Compelling circumstances

Yesterday the media company known clumsily as NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune, having been denied a request for appeal, complied with a judge's order to turn over account information about two frequent commenters on its website.

“Nola.com/The Times-Picayune is committed to the idea that the constitutional rights of Internet users, including the First Amendment right to speak anonymously, should be carefully safeguarded, and that the identity of those who choose to speak anonymously should be revealed only in the most compelling of circumstances,” Lori Mince, the paper’s attorney, said in a prepared statement.

The T-P's position in this matter is laudable in principle. Although it has been pointed out elsewhere that they've been less than consistent on this point.  Right now, it seems, they're committed to objecting to having to rat out their... users? sources? content providers?.. whatever you call a newspaper commenter... to a judge. But they're being forced to do that anyway under "compelling circumstances."

In this case the compelling circumstance is that lawyers representing Stacey Jackson think that one or both of these commenters might have been a federal prosecutor publicly disparaging Ms. Jackson while they were in the process of bringing charges against her.

Many will recall Jackson was head of  the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership agency. 

The NOAH program erupted into scandal in the summer of 2008, when information emerged that many of the homes the quasi-city agency had paid to gut or board up had in fact received no attention. The scandal galvanized citizens frustrated with the city's halting recovery.

Much of their ire was aimed at Nagin, who had championed the NOAH program as a way of propping up overwhelmed nonprofits that had been providing gutting services. Nagin initially reacted defensively, holding a memorable news conference in which he blasted the reporting of Lee Zurik, then with WWL-TV and now with WVUE-TV, and accused him of impeding the city's recovery.

But the real center of the scandal was Stacey Jackson, who was NOAH's executive director and had close ties to several of the program's favored contractors.

Whether or not it ends up becoming the means by which more prosecutorial misconduct is exposed, the NOAH scandal is already a memorable event in the city's political history. Not only was it a major turning point in Nagin's relationship with the media but it also helped launch Karen Gadbois's career in investigative journalism and thus is a major reason we have The Lens today. 

Fewer will recall that Jackson was also part owner of a men's designer underwear shop called "The Him Store" but somehow that fact has become less significant with the passage of time.

Anyway, as we were saying, according to Jackson's lawyers, there is compelling reason to believe that forcing the T-P to turn over information about these anonymous commenters will lead to their being positively identified as federal prosecutors.

Whether they will ever be unmasked, however, is not clear, despite Thursday’s developments.

Keith Marszalek, Nola.com’s director of digital operations, did not respond to an emailed question Thursday about what information the website keeps on its commenters. And whether the identities of “aircheck” and “jammer1954” are even knowable may depend on how hard the two have tried to cover their tracks, experts say.

Or not.  But hey let's err on the side of suppressing free speech and a free press anyway just in case.

"Open secret"

It sure seems like it's taken a while to crack the open secret all the way open but better late than never.

As a defense attorney, Gibbens served on the team representing Fred Heebe, co-owner of landfill company River Birch Inc., as federal officials began to probe allegations that Heebe had bribed officials for preferential treatment.

By then, the fact that at least one federal prosecutor was using Nola.com comments to weigh in on cases had been an open secret in New Orleans’ clubby legal community for years. It was a secret that Gibbens and co-counsel Kyle Schonekas would use to explosive effect in a defamation suit when they — with the help of a former FBI profiler — identified Assistant U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone as the author of 595 comments posted on Nola.com under the handle “Henry L. Mencken1951.”

The moment Heebe trotted out his forensic divination charlatan guy two years ago, many readers immediately suspected Perricone was more likely to have been outed by the grapevine.  All of these people know each other. Heebe, himself, was almost nominated to be US Attorney once. The whole thing is one big "clubby" inside game.

And remember we still don't know all of the identities of the prosecutors who took part in what increasingly looks like a coordinated public propaganda campaign.  We don't know how high up it went. Some have suggested that one of the remaining suspicious comments handles belonged to Jim Letten himself.  It's also possible that one or more participants in or people with knowledge of the scheme are still on staff at the US Attorney's office.  At a recent appearance, the new boss Ken Polite said that "he spends an inexcusably inordinate amount of time dealing with internal personnel issues."

As for this Gibbens character, it's difficult not to admire him a little bit.  Sure some crooks may get off the hook thanks to his efforts.  But not all crooks are created equal.  Justice in the Danziger case would be worth twenty Ray Nagins walking free, for example.  All of that notwithstanding, it seems appropriate that someone stand up to the haughty bullying, public grandstanding, and sockpuppet propagandizing Jim Letten and his deputies disgraced his office with.

The issues all of this raises for the press are serious, though.  And I don't mean to give the principles at issue short shrift.  But, in practice,  it's not entirely clear that they don't deserve a bit of comeuppance themselves for the role they've played at times. But that's pretty much an open secret too.

Hey that's our job!

Moseley's description suggests we think about the "comments" scandal at the US Attorney's Office as a coordinated plan to run a sort of online propaganda campaign against federal prosecution targets.

Granted, the online comments don’t mean that Ray Nagin, or the Danziger defendants or Renee Gill Pratt are suddenly innocent. But they raise the question of whether those figures — and numerous others — received a fair trial. If the Danziger defendants were right that the government waged “a secret public relations campaign” on the internet— in other words, if the “lone wolves” did in fact operate as a pack — we’ll have to steel ourselves for a flurry of (grueling) retrials and re-sentencings.

And I think I've figured out the real reason  the political media is so concerned about these activities. It's territorial.  Usually promoting the unquestioned benevolence of federal prosecutors while smearing their targets in the news is their job.

Who is poisoning "the discourse"?

Tigerdroppings and NOLA.com are famous internet-wide for being hosts to the most outlandishly mean, racist, sexist, what have you, comment threads a person could hope to experience.  They're often exhibit A held up by whatever pearl clutching community leader is militating for a clamp down on internet speech in the name of preserving the "civil discourse."

It's interesting to me, then, that we keep finding out the people contributing the most corrosive "uncivil" comments happen to be well.. judges and US Attorneys and such.

An Arkansas circuit judge has called off his campaign for higher office after he confessed to making what some deemed to be offensive comments under an alias on the LSU fan message board, Tiger Droppings.

A political blogger first suggested on Monday (March 3) that Arkansas Circuit Judge Mike Maggio was behind the pseudonym “geauxjudge” in a post on his website, Blue Hog Report, according to The Associated Press. Maggio acknowledged the comments were his on Wednesday (March 5), apologized and ended his campaign for a seat on the Arkansas Court of Appeals.

Some have called the comments racist, sexist, homophobic or inappropriate.

Speaking of which, the US Attorneys comment scandal is likely far from over.

Repeat after me: WE DON’T KNOW JACK SQUAT. The next time you read an article on Commentgate — and you will— whisper that mantra under your breath.

We’re two years deep in this scandal and still can’t answer any of the fundamental questions: How many feds were making comments? How many usernames were used? How many comments were written?

Based on my research I’ll wager that there are many thousands of undiscovered comments written by feds who are supposed to be impartial servants of the law.

What is the difference, exactly?

Here are a couple of commentaries from last week about the overturned Danziger verdict I thought were worth mentioning.  First, there is this from two of the jurors who sat on the case.  They sound pretty adamant that the "prosecutorial misconduct" cited by Judge Englehardt didn't have anything to do with the jury's decision to convict. 

The New Orleans Advocate tried to contact each of the 12 jurors in the Danziger case. Farlough and Robin were the only ones who agreed to be interviewed. Both said they knew nothing about any online comments — by Perricone, Mann or anyone else. They made their decision, as the judge ordered them to, based on what they heard in the courtroom.

“I think it’s a folly, all of this supposed posting of things on NOLA.com,” Robin said. “We would not have been selected as jurors if we didn’t have the integrity to follow the court’s order. We rendered the verdict that we thought was fair and proper. To now reverse that verdict seems a bit ludicrous.”

The editorial board at the Washington Post agreed this weekend.

Judge Engelhardt is right that the online comments were egregious, unjustifiable, unprofessional abuses of authority on the part of the lawyers. The two prosecutors in New Orleans left their jobs in disgrace. The Justice Department lawyer, whose role was revealed in the judge’s decision, may face disciplinary action. Conceivably, they could be disbarred.

However, his conclusion that the online postings created a “prejudicial, poisonous atmosphere” that justified throwing out the convictions is a huge stretch. By that logic, overturning the convictions might also be justified by the TV show “Treme,” which began airing on HBO 14 months before the officers’ trial and depicts the New Orleans police as corrupt, brutal and violent. It’s a safe bet that more New Orleanians have seen “Treme” than the prosecutors’ online postings.

Please don't get me started about the egregious, unjustifiable, poisonous abuse of the viewing audience that is HBO's Treme. The Post is wrong to assume that anybody watches that anymore anyway.

A better comparison, if we're talking about actions that might prejudice a jury, would be between the relatively obscure online comments and Jim Letten's penchant for grandstanding press conferences that get blasted all over the media every time he indicted somebody. If a jury can be tainted by anonymous sniping deep within the bowels of  a newspaper's online comments section, surely this bluster must have some prejudicial effect.

Ain't my fault

Here's a little trip down memory lane to Ray Nagin's 2007 State of the City address.

"It's not our fault that the levees breached that the federal government built," he said, launching into the speech's singular moment of unscripted oratory and rousing the night's only standing ovation. "It's not our fault that we were stranded and left. It's not our fault that the Road Home program has issued only 12 percent of the grants after almost two years. It's not our fault that our water system is leaking today. It's not our fault."

The T-P article failed to note that Nagin was explicitly referencing the brass standard "Ain't my fault" here. As was the case during nearly all of Nagin's extemporaneous moments, I remember cracking up watching it.

Anyway, it crossed my mind again today when I saw this. 

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin asked Thursday for a delay in his corruption trial, scheduled for late October, with his attorney arguing that he needs the opportunity to fully review reports by a Justice Department special prosecutor into the anonymous online commenting of two former high-ranking New Orleans prosecutors.

The request came two days after U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt tossed out the convictions of five former NOPD officers in the Danziger Bridge shooting case, in part because of the online commenting of Sal Perricone and Jan Mann, once high-ranking members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

So that's now Heebe, Nagin, and the Danzinger cops who have picked up the Perricone Get Out Of Jail Card so far. But if this is gonna be somebody's fault, it's ultimately got to be Jim Letten's.

Sympathy for the hobbits

Listen to me, hobbits.

I'm thinking about beginning all of my correspondence with that opening from now on. Yesterday I said that the Letten-O'Keefe video "does not disappoint." I might have understated my feelings a bit.

It is every bit the big-pompous-asshole-screams-bizarre-unconventional-insults-at-annoying-little-twerp bit of comedy gold I had imagined it could be the moment we learned of the encounter.

Since yesterday afternoon, I've watched it at least 50 times.  Every time I laugh loudest at some new aspect.  There's the way Letten holds the phone steady next to his reddened face as he shouts. There's the part where he, literally, throws the book at O'Keefe. There's the line "All of you, you're hobbits. You are less than I can ever tell you. You are scum. Do you understand?" It's the, "Do you understand?" part that gets me.  I think this rhetorical treasure should be recreated on stage for future generations to ponder. Like the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  

So it's a wonderful blessing and we should be thankful for it.  But also pay attention to what it also might tell us about the already infamous sloppiness of Letten's office.

This background adds an interesting dimension to O’Keefe’s claim that Mann, or someone on her team, leaked privileged emails between O’Keefe and his lawyer, in an attempt to drive media coverage against him. In the second video, O’Keefe says that Attorney General Eric Holder pressured Letten’s office to prosecute O’Keefe (presumably for political reasons).

The videos note some of the many interconnections in and outside Letten’s office. For example, Mann and her husband were both top prosecutors, and Sen. Landrieu’s brother Maurice was a prosecutor on staff. The second video quotes from a letter O’Keefe’s attorneys sent to the Department of Justice asking that Mann recuse herself from the case due to “intertwining political issues.” (According to O’Keefe, there was no response to the request.)

The letter failed to mention a relevant fact that I’ve wondered about: Mann grew up with Landrieu. They were classmates at Ursuline Academy (both were class of ‘73 graduates). Further, Mann’s father — Joseph Maselli — a proud Italian-American and fervent foe of ethnic and racial bigotry, proposed building the Piazza d’Italia to Mayor Moon Landrieu. (The plaza is now undergoing renovations under Moon’s son, Mayor Mitch Landrieu).  Indeed, according to Maselli’s Oct. 23, 2009, obituary in The Times-Picayune, Moon Landrieu was an honorary pallbearer for Maselli. So Mann grew up with Mary Landrieu, and their fathers were friends.

This seems to be the basis of a pretty clear conflict of interest. Letten’s recusal might have given the appearance of fairness, but Mann may have had more of a conflict than her boss! If so, Mann should not have prosecuted the case and should have recused herself along with Letten.

And, of course, there's more there. Go read. 

That Furnace Faced Letten vs Smarmy Punk O'Keefe video we've been waiting for

Fight fans will recall that last month there were reports of a nasty clash between former US Attorney (and big jerk) Jim Letten and conservative provocateur (and bigger jerk) James O'Keefe. The reports seemed like a bit of a tease, though, since no one shared any video of the event, which we knew had to exist somewhere.

O'Keefe has released his version.  It does not disappoint.

James O'Keefe vs Jim Letten

Surely there is video of this incident. Surely we should demand to see it.

After leaving the Letten home, O’Keefe and at least five others then moved on to Tulane University, Letten’s alma mater, where Letten now serves as assistant dean for experiential learning at the law school, after resigning as U.S. Attorney in December following an online posting scandal that involved two of his top lieutenants.

Letten, a Republican, had recused himself from the Landrieu case because the father of one of the charged men was a federal prosecutor whom Letten knew. But O’Keefe was intent on confronting the former U.S. attorney anyway, tracking him down on the Tulane campus and accusing him of “ruining my life,” a source with knowledge of the incident said.

By now, Letten was aware of O’Keefe’s visit to his home. Furious, he unleashed a loud verbal tirade on O’Keefe. He also alerted various law enforcement authorities, including the FBI and the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.

According to a Tulane police report, O’Keefe and the others were “issued restricted presence letters” -- basically an order to clear off -- and escorted off campus. No arrests were made.

"So far"

So far, video of the altercation has not surfaced on O’Keefe’s web site or elsewhere online. Neither O’Keefe nor an associate at the web site immediately responded to questions about the incident.

De La Salle High illuminati

This week's Gambit cover story (not yet online.... also not really a story so much as a series of blurbs from the staff) is one of those, Are You A Native Or A Transplant gimmicks that transplants tend to be so over-sensitive about.

Unsurprisingly, the "Where'd you go to high school?" issue comes up. But this has kind of fallen into the realm of the cliche' lately. It's one of many myths we still like to tell each other about New Orleans that doesn't quite reflect reality.

When it did exist, the high school question was a quirky means of making small talk with strangers.  New Orleans is an overgrown small town and most of us are socially separated by two to four degrees at most. Beginning a conversation with, "Where'd you go to high school" used to be a pretty reliable key to figuring out how you might know a new person or which people you know in common with them.

People still try to do this, of course.  But they're less likely to try and figure you out by way of your high school because, for one thing, the school system in New Orleans has been in such flux that it's no longer the static identifier it once was and, for another, post-Katrina times have brought such an influx of people from other cities that it wouldn't matter anyway.  If you're new to town, you're much more likely to hear someone warn you you'll be asked about your high school than you are to have the question put to you in earnest.

So I was all set to write that nobody actually cares about where you went to high school anymore. But then here's an Advocate feature on incoming U.S. Attorney Ken Polite where we learn,

He was born to teenage parents and raised, early on, in the Calliope and Lafitte housing projects of New Orleans and then in the Lower 9th Ward. He went on to become the first African-American valedictorian of De La Salle High School in New Orleans before going to Harvard University.

Polite's accomplishment there is noteworthy in and of itself, of course. But there's something else about this that's pretty remarkable. Jim Letten, the man Polite is replacing, is also a De La Salle grad.  As is Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizaro. As is Senator David Vitter whose (somewhat whiny) decision to not object to Polite's nomination has cleared the way for his appointment. The school clearly holds some mystical "Skull & Bones" type influence over the local criminal justice apparatus.

Cedric Richmond went to Ben Franklin. But he supports Polite anyway. In particular he supports Polite's stated intention to beef up his office's focus on prosecuting street crime even if this means a drop-off in the emphasis on public corruption. At least, Vitter strongly implied that it might mean that. Richmond disagrees but also takes the argument a step further.

“The last time I checked, public corruption didn’t kill a damn person in the city of New Orleans,” Richmond said. “Having 200-plus murders is absolutely unnecessary. And if the senator doesn’t have that concern, then that’s his problem.”

Please don't take this as a defense of David Vitter's catty remarks. But Richmond's statement here is not exactly true.  Public corruption can and does at the very least endanger lives. It can lead to the subversion of environmental protections, flood control structures, as well as the delivery of services that directly impact the lives and health of citizens.

Oh and sometimes public corruption just shoots people and burns their bodies in a car behind the levee.

But Richmond is telling us, in kind of a New Orleans way, that we shouldn't focus on that stuff because we're too busy fighting the war on terror, or something like that anyway. New Orleanians may not ask each other where they went to high school anymore but they're probably not as worn out on wanting to know who is stealing what from them. Or, at the very least, that question does still retain its relevance.

Just keep checking the comments

Eventually everything will be published there, anyway.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility has declined to make public its investigation into possible misconduct by former Assistant U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone and perhaps other prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office. A lawyer for the office recently wrote to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune to say she was "withholding any responsive information" to a request the newspaper made under the federal Freedom of Information Act for any reports or documents generated as part of the investigation.

All their bats are corked

Moseley does well with this metaphor.

Some fellow pundits claim the scandals involving online comments and possible prosecutorial misconduct only tarnish the terminal months of Jim Letten’s legacy as U.S. Attorney in New Orleans. They’re a stain at the end of his distinguished tenure, according to WWL’s Clancy Dubos. A bad final chapter in an otherwise great book of accomplishments, according to WGSO radio host Kaare Johnson.

It’s as if Letten were at bat in the bottom of the ninth inning, and struck out on a wicked slider thrown by businessman (and former federal target) Fred Heebe. Then he retired. You can’t boo a Hall of Famer for one untimely lapse, can you?

Government and politics is no place for hero worship.  No one rises to these leadership roles through the awesome force of shimmering virtue. Instead, such men and women make their careers through grasping compromise of principle; by going along to get along; by consciously conforming themselves, their opinions, and priorities, to those of the governing class; by whispering together in their dry cellars and such.

High ranking public officials are not "dragonslayers." They are club men.  Their most common distinguishing characteristic is cowardice. This isn't always a bad thing, of course.  Because we are fortunate enough to live under a mildly responsive, somewhat functional, kind of democratic form of government, we can occasionally frighten the cowardly club men into doing the right thing.  But what that requires from us is constant attention, and much screaming and yelling at no small expense to our leisure, our security, and to our pocketbooks.

Even so the failure rate remains high. The club, after all, is the club and its members enjoy many privileges most of us do not. In any case, there is no time in this to stop and pretend any of our presumed leaders, even when occasionally made to behave, is our friend.  It would be helpful, then, if the gatekeepers of our journalism would refrain from doing so too. But maybe that's too much to ask since so many of them clearly want to be in the club themselves.

And then you'll feel better

As is our custom, we walked out and waved at the Phunny Phorty Phellows streetcar on St. Charles Avenue  last Sunday night. And, as you can see above, I took my customary blurry photo of said streetcar.

Here is last year's blurry photo. Here's another one from a few years ago. One year I even got about 15 seconds of dark and blurry video of the Phellows as they passed.  I'm sure there are more in a pile somewhere and I'm sure they're all just as crappy.  But I like these pictures.  I think they convey the brevity and the mystery of the Twelfth Night hint of Carnival quite nicely.. even if this happens entirely by accident.

So as Carnival 2013 begins, here are a few of the mysteries we are pondering.

1) For Sunday night's ride, RTA made special arrangements for the Phellows to travel through a section of track where cross tie replacement work is currently ongoing.  In order to accomplish this, the PPP had to pass us traveling downtown on the normally uptown-bound track.

According to RTA, all work along the route will halt in time for parade season.

Regardless of how it looks now, RTA officials say, the area will be cleared in time for the crowds that will gather for the Krewes of Oshun and Cleopatra, the first parades in Orleans Parish, on Jan. 25.

“The good news is the agency (RTA) was able to negotiate with its contractors a suspension of contract work,” RTA spokeswoman Patrice Mercadel. said

The contractor working on the project has promised to have the site ready for revelers by Jan. 20. Work to complete the project will resume on Ash Wednesday, Mercadel said.

All this talk of clearing the neutral ground in order to make it "ready for revelers" makes this as good a moment as any for us to renew our annual petition to city fathers that they finally enforce the ordinances against excessive use of tents, ladders, and other territorial obstructions which crowd the route in ever increasing magnitudes of obnoxiousness.

So far it looks as though the enforcement priority places the territorial visibility of official NFL sponsors above the comfort and enjoyment of boring old ordinary New Orleanians this season. Oh well. Maybe next year...

2) Mark Moseley's latest Lens column has me imagining all the various online commenters connected to the US Attorney's office hubub as participants in one big Carnival Ball Masque.  Many of them are socially and politically powerful individuals.  They all know each other but they're all anonymous.. sort of.  And, of course, each and every one of them looks utterly ridiculous.

Related:  I share Dambala's "pet peeve" about this business.  I can understand why most normal people will get the terminology wrong.. or not give a shit either way.  But the misuse Dambala is complaining about keeps coming from media professionals who should know better but get it wrong anyway.  Must be on purpose, right?

3) It's January 12 and I haven't had a single slice of king cake yet.  (In fact, we haven't even taken down the Christmas tree but that's beside the point.) However, on a recent trip to Rouses, I did have an opportunity to price this year's "king cake" flavored vodka offerings.


The original imported Lucky Player brand is selling for $28.99.  That's up two bucks from last year's $26.99 which, we thought was so ridiculous at the time that we just resorted to making our own by dropping slices of king cake into shots of Stoli.



Result: It was terrible, of course.  It's king cake vodka, what did you expect?

The new development this year is Taaka has added a king cake flavor to its brand of discount vodkas which you can also buy at Rouses for $5.99.  What could possibly make one king cake flavored vodka 13 whole dollars more horrendous than another king cake flavored vodka?  I hope I never find out.

 

4) Krewe Du Vieux is just one freaking week from now!



We are not ready.  Our unreadiness isn't due so much to the the Super Bowl affected scheduling as it is to technical issues with Yellow Blogging Carnival World Headquarters.  Ordinarily at this time of year we'd be cleaning the place up, stocking up on beer, and getting ready to host parade visitors. But none of that can begin yet since for the last month we've had only intermittent experiences of 21st century indoor plumbing.

This has occasioned a series of visitations from various men purporting to have some knowledge of.. though more likely willingness to do some.. working with "the pipes." After much screaming and telephone messages to the landlord from us and our similarly affected neighbors, an actual professional plumber has been hired to direct the digging of a great hole in the earth.



At least that's what we are told is happening.  We're not entirely ruling out the possibility that we've got a vampire infestation... it is, after all one of the things I hate about this town.  But, for now, let's just assume the plumbers are being up front with us.  So it is hoped that the great hole will ultimately lead to a resolution of our predicament. It is greatly wished that this resolution happens before parades begin.

On the way out yesterday morning I found one of the building super's guys standing in the hole in the sidewalk with a shovel.  Apparently the plumber came out and told them he couldn't do the work because the hole wasn't deep enough. I asked, "So he's coming back out when the hole is deeper?"

"Maybe," says the guy with the shovel.

Further proof nobody knows how the hell NOLA.com works

Feds seeking information on 11 additional NOLA.com commenters

The aliases that the federal government wants to know more about are as follows: "FormerNOPDman," "mardigraswizard," "lawdawg1963," "nolacat60," "FSU1982," "alafbi," thewizard," "copperhead504," "isthisthingon?," "Andjusticeforall," and "uckzerto."

The Times-Picayune could find no evidence that "nolacat60" has ever been a username on the site. Two of the handles -- "thewizard" and "isthisthingon" -- exist on the site, but neither one has posted any comments, according to a search of NOLA.com.

Passing on a link I don't have time to comment on

Because, you know, holidays and such still in effect. 

But here's Moseley on the long history of intrigue at the US Attorney's office.

The corruption was always sophisticated

In his parting interview, Jim Letten takes the opposite view of that once expressed by former New Orleans Inspector General Robert Cerasoli who told us our corruption wasn't as "sophisticated" as what you see in other cities.

Letten's comments suggest otherwise.

Letten admitted that the timing of his departure is awkward. The date was not entirely of his choosing, and it comes at a time when several major cases are deep in the pipeline. One case that is nearing a possible indictment is the not-so-veiled bribery investigation of former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin.

But just as New Orleans’ criminal landscape is always full of surprises, so, too, was the unexpected chain of events that led to Letten’s departure.

“We have the weirdest problems, the strangest challenges, the damnedest struggles. So, maybe, just maybe, this event is consistent with that,” Letten mused.

Maybe the truth is we really were always "so far behind we're ahead" at least as far as sophisticated corruption goes.


Update: Posted this before I noticed Moseley's latest column about Letten and his "damn struggles" is up at The Lens.  Go read that now. 

And while we're at it I should also point you to this AZ post where Dambala raises a question that's been on my mind a lot since the whole Perricone affair broke.

Final question...why the hell would anyone, ever again, remotely consider commenting on Nola.com?  Even if you're not a DOJ employee.  This is a serious question, I'm not just asking it to dis Nola.com.  I'm asking this question because I think we now have an enormous deterrent for people who have information on corruption to anonymously comment in online, public forums and I think that hurts our democracy.

Over the past year to three years, we've definitely seen a retreat from the high level of civic engagement we had been seeing from everyday internet users.. particularly in New Orleans but elsewhere as well.

I think there are a number of contributing factors to this chill.  Today's social media tools are more geared toward promotion of commercial rather than user-generated content. Meanwhile amateur opinion has become less fashionable as we've become more and more saturated with it. Plus there's been a fair degree of (I believe unwarranted) push back from professional journalists who have come to see their most engaged readers (i.e. bloggers and commenters) as more and more of an annoyance.
The Perricone story has only served to reinforce that trend.

So while the past decade witnessed a brief flourishing of messy but democratic discourse, we seem now to be heading back to a place where the public sphere is dominated by elites writing for other elites about elitist priorities.   And that, not the downfall of a false hero like Jim Letten, is the real bad news this year.

Quotes of the Day

Edwin Edwards:

"Sit by the river long enough. I did," Edwards said in a statement passed along by a longtime friend. The ex-governor and ex-convict was referencing one of his most famous bon mots, which he used memorably in May 2000 after his conviction for extorting riverboat gaming companies.

 And perhaps more appropriately from that same NOLA.com blurb.

"If the saint had killed a dragonfly instead of a dragon, nobody would remember him," Edwards said in an interview. "But when you do something like convict Edwin Edwards, after all the other people have tried for 20 years, it puts a feather in your hat. Whether you did it right or wrong, honestly or by the rules or not, is immaterial. It's a success story and I tip my hat to him."

H.L. Mencken (The actual Mencken) via NOLADefender: 

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth—that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

Tomorrow never knows

Today could have been a very different sort of day for Ray Nagin.

Is Jim Letten go?

Looking that way.

NEW ORLEANS —
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten will step down from his post at the U.S. Attorney's Office, sources tell the WDSU I-Team.

Quoting the great American Fascist parable of our day:

Commissioner James Gordon: The Joker won. All of Harvey's prosecutions, everything he fought for...undone. Whatever chance you gave us of fixing our city dies with Harvey's reputation. We bet it all on him. The Joker took the best of us and tore him down. People will lose hope. 

Batman: They won't. They must never know what he did.

In the fascist parable, the so-called "best of us" has just murdered five people. But the heroes decide it's best to build up and celebrate his phony reputation instead.  Expect plenty of that from the heroes in the NOLA commentariat in the coming days.

Moesley's latest column on this business begins with a helpful thought.

Strange bedfellows

About that thing we mentioned yesterday regarding everybody involved in the Heebe-Letten-Vitter-Perricone-Robinnette business being very closely tied together by their professional, political, and personal associations.  Here, via Slabbed, is what we meant by "personal."

We now know Senator David “Diaper Dave” Vitter was ensnared along with Billy Nungesser and that both guys like their sex kinky.  Vitter of course was the guy who got Judge Kurt Engelhardt on the bench. Engelhardt in a prior life was Vitter’s campaign manager and somewhere along the line it came out the Sinator used his campaign money to indulge his sexual proclivities and that it was Engelhardt that likely wrote the checks.

Engelhardt is the judge now trying to use Perricone, et al as an excuse to  have the Danziger verdict tossed out.

Meanwhile, keeping with the title theme, check out all the money people lining up behind Dana Kaplan.

Notable Kaplan contributions in the most recent reports: $4,000 from developer Sean Cummings ($1,500 before the Nov. 6 primary and $2,500 after); $2,500 from Mayor Mitch Landrieu's election campaign; $2,000 from political strategist and commentator James Carville; $1,000 from Louisiana House Speaker Pro Tem Walt Leger's campaign; and $500 from banker/developer Joseph C. Canizaro.

Update: And now here's more from Moseley on Letten.