stage in any given case, for any number of reasons. The fear is that too many continuances delay, hence deny, justice. Delays in legal processes can also hinder justice when evidence is damaged or destroyed, when witnesses die or can't be found, or when administrative foul-ups "disappear" people from the justice system for weeks, months, or even longer.

On the other hand, granting continuances also benefits justice from time to time, or else it wouldn't be done. Today, in courtroom Section L, the judge granted two continuances, one for a man out on bond, the other for an inmate of OPP.

In the first case, the nervous accused stood twitching while his court-appointed attorney informed the judge that he had only become acquainted with the defendant three days ago, and hence was not ready to give an adequate defense to the man. Upon questioning, neither the defense attorney nor the accused himself could remember the name of the original court-appointed lawyer.

Frustrated, and in a nod to the awareness that continuances are slowing justice down and making judges look bad, his honor quipped, as he granted the stay, "It is what it is, I'm sorry. We don't even have the [original] lawyer's name." Proceeding with that case would have violated the man's right to proper counsel, a right that is easy to overlook by citizens outraged by crime and lawlessness, but not so easily taken for granted by anyone who's ever been penniless and wrongfully accused of a crime.

The other continuance was ordered when an officer who investigated a June burglary on Esplanade was unable to testify due to his recovery from a second round of chemotherapy for leukemia. The suspect in this case was caught on videotape breaking a store's windows and stealing some liquor. Investigators watched the tape and determined from the perpetrator's appearance and demeanor that he was homeless. They contacted the director of the Homeless Assistance Program of NOPD, who recognized the man in the tape by name, identifying him as Christopher Horton, a homeless man with alcoholism who had recently come out of the hospital.

Detectives picked him up on Jackson Square later that week, and since then the suspect has been in OPP. Two of the officers involved in his case were in the courtroom, and both testified, but the judge called for the testimony of a third detective, and so Mr. Horton will remain there until his next court date, slated for the 21st of this month, courtesy of a continuance.

So you may not have heard, but our beloved bloggingneworleans.com website has been selected for cancellation ("retired" is the preferred term) in less than two weeks. I know I'm not alone in saying that I will miss writing for the site, and will miss the chance to engage so directly with readers.

But the end has not yet arrived, it remains only nigh. Therefore, I avail myself of the opportunity to try generating a little more discussion on certain topics of interest. Here, I want to talk about ending the prohibition of marijuana, a step I believe can assist in the recovery and healing of New Orleans.

There are many reasons why not to take such a step, and I want readers who disagree to chime in. But arguments favoring such action seem stronger than those I've heard opposed. Such action can help rein in crime, reduce courthouse workloads, alleviate burdens on families with loved ones incarcerated for non-violent possession or distribution offenses, keep young people out of the criminal justice system, and create a profitable local industry, not to mention the relief that the medicinal use of Cannabis offers to patients suffering from a long list of ailments, none of them strangers to New Orleans.

I propose rethinking drug policy out of the legal morass it is in and into the realm of the social and the medical. I would propose decriminalization of recreational and medical use of marijuana in the French Quarter, depenalize growing it as a taxable crop for local use in New Orleans, allow the establishment of coffee shops and medical dispensaries, make simple possession of unlicensed weed outside the French Quarter a ticketable offense (if that)and declare an amnesty for those incarcerated under non-violent simple possession or distribution charges.

It would be major big business, bigger maybe than novelty t-shirts. Did I say "would be?" I meant, of course, that it is big business. According to sources, marijuana is the sixth-largest cash crop grown in Louisiana, despite years of withering prohibition enforcement. As an illegal revenue stream, it's just about unbeatable. As a legal one, I askk you, what do you think might happen?

Marijuana is a powerful drug, there's no argument there. Local hospitals would have to be ready to deal with an upswing in emergency admissions for mixing drugs by foolish tourists (weed and booze are often a very bad combination). Driving under the influence of weed, selling it to minors, these should remain outlawed acts. But arresting a group of fellas sitting on a front porch smoking a blount is a waste of time; their time, the cop's time, and the court's time. If those fellas get up off that porch and commit a robbery, arrest them for the robbery; chances are, though, that they're gonna sit right there for a while.

Some say marijuana is more healthy for you than tobacco. I don't know if that's true or not; it's just as apparent that smoking neither is probably the healthiest strategy. It may not be the healthiest habit, but much more clearly harmful substances are freely available in every corner store and gas station in town.

Some say that marijuana helps maintain mental health. Others have long claimed it causes "reefer madness," luring perfectly good white men and women into dens of sin (you must see the propaganda to believe it) or insanity.

At the end of the day, would decriminalization create more madness than it would resolve? Would it alleviate more people's stress, or simply add to their anxieties? Would it calm people down, or agitate them? Would it be good for business, this new iteration of Storyville, or would it wind up draining the city's resources?

Readers, let me hear from you. You too, Mr. Courreges, if you're around. Our time on this site is growing short.

Brad Pitt may have broken ground on his visionary green development in Holy Cross, but residents and others looking to restore homes that survived the flooding of 2005 might do well to look at how previous examples of building production values fared after catastrophe. It seems apparent that some modes of construction in New Orleans should be abandoned, and new designs created, to provide for the future housing needs of New Orleanians.

There are environmentally friendly ways to redevelop, like what Mr. Pitt and his Global Green group has in mind. Using energy-efficient materials and design strategies, and aiming for "net zero energy and carbon neutral building," the Holy Cross development promises solar energy emergency power, rainwater recycling, and community conveniences. The plan includes middle-income affordable housing, and through energy-saving design, it estimates residents will save up to $2,400 per year in electricity. It calls for five single-family houses, with preference given to displaced Lower 9th/Holy Cross residents. The 18-unit apartment project is also said to be targeted at displaced Lower 9th Ward residents, offering very reasonable rents ($550 for a one-bedroom unit, $650 for two bedrooms).

A brief survey of rents on Craigslist indicates that, no matter how poorly the housing market is faring, the rental market is booming. One bedroom apartments go from $500 (rare) to $1000 or more per month. Vacancies seem high, judging by the number of "For Rent" signs that keep popping up in my neighborhood. Maybe by the time the Global Green project is completed the housing market will have overcome its slump; even if it doesn't, though, I'd bet Mr. Pitt and his cohort won't have too much difficulty filling the conscientiously-built units with returned New Orleanians.

By contrast, other parts of Holy Cross are going to need a lot more than a little sprucing up to make them as desirable as new houses. The house in the photo survived the flooding, but hasn't quite gotten along as well as others. It had plastic siding, which I'm sure added to the value of the home and protected it from the elements ... until fire struck, and burned the place all but to the ground. The plastic siding melted into absurd shapes and flowed like toxic liquid onto the concrete and fencing around it. As it burned, it released who-knows-what into the air, and the place still reeks of charred furniture.

Nearby many brick-on-slab buildings still stand, deserted by their owners and, in many cases, unable to be raised to FEMA-determined safe elevations. An article in this week's Times-Picayune decried the encroaching loss of historically significant housing in New Orleans, and brick-on-slab construction was singled out as one of the losers in the new architectural game.

Slab houses are sturdy and solid, as far as that goes. Personally, I think these homes should be preserved, so long as the owners realize that the next "Big one" will flood their home again, and that they will have to rebuild again in such a case. But there should be no question but that slab-homes in New Orleans belong to a different time, and shouldn't be kept in the housing-design portfolio for Post-Katrina rebuilding.

A friend recently pressed home to me the fact that most people make economic decisions based on emotion more than on logic or reason, and sometimes it seems that's the only thing that successfully explains how so many residents could work so hard every day to rebuild their homes. It might be easy for others to dismiss the faith that New Orleanians have in our future, especially in light of global concerns and climatic extremes.

But faith has gotten a lot of us a very long way over the past two years. How well we couple that faith with sound decisions on how to rebuilt will very likely determine how well the city survives the next catastrophe.

So there are two news stories I've kept aware of lately, because they both center around racism, particularly, that is, racial prejudice in the service of power.

The most egregious story is that of the so-called Jena 6, a half dozen young black men facing decades in prison for beating the snot out of a white classmate after weeks of racial antagonisms in the backwards hamlet of Jena, Louisiana. You can get the full story elsewhere, but suffice it to say that there are two narratives of the events in Jena; one told by whites, and the other is what really happened, told mostly by blacks. According to most whites in that town, there are no racial problems in Jena. According to American history, there are racial problems everywhere in the US, no matter how much progress has been made since it was o.k. for whites to own blacks. I have to admit I'm no longer outraged when white people say they have no problems with blacks; it's kind of like hearing Dick Cheney talk about supporting "freedom and democracy in Iraq." Bullshit by any other name still smells the same.

Sentencing for Mychal Bells, the first of the six students convicted for aggregated second degree battery and conspiracy to commit second degree battery, is scheduled for the 20th of September. The other five have not been tried yet, and whether or not their charges will be reduced has yet to be seen.

The charges against Bells were reduced from attempted murder, which is what the boys were arrested for; according to the prosecutor the boy's shoes count as "dangerous weapons." Bells faces up to 22 years in prison for the assault, for which he was tried as an adult.

Closer to home, in St. John the Baptist Parish, "leaders" are cracking down (pun intended) on the youthful fashion faux-pas of baggy pants. One Councilman has penned an ordinance outlawing droopy drawers, with offenders being fined and and corralled into community service. In July, the visionaries of LaFourche Parish signed into law an ordinance against the menace of exposed boxer shorts, a law that St. John took inspiration from.

Of course, this is a symbolic attack against hip-hop culture in general, and against young blacks in particular. The prosecution of the Jena 6 also reflects racism, of course, but Jena officials won't hear of it.

Maybe no one reading this will remember the old shopworn phrases that whites used to use when describing their black neighbors, phrases like (apologies to the sensitive) "our nigras are as happy as can be" or "we never had any racial problems here before," two whoppers of lies that whites have used for decades if not centuries to downplay racial tensions and ignore long-standing patterns of discrimination and disparity that all of our communities have inherited. We whites can't be fully blamed for the legacies of prejudice we live under, but we can be blamed for continuing to ignore that which our black neighbors have taken pains to point out to us.

And our "leaders" can be blamed for unequal treatment of some of our citizens under the law -- like the Jena 6, who committed a crime but stand to face punishment completely out of line with the offense, and like the baggy-pants wearers of some parts of the state, who now face punishment because their pants hang low.

You might not agree with me on all this, but if you're white, and you can't at least try to see how these absurd situations appear to blacks (not to mention affect some people's lives), then you just might be part of the problem.

Federal agents last week raided almost a dozen medical marijuana clinics in Los Angeles in the most recent attempt to enforce the 70-year-old federal ban on pot. The clinics, legalized a decade ago by California law, provide medical weed for people suffering from AIDS, cancer, and other illnesses.

Feds say that recreational users are availing themselves of the decriminalized marijuana, a flimsy cover for stupid federal policy. Louisiana has three -- count 'em, three -- medical marijuana laws on the books, passed by three different Louisiana legislatures and signed into law by three different Louisiana governors. Despite this, nothing has ever been done to follow through and enact these laws, as has been done in California.

Meanwhile, the illicit trade steams along, generating millions of dollars in street-level cash and producing a steady stream of mostly young black men flowing into Orleans Parish Prison, courtesy of a perfect storm of poverty, undereducation, lack of meaningful employment, and a structurally racist judicial system that can't seem to spend enough money trashing the futures of young African-American men.

Of course, no matter how aggressive law enforcement interdiction is, the bottom line, written in bloody scrawl, is that so long as prohibition exists, so will exist the wildly profitable drug trade, and all the violence arising therefrom. Seventy years of federal stupidity (and, lots of people like myself might say, seventy years of racially skewed enforcement) has only made the trade stronger and more embedded. One has to question the intelligence of every person in the chain of law enforcement when one realizes that a) cops, lawyers, judges, and feds see first-hand every day the futility of their efforts at controlling the trade, and b) these same people see, at least in New Orleans, that murderers go free while hundreds of unfortunate souls languish behind bars for foolishly trying to make a buck from a dangerous game.

If Louisiana was smart enough to decriminalize marijuana, the boost to the state's economy would be tremendous. People pay to get high -- the market is already established. Ignoring this facet of entrepreneurialism is is just plain stupid. The fact that this stupidity engenders mayhem in the streets and dead ends for young people is criminal, and is far more harmful to society than a consumer market of spaced-out stoners could ever be.

To hell with puritanical laws, people are going to get high no matter what the cops and judges say. Cops and judges routinely use and abuse intoxicants that were once illegal, but the country at least had the sense to end alcohol prohibition -- albeit after making a literal killing for organized crime during its decade-and-a-half-long reign of error.

As a Southerner who understands the historical paradox of the phrase "state's rights" -- a phrase that, for most of the 20th century, was thrown around by powerful whites in an effort to keep the feds from doing anything to improve the lives of blacks -- I appreciate that there are two sides to every political story. But federal prohibition of marijuana keeps American states powerless to find new ways to combat abuse and spark local economies.

Farmers all over the nation are looking for profitable new crops, but federal law keeps them from growing industrial hemp -- a resource so indispensible in the pre-synthetic-fabric world that the US all but mandated farmers grow it for military use during World War II (and made a somewhat famous film urging farmers to raise Cannabis, a film called "Hemp for Victory"). It keeps sick people from getting a natural medicine to ease their pain. And yes, resource-squandering drug warriors, it keeps average American joes from getting high. Is there any reason, based on fact and not on emotionally manipulated anecdote or spurious argumentation, why people shouldn't be able to put into their bodies whatever they wish? Legal tobacco kills, while illegal weed makes people goofy. Where's the sense in that?

Economic, medical, and social nonsense. That makes three strikes against prohibition. Word to the drug czar: YER OUT!

She sat on a wooden chair at the front of the courtroom, silently watching the lawyers and the judge as they filed motions, requested continuances, and disposed of case after case. Chained hand and foot, dressed in the bright orange jumpsuit of the incarcerated with the bold-faced words "OPP INMATE" printed on front and back, the woman appeared in her late 40s or early 50s. She was small, her thinning hair braided into tight cornrows, her face withdrawn and clouded. A dozen or more cases preceded hers, and for a while it appeared that she would be sitting there all day, isolated and all but unnoticed, in Orleans Parish Courtroom A.

After an hour and a half or so, her lawyer entered the court. He addressed the clerk seated before the bench, and then took a seat in the audience, waiting to be called. As was the case for most other hearings that day, the lawyer was white, the defendant, black.

After a while longer, the clerk called out a name: "Tracy Stearns*?" The woman carefully rose from her chair and in leg chains hobbled the half-dozen steps to the defendant's podium where her lawyer now stood behind a large microphone. Following the instructions of a court clerk, the woman raised her cuffed right hand and was sworn in.

The judge addressed her attorney first, confirming the case number, recounting the nature of the crime, and affirming the defendant's identity. Then he turned to the woman.

"Ms. Stearns, you were arrested on June 12, 2006, for possession of cocaine, is that correct?" She quietly responded "Yes, sir," but her voice didn't carry.

"Please speak into the microphone, ma'am," said the judge. She repeated her answer into the mike, her voice thin, raspy, resigned.

"And you wish to plead guilty?" the judge continued.

"Yes, sir," the thin voice replied, echoing around the near-empty courtroom.

She had shifted away from the microphone; her reply was inaudible.

"What did she say?" asked the judge to her lawyer. "Please speak into the microphone, ma'am. Do you understand what you signed?"

"No, not really," she repeated.

A flash of consternation crossed the judge's face as he peered over his glasses at the woman's attorney. Handing the paper to the clerk, he said, "Counselor, could you please go over the plea agreement with your client?"

The lawyer approached the bench, took the page from the clerk. He spoke quietly for a moment with the woman, then handed the paper back.

"Now, ma'am," the judge continued, "do you understand what you have signed?"

"Yes, sir," she replied, powerlessly.

"And, Ms. Stearns, do you feel that your attorney has represented you in this matter to your satisfaction? Please speak into the microphone."

"Yes, sir," she repeated.

"Possession of cocaine is punishable by up to five years' hard labor and or a $5,000 fine, do you understand this?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay," said the judge; and then, to the clerk, "Please note that Ms. Stearns has entered a plea of guilty to possession of cocaine. I'm sentencing her to 15 months hard labor, with credit for time served." To her: " Do you understand the sentence, ma'am?"

"Yes, sir." There was no relief in her voice, now reduced to a weary whisper.

"Clerk, please enter a sentence of 15 months, with credit for time served."

With that, a female bailiff took the woman by the elbow and accompanied her to another clerk's desk, where she signed some documents. She was then led, half-stepping two or three paces, back to the nearby wooden chair she had left only a few minutes before. Her face betrayed no more or less emotion than it had when she first entered the courtroom; she simply sat, deflated.

A few minutes later, another bailiff helped her to her feet. She was led to a door behind the judge's dais, and escorted back to prison.

* Defendant's name has been changed, but otherwise this is a true story.

Since the Fourth of July, homeless people and their advocates have occupied the pavilion at Duncan Plaza, across the street from City Hall, to spur city government into action. Every night, dozens of men, women, and young people sleep on carboard mats or blankets beneath the pavilion roof, providing security and solidarity for each other and forcing a visible reminder of the struggles many people face finding housing in post-catastrophe New Orleans. Organizers of the encampment are demanding the opening of more public housing units to alleviate the low- and fixed-income housing needs of returning New Orleanians.

As several homeless participants in the encampment told me recently, the numbers of people seen on the pavilion at any time since the 4th's occupation is only a fraction of the number of homeless people citywide. Even those who possess a home here aren't immune from homelessness: across town each night, protesters say, families sleep in cars as they rebuild their houses, unable to afford lengthy hotel stays.

Some of the homeless at the encampment are from out of town, but most protesters were New Orleanians enduring hard times. Most were black, most male, but the dozens who gather for the free dinner served each night represent all ethnicities, female and male. At least a half dozen of the women there on a recent night were old enough to be grandmothers -- and, as two of these older women were accompanied by teenage-looking young men, grandmothers they likely were.

Protesters say the police have threatened to run them off, but so far there haven't been any altercations from NOPD. This hands-off police approach is partially due to the recent Essence Fest; with thousands of participants and spectators in town for the high-profile event, a police raid on a homeless encampment would have been a hard rain on what otherwise turned out to be a pretty sweet parade for New Orleans. Given the cloud of community (not to mention national) mistrust perpetually floating over the NOPD, actions like the rousting of a group of orderly homeless folks in City Hall's front yard would be less than beneficial to the reputation of New Orleans' finest. Not to mention the fact that the National Guard is bivouaced right across the street at the Holiday Inn, not interfering but always within eyeshot.

For now, protesters say that a councilperson has offered tentative official protection to them, so long as they keep the pavilion clean. They've been doing a good job at this, occasionally bleaching and scrubbing the sidewalks and concrete floor of the pavilion. Alcohol and drugs are forbidden, and people are encouraged to get along with other protesters, all of whom share the lack of any kind of privacy afforded under the pavilion.

So homeless people sleep there every night, and occupy the pavilion every day. They know they won't be able to stay there indefinitely, but their hope is to successfully demand re-opening of usable, unoccupied public housing, so they can leave the pavilion and move to a decent home they can afford.

It would seem counter-intuitive that anyone in southeast Louisiana would intentionally damage the machines that keep the area above water, don't you think? Yet in last week's The St. Bernard Voice, the Sheriff's Office reported two recent incidents of vandalism to pumps in the Parish, vandalism that has both me and Captain Mike Sanders, the Public Information Officer for the St. Bernard's Sheriff's Department, scratching our heads.

In one incident, a pump in Arabi was sabotaged when someone pulled electrical wires out of their connections, causing the pump to stop running. In the other incident, a pump in the township of Violet was vandalized when someone poured rocks into the pump's oil system. The Sheriff's report indicated that damage to that pump, which is used to pump out drainage lines, could be as much as $10,000.

Maybe it's just some kind of odd coincidence. Perhaps teenagers in Violet were playing around and, out of ennui, poured rocks into a pump that keeps their homes from flooding in storms. Meanwhile another group of restless young kids yanked wires out of another pump on the other side of the Parish, just for kicks.

Maybe. But that's awfully far-fetched. Kids in St. Bernard surely have better ways to fritter away their summer hours than by sabotaging critical infrastructure. If the kids want to get into nefarious activities, there's a thriving drug trade, with recent openings in the Chalmette heroin market. Older teens have assault rifles to occupy their time, and they ain't afraid to use them. So, for the life of me, I can't see why anybody would be so bored as to mess with the pumps.

Now, we can generally rule out that these incidents happened accidentally --they both seem pretty intentional, by the sound of it. If it's not the kids, then it must be some adults. But why would adults do this kind of thing?

I remember a few years ago (ok, 15 years ago) when the northern parts of the Mississippi were overflowing the banks and flooding massive parts of the mid-west, some yokel in a pickup truck was caught trying to use his vehicle to break through part of the levee in order to protect his property downriver. It was pretty pathetic, this lone dude in a white Chevy trying to bust through an earthen berm of probably 10 feet or more in height., and two or three times that in width. His was an act of desperation. But there's no pressing catastrophe in St. Bernard, nothing going on that would drive someone to cripple vital public works. So what gives?

Captain Sanders told me this morning that these incidents were the first time he'd ever heard of someone intentionally damaging the pumps. "Naturally you'd expect ... there are those who can't resist getting some copper from construction sites," he said, "but this is a rarity for us."

The Captain told me he'd pass my information along to the investigating officers, and I hope to hear from them soon.

Strange times hereabouts. Could this sabotaged pump situation somehow lead to William Jefferson?

That's a joke. For the moment...

Well, maybe you saw the Times-Pic yesterday, and read the front page article on the charges leveled against Gretna city attorney W. J. LeBlanc, charges alleging that he gave an illegal contribution in the form of eight $100 bills to a former judge, one Alan Green. A judicial disciplinary panel has recommended that the attorney be suspended for six months as punishment for his deed, which violates state ethics rules.

LeBlanc claims that he was simply unaware of the rule against such conduct. The disciplinary panel believed differently, in light of the evidence, and has requested that the Louisiana Supreme Court impose the disciplinary sentence.

The funny thing is, though, that the implicated Judge Green -- who was being investigated by the FBI in an operation named "Wrinkled Robe" -- was soliciting contributions not on his own behalf, but rather for the campaign of state Representative Jalila Jefferson-Bullock, daughter of our beloved and beleaguered US Congressman William Jefferson, himself indicted on 16 federal charges only last month.

The pace of this scandal-widening is making me giddy. I'm just an outsider, to a large degree, so my heart doesn't sink when I realize that institution after New Orleans institution are falling to federal bribery or corruption investigations, and people are pleading guilty.

I am simply not savvy enough to fully appreciate the interlocking natures of these scandals. For those who command the full picture, it must be an astonishing thing to behold. How far can these ties of complicity and malfeasance go? How many municipal servants are linked in this net of impropriety? I wonder but one thing: are there any corruptions in Orleans Parish that are not tied into our (alleged, and many guilty pleas-validating) ruling family of perfidy, the Jeffersons?

HOLY COW! When rank and file judicial corruption investigations lead right to the same doorstep as international bribery scandals which somehow are linked to school board bribery investigations, it's either a vast racist conspiracy or it's another story of power corrupting those who possess it. When bribes in the amounts of hundreds of thousands of dollars are confessed to in court, and these confessions implicate the same people, then it's reasonable to think that something scurrilous has been going on. Of course, the whole Jefferson clan may be as innocent as the day they were born, this whole chain of events might be some bizarre kind of singularity that has been manipulated by the media and power-hungry politicians to discredit Jefferson and bring his powerful political family down.

Or it could mean that Jefferson and his family have been caught with their hands in numerous cookie jars. Not that Rep. Jefferson should be judged as guilty before his trial, but this is American justice. The innocent may go free, but sometimes the guilty do, too.

Every once in a while, the guilty do pay for their crimes. I hope for nothing but the truth to come out of all of this, if for nothing other than the sake of history. This will make great literature, one day.

It sounds like no one has died yet in this chain of scandal, and unless and until someone does die, it can stay a funny story of absurdly linked corruptions.

Let's hope the Jefferson complexities don't lead to a corpse...

Although it may seem sometimes like nothing will ever improve fast enough to save New Orleans, when you look around the city these days, you can discern -- between the dilapidated houses and the derelict business storefronts -- real progress being made.

I recently posted about the repaving of a long stretch of St. Claude, one of the 9th Wards' major east-west arterial roadway and home to dozens of small businesses. Investment in street upgrades will hopefully nurture the ongoing recovery of the Bywater business district along St. Claude, a district largely characterized by mom-and-pop corner stores, a couple of fast food outlets, and a handful of bars. Bringing back New Orleans will necessitate a far greater share of municipal resources going into infrastructure upgrades, in order to draw more economic life into areas left blighted by years-long decline prior to Katrina, and a precipitous drop after.

Driving around many neighborhoods after Katrina, we found roads too numerous to count with the worst of surfacing, irregular pavement that shocked cars, potholes that could swallow children. These sorry streets were no fault of Katrina's; only years of municipal neglect can provide roads of such miserable quality.

Not that I think for a moment that streets across town are all that much better. Garden District side roads are often equally uneven and as damaged as 9th Ward streets. But at least the wealthier Garden District had streetcars.

When we speak of recovery, we often speak of re-establishing a pre-Katrina levels of service in New Orleans, and set benchmarks for progress accordingly. But this town has been underserved by its leaders for a long time. Pre-Katrina levels of service on all fronts were nothing to be proud of. Infrastructure was crumbling, police brutality, crime, and corruption were cottage industries, and children learned little in the schools, but plenty on the streets; in short, pre-Katrina New Orleans was a place to measure from, not a place to go towards. I'm certain that the Mayor and other elected officials realize this and are doing what they can to seize this golden opportunity to transform New Orleans, and not just give it a facelift.

With revelations of more and more corruption in high office, it's likely that part of New Orleans' pre-Katrina mess is attributable to the mendacity and greed of its public officeholders. Bribes, kickbacks, official malfeasance; New Orleans has invented new vocabularies for these criminal institutions. All that money to pay those bribes had to come from somewhere, and it's an even bet that much of it was diverted from the public welfare to the pockets of the wealthy.

Will New Orleanians be satsified with a pre-Katrina city, where population was on the decline, unemployment high, and wages low? Will we accept the resurrection of an impoverished, corrupt, and physically questionable city, without aiming for a higher standard?

If not, then what kind of standard will we aspire to?

And how can we aspire to anything if the same old problems keep popping up to hinder us?

So it was all sort of humorous at first, the whole "Dollar Bill" Jefferson story and his $90,000 in bribery-related frozen cash seized from his icebox by the feds. It was easy to dismiss the story as just another corrupt Louisiana politician tale, and Jefferson as just another garden-variety crook.

But the garden keeps getting bigger. And the gardeners are coming from the most unlikely places...

The FBI's raid on Jefferson's Washington office and the search of his homes in New Orleans and D.C. created a minor political firestorm, with some people alleging that Jefferson, a powerful black senator, had been targeted by whites looking to advance a racist agenda. Others contended that, if the good senator had indeed taken a bribe while in office, then he should be held accountable, and that his race was immaterial.

I don't know about the "white conspiracy" theory, but If this wonderful country of ours didn't have such a terrible and complicated racial history, then we perhaps could see more clearly the fundamentals of the case against Jefferson. Precedent for kicking blacks out of congress was set long ago, and fears of ethnic cleansing in halls of power aren't unheard of (see footnote at bottom of post). All the same, if he hadn't done anything wrong in the first place, we'd likely not see the headlines we get these days. Corruption is colorblind in our great nation.

YES, of course he's innocent until proven guilty; and, this being America, he could very well be guilty and be found innocent in a court of law.

When Hurricane Katrina blew through Jefferson's constituency less than a month after the raids, scattering his electorate to the four corners of the continent and putting his legal hassles in a different context, the good Senator must have felt a little something of a cooling breeze, despite the devastation. Not that he had an easy time of it; I'm sure that Jefferson did every thing he could to bring southeast Louisiana back from catastrophe, despite having an federal probe dangling over his head.

Then, to the amused horror of many sane people, he was re-elected in 2006, with a cloud hanging over him that just kept getting darker. He wasn't indicted during the election, but the details of the shady dealings kept creeping out. Acquaintences of the Jefferson family started pleading guilty and being sentenced to prison, like a little trail of bodies that seems to lead to the Jefferson family doors. Jefferson narrowly edged out Karen Carter, a progressive woman who wasn't tainted by graft and would have been an unencumbered senator with energy and passion, even if she would have been a novice to the job.

The investigation continued throughout, and this month Jefferson himself was indicted on 16 federal charges. So far, three people have pled guilty to bribery-related charges, and the investigation is only getting deeper in New Orleans politics.

Now the Orleans Parish school board is implicated, with former OPSB president Ellenese Brooks-Simms' recent guilty plea to bribery charges. Here it gets more interesting; the Brooks-Simms investigation comes after a 5-year FBI investigation into School Board corruption -- an investigation that saw the feds set up an office in the School Board administration to facilitate the investigation. Which federal probe will be next to connnect to this metastasizing beast of bribery? Will it reach City Hall? If it does, will anyone be surprised?

More to the point, will anyone care?

It would be nice to think that a string of federal investigations will put an end to New Orleans corruption. Because it doesn't seem likely to happen any other way.

Here's a timeline of the Jefferson investigation. Keep reading the papers, 'cause it ain't over yet.

Historic footnote for those interested: It was just about a hundred years ago when white politicians ended the post-Civil War Reconstruction period, a time in which former slaves were ushered into high offices all over the land. These emancipated people weren't greeted with the most enthusiasm, though. Powerful whites contrived to regain control over the government, and Southern white "Bourbons" as they are known, put an end to the Reconstruction period and inaugurated through violence and riot the so-called Redemption period, when white power was "redeemed" throughout the south.

Holy Cross, Inc., is trying to figure out what to do with their abandoned former campus in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood still known as "Holy Cross". The Catholic boys' school now operates in Gentilly, having left behind the centuries-old complex by the river. The corporation is putting feelers out for a professional planner who can envision and enable a new future for the old site, and they're hoping to find the right person by the end of this summer.

The campus is located on some prime real estate. It abuts the Mississippi River levees, is on some of the highest ground in the Lower 9th Ward, and covers 16 acres. Personally, I think that the Holy Cross neighborhood is going to be one of the most enviable neighborhoods to inhabit in the next five to ten years. The neighborhood's historic character is a major asset, and it's favorable elevation doesn't hurt, either. Keep in mind that Holy Cross flooded mostly due to the catastrophic levee failure in the Industrial Canal; the volume of water coming in was so great that it flooded even the higher areas, and it took a long time to drain the place.

The campus can be redeveloped into a thriving center of activity. It's one of the areas that recovery-captain Blakely has prioritized for investment, with good reason. Regular readers will know that I'm no staunch ally of 21st-century development schemes, particularly when they threaten neighborhood integrity (ICINola, anyone?), and I take it for granted that re-development here, and elsewhere in the city, is going to look a lot like gentrification, but as far as resurrecting a devastated neighborhood goes, there are more important things than simply "maintaining neighborhood character." The Lower 9th Ward and Holy Cross are desolate still, rebuilding efforts are piecemeal, and every passing month seems to send one or two more abandoned houses up in fiery smoke. This state of affairs only benefits squatters and rats, and I doubt it even benefits them all that much.

New development will surely mark the end of a part of Holy Cross history, but it doesn't have to signify the discarding of history in toto. I fear that new development might bring more than a few changes to the neighborhood, though. Will successful renovation drive life-long residents out by jacking up housing costs and taxes? Will new construction benefit the entire community, or will it act as a funnel for corporate profits to be sent out of state? Will the historic name of Holy Cross be jettisoned for something more contemporary?

(Suddenly I find myself gripped with apprehension ... what if the whorish American proclivity to sell naming rights to the highest bidder results in some kind of unconscionable corporate nomenclature -- Shell Park? Verizon Village? Murphy Oil Commons? Call me an old-school, corporation-mistrustful Jeffersonian [as in Thomas], but I'd fight that crap all the way to defacing signage ... no lie.)

I wish the Holy Cross corporation good luck in finding a suitable planner for this vital undertaking. And I hope to god we never have to see a Starbucks Plaza in the re-christened Halliburton neighborhood of the Lower 9th Ward ... soon to be renamed the "Carnival Cruise Line" Ward...

This Sunday, New Orleans will mark with no fanfare the 84th anniversary of the city's first police raid on marijuana. In the early evening of June 17, 1923, cops raided the Black Cat restaurant on Ursulines, arresting the owner and his wife and confiscating a 12 packs of marijuana cigarettes. The raid was the fruition of a campaign by local elites to eradicate the menace of the Cannabis plant, and it marked the beginning of a law enforcement regime that lasts to this day.

When the ordinance was passed, marijuana had already become popular among musicians, prostitutes, and "underworld figures" in the Crescent City. Introduced locally around 1910, the weed stayed mostly in the hands of sailors and travelers from the Caribbean until it caught on in Storyville, the famous red-light district north of the French Quarter. From there, pot spread throughout the city.

Before it was outlawed, marijuana could be bought in bulk over the counter of certain drug stores, and joints could be bought for as little as a dime each. With the advent of the Volstead Act, and other laws criminalizing alcohol, marijuana's popularity as intoxicant of choice spiked. It offered a high unlike liquor, didn't give users a hangover, and it was legal. Soon it could be found not just in the rucksacks of maritime traders, but growing in concealed plots in the backyards of New Orleans residents.

Public safety officials caught wind of the smoke, and determined to outlaw the humble plant. In 1920, President of the Louisiana State Board of Health Dr. Oscar Dowling wrote to the governor to warn him about marijuana. Calling the plant "a powerful narcotic," Dowling urged the governor to take action.

Dowling, and other New Orleanians committed to banning the weed, didn't wait for the governor to act, though. They began lobbying the New Orleans City Council to pass an ordinance against the drug, which had, in December 1910, already outlawed cocaine, opium, heroin, morphine, and a handful of other medically useful drugs with the capacity for abuse.

The entreaties of the prohibitionists succeeded: on May 29, 1923, the City Council passed Ordinance 7384, criminalizing the possession or sale of marijuana. Fines were set at $25, or 30 days in jail.

Enforcement soon followed, and the raid on the Black Cat Restaurant was only the first on a long list of soft drink stands, pool halls, and music clubs that received the attention of the cops. In one dusk-to-dawn period in 1926, police raided dozens of establishments and arrested over 150 people in a city-wide crackdown. In a town known for vice, marijuana joined the pantheon of forbidden vice, an association that ironically only increased the the drug's allure.

Fast forward to the 21st century, wherein a marijuana culture is deeply ingrained in New Orleans, weed is not hard to come by, and price, as well as quality, vary greatly. Enforcement for simple possession and sales focuses on hapless street dealers, mostly young, mostly male, and mostly black. Instead of re-assessing the utility of marijuana prohibition, the laws against it are only more entrenched and more punitive. Instead of recognizing, like it or not, that no amount of law enforcement can stop the flow of drugs such as weed into the city, many upstanding citizens choose to follow the "lead" set by the feds, and continue a patently failed policy of enforcement and eradication.

The erroneous notion that the problems caused by drugs can be controlled through the legal system still has plenty of traction. Misunderstanding of the issues underlying the popularity of marijuana is almost an American folkway: despite citizen-led initiatives in many states to legalize weed for medical purposes -- it has long been recognized as having valuable therapeutic use -- marijuana remains a federal Schedule I drug, making it one of the most outlawed substances in the country. Under Louisiana law, it is a Dangerous Controlled Substance, and simple possession can get you a $500 fine and up to 6 months in jail. Despite tens of thousands of arrests for possession or sales each year, and despite the fact that weed is the sixth most-profitable crop in Louisiana (in street value per pound, it's number 1), still, the plant is illegal.

After the Black Cat raid in 1923, New Orleans Police Superintendent Guy Molony indicated that victory over weed was imminent. According to Times-Picayune coverage of the bust, "Supt. Molony says the police will shortly put an end to traffic in marihuana [sic] if the judges and recorders will cooperate with them."

Such faith in the integrity of law enforcement is laudable; however, ignoring the continued failure of the law enforcement paradigm to control drugs, and the problems they generate, is no cause for celebration.

Yesterday, notorious Judge Charles Elloie retired from the bench after 10 years of controversial "service" to Orleans Parish. Elloie's retirement effectively ends the investigation into his chronic habit of lowering bail for accused criminals, a habit that led to his suspension last October.

Lots of criminal justice professionals in New Orleans greet this news enthusiastically. Among the numerous interlocking forces that keep justice in Orleans starved for air, lousy judges are one of the biggest. As quoted in the Times-Picayune, the president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission called Elloie's time on the bench "one of the most embarrassing tenures of judicial misconduct in the history of the City of New Orleans."

That might be true, but it's certainly not the first time an Orleans judge demonstrated sympathy towards the "criminal element." As I wrote about a few weeks ago, back in the early 1920s it was Judge Jacob Leininger who was causing NOPD grief by his chronic intervention on behalf of criminals of all stripes. Like Elloie, Leininger allowed arrested suspects low- or no-bail, and often took the liberty of arranging parole for accused by phone. Judges were a limiting factor in justice, in the eyes of the law enforcers, and couldn't be relied upon to represent the public's best interest.

Those celebrating Elloie's announced retirement would do well to broaden their perspective. Of course it's a good day when a judge with a questionable allegiance to law and order removes himself from the bench. But the circumstances that created a Charles Elloie also created Jacob Leininger, and no doubt are creating more such "justices" as we speak.

Leininger presided in the early '20s, a time of massive corruption and vice. Prohibition was failing mightily in the Crescent City, and opportunities to scoff at the law were plentiful. Vice money paid off cops, judges, and politicians, and no matter how the newspapers presented it, the moral crusade of sobriety and temperance precipitated this corruption.

Crackdowns on some of the most lucrative enterprises in town -- speakeasies, brothels, gambling dens -- must have bordered on the absurd. As prohibition agents and vice squads hit place after place, only to see them bounce back shortly thereafter (partially due to lenient judges, no doubt), their faith in the system must have been taxed. If, after a few years, a cop sees how pointless his actions are in reducing vice and "cleaning up the town," he just might entertain the thought of cashing in on the action.

On that note of crime-linked-to-corruption, around the same time that Leinninger was holding court, NO Police Superintendent Healy was doing a little housecleaning around the 3rd and 4th Precincts. Within 10 days in October 1926, Healy dismissed seven officers, two for "tipping off bootleggers" prior to raids and five more for "winking at moral code violations." After these dismissals, the Superintendent launched an anti-narcotic sweep of the city that netted over 150 arrests.

Despite this apparent success, over 80 years later, malfeasant judges and complicit cops still make the headlines in New Orleans. Maybe there's something in the air that leads law enforcers to corruption. Or maybe it's the laws themselves. Back in the '20s, alcohol prohibition gave rise to an astonishingly lucrative underground economy, an economy with many people on its payroll, cops and judges included.

Seems there might be an analog in contemporary New Orleans ... prohibition ... lucrative underground economy ... corruption ... seems like we've been here before, huh?

Let's hope for a better judge to replace Elloie. But let's not pretend that the problem was just one bad judge.