Nothing is synonomous with bad government quite like the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to Hurricane Katrina. But should FEMA be faulted for New Orlean’s continued failure to recover from Katrina?

The Wall Street Journal’s Alex Roth makes the point that road and building problems in New Orleans existed well before Katrina. I don’t agree with the implicit point that federal funds aren’t the answers to these problems. But should it be FEMA federal money? The agency’s mandate is to respond to emergencies — not deal with the unfortunately chronic problem of urban blight. Almost three years after Katrina it may be time for the federal government to devise a more long-term New Orleans plan.-MB

That’s the original title of a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese interrogation tactics — a study that Guantanamo Bay interrogators lifted "verbatim" to use in their own coercive interrogation of terror suspects. The New York Times’  Scott Shane reports that these Chinese torture methods — used to extract often false confessions from U.S. soldiers in Korea — were applied between 2002-05 to get confessions out of Guantanamo detainees.

Shane’s revelation comes two weeks after the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the military’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) program, which was designed for captured U.S. troops facing torture but whose torture methods have been used by Guantanamo interrogators.

Shane’s finding — that a byzantine and ineffective program used by interrogators in 1950’s China was used by the Pentagon and CIA five years ago — is sure to further discredit the Bush administration’s "war on terror." But with Guantanamo still open, military commission trials on the docket, and no administration officials facing war crimes prosecution, Bush’s first declared war lives on.-MB

A "Blue Ribbon" Air Force report made public last week says that security for nuclear weapon storage sites is bad, particularly the five places the U.S. uses to store weapons in Europe. The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus looks at the report, originally written in February, that criticizes both the shoddy buildings and inexperienced building personnel in charge of nuclear weapons.

The report comes after a B-2 bomber pilot unwittingly flew nuclear missiles between North Dakota and Louisiana last September. The Air Force has since fired two top officials, but the Blue Ribbon report suggests problems more institutional than a few bad apples at the top.-MB

The Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson reports this morning on the hundreds of backlogged whistleblower cases at the Justice Dept.  These cases include charges that Iraq and Afghanistan contractors and large pharmaceutical companies are defrauding the taxpayer millions.

But what exactly these perpetually pending cases are about, and whether they’ll actually be litigated, is a mystery. Under the Civil War-era False Claims Act, somebody who blows the whistle on, for example, a corrupt government contractor, can’t say a word publicly until Justice’s 75-whistleblower lawyer team has handled the case.

Another mystery is whether the Justice legal team is deliberately ignoring cases especially damaging to the Bush administration.-MB