Gaggle is a daily comic strip about the Washington press corps and Larry the press secretary. Larry deals with the shenanigans of reporters who couldn't imagine anyone voting for a Republican.

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported yesterday that the levees in New Orleans were not overtopped by flood waters related to Katrina. Instead, as was reported by NBC News on September 29, and here on September 30, these levees broke due to construction failures related to the instability of the soil beneath them. Moreover, one of the contractors involved in their construction warned the Army Corps of Engineers about this problem in the early ’90s, but these cautions were ignored.

As yesterday’s Times article stated: “The engineers said the findings, which they warned were preliminary, raised questions about the design of the levees and the testing of the relatively fragile soil during the construction of the walls. They also said that on the 17th Street Canal, the source of the flooding in much of the main part of the city, the flood wall broke in an area where a contractor had complained to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers that the soil that anchored the wall was dangerously soft.”

And, yesterday’s Washington Post stated: “In the early 1990s, a New Orleans-based contractor filed a legal claim against the Corps alleging that the soil beneath the floodwall on the 17th Street Canal was poor. A judge dismissed the contractor's complaint in 1996.”

These revelations raise an interesting question: Why aren’t the Times and the Post apologizing to their readers for and/or retracting earlier reports by their respective papers that the levee problems in New Orleans were caused by budget cuts implemented by President Bush?

I went to the Liberty Film Festival last year, and it was really incredible.

Truly creative, sincere, independant, original, funny, intelligent and (imagine this from the entertainment industry) entertaining.

A festival and organization like this, I believe, has phenominal potential to change the cancerous media as we know it (broadcast media included.)

Check it out. 

The 2005 Liberty Film Festival will be held this October 21-23, 2005 at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. The Liberty Film Festival showcases films that celebrate the traditional American values of free speech, patriotism, and religious freedom

http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/

Tonight on CBS's 60 Minutes, former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh will be on to talk about his new book, "My FBI", which will apparently include a charge by Freeh about Bill Clinton, Saudi Arabia, and funding for Clinton's Presidential Library.

Amusingly, it is Sandy Berger who will be coming to Clinton's defense tonight in a written statement to be read by CBS. Sandy Berger is best known for being Clinton's National Securoty Adviser who was recently given a $50,000 fine, ordered to do 100 hours of community service, and placed on probation for stealing Classified Government Documents and stuffing them in his pants. Berger eventually admitted to sneaking out the classified documents in various parts of his suit, and then of later destroying them (and lying about the whole thing). Also, this past week, Berger was in court again after being charged with reckless driving by going 33 miles over the posted speed limit (88 in a 55), a violation of his parole which could land him in more trouble.

During the roundtable segment on Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC reporter Cokie Roberts charged that “I do think there's sexism here” and went on to approvingly cite a left-wing Democratic Senator: “I do think that there is a degree of sexism, as Barbara Mikulski has also said, and I do think that there is a certain Ivy League prejudice going on here.” Roberts contended that Miers’ “experience on the Dallas city council showed her to be a great pragmatist and that's what people are really worried about." Roberts soon gushed: “Praise the Lord she doesn't have a judicial philosophy." She cited Justice O’Connor’s approach as desirable: “You're presented with a case on the Supreme Court instead of an argument, and you decide the case and that's exactly what Sandra Day O'Connor did and that's exactly what makes conservatives angry."

When former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich suggested that “a lot of conservatives are worried that she is going to be another David Souter,” Roberts interjected: "A pragmatist." (So, Roberts sees the liberal Souter as merely a "pragmatist"? Or, maybe she was trying to correct Reich and just meant that conservatives are upset not by how Miers will be another Souter but by how Miers might be another "pragmatist.") She also lamented how “the people who are complaining about this didn't complain about Clarence Thomas, who was hardly a distinguished jurist when he was picked for the bench." To that, George Will shot back: “He was, however, a jurist on America's most distinguished appellate court.” (Transcribed excerpts from the October 9 This Week follow.)

Even though the big news event this week was the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers to replace retiring justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, NBC’s Chris Matthews this morning, on a show that bears his name, chose to lead with Karl Rove’s upcoming testimony in front of a grand jury.  To assist him, Matthews stocked his panel with the likes of Andrea Mitchell, Clarence Page, Judy Woodruff, and a lone “conservative” voice, Howard Fineman. 

Of course, when Howard is the sole “right-wing” member of a panel, you’re certainly not going to get a fair and balanced discussion on any issue.  As a result, what ensued was quite a Rove bash-a-thon, with dire prognostications of what the meaning of this fourth appearance in front of the grand jury could mean for Rove as well as the Bush administration. 

In Sunday's Washington Post, journalist Brian Faler provides what can only be described as a fawning push-piece aimed at exciting the liberal activist and elite--both state and nation-wide.

In a piece titled : "Dean Camp's Tactics Applied to Colorado," Faler contends that what Howard Dean started in his aborted presidential run in 2003/2004--namely huge Internet participation--local activist will now continue, as they start web sites to organize liberal activists.

In the article, Faler highlights a Colorado-based progressive site called ProgressNowAction.org, in which he says: "The goal is to create a go-to site for Colorado activists -- a sort of online hub for everyone from environmentalists to abortion rights advocates to those concerned about the direction of their school boards. The group hopes liberals will use the site (ProgressNowAction) to find each other, organize and meet people working on other issues. In the process, it hopes to assemble a statewide network of activists and, ultimately, give Democrats a new and easily replicated model for local political organizing."