The week in review

Around the nation Gustav hits New Orleans Hurricane Gustav slammed into the heart of Louisiana’s fishing and oil industry with 110 mph winds Monday, delivering a glancing blow to New Orleans as hopes rose that the city would escape the kind of catastrophic flooding spawned by Hurricane Katrina three years ago. That did not mean the state survived the storm without damage. A levee in the southeast part of the state was on the verge of collapse, and officials scrambled to fortify it. Roofs were torn from homes, trees toppled and roads flooded. More than 1 million houses were left without power. The nearly 2 million people who left coastal Louisiana under a mandatory evacuation order watched TV coverage from shelters and hotel rooms hundreds of miles away, many of them wondering what kind of damage they would find when they were allowed to return home. Keith Cologne of Chauvin looked dejected after talking by telephone to a friend who didn’t evacuate. “They said it’s bad, real bad. There are roofs lying all over - Sunday, September 7, 2008

Lights out on liberty

BY MARK STEYN

Reprinted with permission of Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, MI. The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on March 13 while Steyn was in residence as a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellow in Journalism. - Sunday, September 7, 2008

COLUMN ONE : Class (Cont’d )

PAUL GREENBERG

Dear Fan, It was wholly a pleasure to hear that you liked my column about class in Americaeven if we’re not supposed to mention the subject in our oh-soequal society. But no society can exist without a hierarchy. Indeed, that’s just about the definition of a society. - Sunday, September 7, 2008

Is experience really necessary for a running mate?

PHILIP MARTIN

Politics ought not to be so interesting in a country like ours, where the only real arguments are over whose lobbyists get first crack at the honorable ladies and gentlemen who debate and decide whether we ought to tax the rich a little more or a little less. - Sunday, September 7, 2008

McCain and his overstated reputation as a maverick

BY CARL P. LEUBSDORF THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

All week, Republicans have hailed Sen. John McCain as a maverick and a reformer, an independent thinker who will shake up Washington with the aid of vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. - Sunday, September 7, 2008

Effort to reduce terrorism in Somalia increased it

BY KEN MENKHAUS AND KARIN VON HIPPEL NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

Back in the 1980s, frustrated aid workers joked that Somalia was the “graveyard of foreign aid,” a place where hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted on projects that occasionally left villagers worse off than before. - Sunday, September 7, 2008

In Laos, children starve, government looks away

BY JOEL BRINKLEY MCCLATCHY-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

VIENTIANE, Laos — To know misfortune is to be a child born in Laos. - Sunday, September 7, 2008