Biden will continue his TV blitz Monday morning with a sit down on Good Morning America, his first appearance as vice president on a morning show. Sunday evening, he'll be on "60 Minutes," where he is expected to discuss the administration's first 100 days.

 

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom (D) announced Tuesday he’s running for governor of California, and took to Twitter to ask supporters to spread the word.

Newsom tweeted via text message:

It’s official- running for Gov of CA. Wanted you to be the first to know. Need your help. Check out video: http://tr.im/iOCN and ReTweet

By asking followers to “retweet” the message, Newsom has gotten to one of the core uses of Twitter for politicians. The San Francisco Mayor’s almost 275,000 Twitter followers can help make Newsom’s announcement go viral in a matter of moments.

For a politician, that’s a powerful tool.

 

CNN is marking President Barack Obama's 100th day in office with prime-time coverage that will recall election nights last year. John King is even bringing back the "magic wall." Oh, not again with that thing. Are they going to have a hologram again too?

Most of the commentators and CNN regulars who appeared during primary nights and the general election will be there. King's giant touch screen will be adapted to track where stimulus money is going. Where the money is going? Oh yeah right!

ABC says it will observe the day with stories on all its broadcasts. Well, isn't that special? How about, "hello and welcome to our show, it is day 100 and we are $90 trillion/million/gazillion in debt. Thanks and have a good night ya all!"

Arguments are set to begin Monday in the trial, which will be heard and decided by a judge, not a jury. And much is at stake: If the five residents and one business in this initial lawsuit are victorious, more than 120,000 other individuals, businesses and government entities could have a better shot at claiming billions of dollars in damages.

 

The residents argue the corps' poor maintenance of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a shipping channel dug in the 1960s as a short-cut between the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, led to the wipeout of St. Bernard Parish and the city's Lower Ninth Ward when Katrina struck in August 2005. They are asking for damages between $300,000 and $400,000 for each individual. Say what? I am sorry, but you have got to be kidding me here.

 

The corps has argued that it is immune from liability because the channel is part of New Orleans' flood control system, but the judge has allowed the case to move forward because residents claim the shipping channel was a navigation project. WTH!

 

One of the residents suing, 75-year-old Lucille Franz, lost her home in the Lower 9th Ward. "I've been through a lot," she said. Her sister drowned at St. Rita's nursing home in St. Bernard near the MRGO, also known as "Mister Go."

"They are responsible," she said of the corps. "We wouldn't have had that kind of water if it hadn't been for the MRGO." I guess living below sea level and in a giant fish bowl did not have anything to do with it or that pesky large hurricane that came through.

 

The four-week trial will explore in detail the natural history, engineering and politics of the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.

The outlet was authorized in 1958 by Congress. The route went through largely pristine wilderness of marsh and swamp forest southeast of New Orleans. Scientists say its construction destroyed about 18,000 acres of marsh and 1,500 acres of cypress swamps. The economic benefits never paid off, and few ships used it before Katrina. After the channel was built, larger vessels continued to use the Mississippi River because a bigger lock to the MRGO was never built.

The corps has acknowledged the area's flood risk, and is in the process of closing the MRGO with rocks. The corps is also building a $1.3 billion floodgate.

"It's really something the people of St. Bernard and the Lower 9th Ward, and New Orleans East, everybody in that area, have needed for a long time. What happened there should not happen in the United States of America," said plaintiffs' attorney John Andry. "It's the largest preventable catastrophe in American history." I was going to say WTH, but WTF is better. Excuse me, you live below sea level. There was this freaking huge hurricane.

 

The Department of Justice is defending the corps, but lawyers declined to comment. In court documents, the government has argued that Katrina's massive storm surge, not the MRGO, caused the catastrophic flood.

"The only way in which the catastrophic flooding of the Lower Ninth Ward, St. Bernard, and New Orleans East could have been avoided would have been through the construction of a better hurricane protection system," the government argues.

For decades, the corps has invoked immunity from lawsuits over flooding -- granted by the Flood Control Act of 1928 -- and maintained it has a good track record of carrying out Congressional mandates.

In this case, the plaintiffs have a glimmer of hope because U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval has ruled the corps can be held liable for flooding caused by the MRGO. By contrast, Duval threw out a similar suit in January 2008 over flooding caused by broken floodwalls closer to the city park and downtown New Orleans, ruling the corps was immune.

"The claims are not new, nor is the defense new, but their application is novel in two ways: One, the size of the stakes and, two, the amount of the alleged negligence and malfeasance," said Oliver Houck, environmental law professor at Tulane University.

The outcome of the trial may pivot on technical arguments. The plaintiffs say the MRGO -- and all the erosion it caused -- allowed Katrina's waves to destroy the levees and floodwalls. Not that big storm surge. Good thing that had nothing to do with it. This suit should be thrown out.

 

"It was nothing but a city killer," said G. Paul Kemp, a coastal scientist.

 

In a decision to be made public next month, the Federal Election Commission found that Sharpton's Democratic primary campaign accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from private sources.

It also "kept poor records of its activities and expenditures" and commingled funds with Sharpton's civil-rights group. All are prohibited under the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Earlier this month, Sharpton and former campaign manager Andrew Rivera signed an agreement with the FEC to pay the fine -- among the highest in the regulatory body's 34-year history.

"Sharpton 2004 materially misstated its receipts and disbursements, as well as cash on hand in 2004," says the April 8 FEC report, which followed an investigation of the Sharpton campaign's expenses.

“I just am not a Castro fan,” Matthews told host Joe Scarborough when asked about the administration’s “historic” opening to Cuba with the easing of travel restrictions.

“He bought the wrong ticket,” Matthews said of Castro. “He bet on Communism. He bet on the Soviet Union. If that side had won, he’d be marching down 5th Avenue overseeing the executions in Central Park. He made the wrong decision -- morally, historically, whatever. He’s on the wrong side of history. He ought to pay for it.”

One reason Matthews cited for his strong feelings: Cuba’s possible involvement in Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“They had something to do perhaps in knocking our guy off,” Matthews said, referring to Kennedy. “So I don’t really want to help Castro. I hope he dies a Communist, ends up that way. I don’t want to lift a finger to help that guy, or his brother.

“So I am not on the side of the people who say, ‘Let’s all be friends together.’ Eventually this guy will play out his hand, he’ll be dead, and Raul Castro hopefully will be dead, too. I don’t want to engage in any way that salutes the Cuban Revolution at all. They’re on the other side of history.”

Matthews called the Cold War “a good war,” adding “I think we were on the right side.”

“I think the captive nations were truly captive, and the people who captured them were the bad guys,” he told Scarborough and co-host Mika Brzezinski. “When Castro took office down there how many people got the firing squad right after he got in? What, 600 people? Look, he’s the bad guy.”

“Look,” Brzezinski broke in, perhaps nervous that Matthews might be straying from Obama administration talking points. “I don’t deny that and I don’t think any of us do . . .”

“Some do!” Matthews interjected.

“Well, I guess my question would be: Do we wait for them to die in order to move on, or is it promising, some of the dialog that we’re seeing now?” Brzezinski said.

“I’d rather get the victory lap in,” Matthews said, suggesting engagement is a bad idea. “I think Castro was a bad guy, okay? He doesn’t like America. He may like baseball, he doesn’t like us.