A shrimp and some crab soup tried to MURDER Marion Barry! A futile assassination attempt. Marion Barry is not afraid of sea creatures, cooked or otherwise. [Washington Times] MORE »

In all the excitement over Kyra Phillips’ pee-break broadcast from “the situation room,” we forgot to note the charming screw-up made by the guy on TV during CNN’s landmark audio event.

Returning to the drowned city he would only fly above a year ago, the president once again fed New Orleans conspiracy theorists with a mysteriously flubbed line.

“The Army Corps of Engineers have been working non-stop — and I mean non-stop — to damage … to repair the damage,” Bush stammered. (It’s after Kyra’s mic is finally turned off, at 1:42 in the clip.)

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• Congress will approve $51.8b relief package for Katrina; joint House-Senate inquiry into hurricane response is approved. Budget director: “This will not be the last request.” [WP, WSJ, NYT]
• Politicians look to gain momentum from Katrina fallout. Rothenberg: “Politicians see this as a potentially defining event and they are worried how they are going to be seen. Politicians realize that public opinion could turn on this, just the way it turned on 9/11.” [WSJ, WP]
• Democrats launch multi-front attack on administration’s response to Katrina. Pelosi on Bush: “Oblivious. In denial. Dangerous.” Kerry: “What you see here is a harvest of four years of complete avoidance of real problem solving and real governance in favor of spin and ideology.” [NYT]
• Hillary stirs up opposition with Katrina-related proposals as strategists warn Democratic rhetoric could backfire; “Privately, [Bill Clinton] has been incredulous over what he regards as the administration’s failure to grasp quickly the perilous situation materializing in New Orleans, particularly for poor African Americans.” [WP, LAT]
• Rehnquist showed “how a wise man looks at the law and a good man looks at life,” Bush eulogizes. [WP, NYT, USAT]

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The emailer who told us about the christening of New Orleans as “Lake George” has a follow-up. In it, he responds to the assertion that the Army Corps of Engineers themselves claim that the levees were adequately funded but just not designed to withstand a category four hurricane, and that no Bush administration misdeeds caused the flooding. His take: The ACE is scapegoat and fall guy rolled into one. Scapeguy. Fall goat.

To sum up: Gen. Strock is asking us to accept that the Army Corps could maintain the structural integrity of every last mile of levee built on subsiding soils in a District that had taken a $71 million budget cut in one year. AND that they would admit it if they hadn’t, when the reputation of the President is at stake. All my experience rejects both propositions.

If we’re going to break the Corps veil around potentially responsible parties, we need answers.

Full email after the jump.

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