Blogito, Ergo Sum - 21 April 2009

Despite his assurances to the C.I.A., President Obama may not be able to avoid an inquiry into interrogation tactics used under the Bush administration.

As I recall, when Mr. Smith went to Washington he had some difficulty adjusting, too. This is giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, of course.

I don’t know about you but there’s a lot of this I simply do not get. I mean, someone at the Times Company had to recognize when they were due to lose their very first million and shouldn’t that have raised enough of an alarm to make changes quickly enough to keep from losing even the second million? How can you just keep on going along and letting the number get bigger and bigger?

I’d say the Corps of Engineers is at considerable risk in this first Katrina lawsuit. After you read down far enough you find this man finally being heard:

During the trial’s opening session, the plaintiffs’ expert on geology and the coastal environment, Sherwood M. Gagliano, cited reports from as early as 1957 that claimed the canal would pose a danger to the people of St. Bernard Parish and reports of his own dating from 1972 that warned of the increased flooding risk from wetlands destruction.

Mr. Gagliano testified that the corps was aware of such research and even prepared a report in 1988 that mentioned “the possibility of catastrophic damage to urban areas” from the channel but did little to reduce the risk.

Under questioning by Kara K. Miller, a lawyer for the government, Mr. Gagliano acknowledged that the corps had agreed to some of his recommendations to improve the canal, like planting grass atop some of the levees to stabilize them.

Wow, wowee, they planted grass! If that’s all that they did as a result of his recommendations then Ms Miller would have been better advised to leave his testimony unchallenged. Yes, your honor, perhaps we did destroy a few zillion acres of wetlands...but we planted grass atop SOME of the levees.

One thing I have learned about the law and liability is if you recognize the benefits of grass in SOME areas then you have just opened yourself to the charge of negligence in not planting grass on ALL of them.

In my early days as a rural real estate broker in Jackson, California, I decided to create a special cautionary form advising city dwellers moving to the country of the special new problems they would face and might not know enough to take into consideration. Things like well tests and septic tanks and wildfires, mountain lions, etc. My attorney looked at it and wanted to know if my competitors had such a document. No, I said, it was my creation and I hoped it gave me a competitive advantage, if anything. Unh unh, he said. In the first case you have exceeded the “standard of care” required of you and created extra liability for yourself as a result, and in the second you may be considered carelessly negligent in some future lawsuit over anything they discover which you failed to include. Oh oh, I said. He smiled approvingly as I crumpled up the form and threw it away.

Cabinet immediately forms special committee and subcommittee to study the question. Lawyers convened to create legal definition of term. Secretary looks in file drawer under ‘E’ and reports nothing there. One staffer wonders if that is nickname for new First Dog. Clinton retreads advise rookies that Efficiency has not been spotted in Washington since before their time. Suggestion is made to broaden search to include Holy Grail and perhaps also Lost Ark.