Odds and Ends

Some miscellaneous news of note on this Tuesday afternoon...

Spike Lee has completed a four-hour documentary on the New Orleans disaster set to air on HBO this month, entitled 'When the Levees Broke'. Details from Newsweek- It "will premiere in two parts on Aug. 21 and 22, and then air in its entirety on Aug. 29, the anniversary of Katrina's landfall... Act I covers the storm's arrival; Act II chronicles the failure of the emergency response; Act III follows an abandoned community coming to grips with all that it lost, and Act IV addresses the halting, haphazard effort to begin again."

Christy at Firedoglake also checks in with the situation in New Orleans. She laments the forgotten tragedy and the lack of progress made in the last year.

Meanwhile, the gang at New York magazine pose the question: What If 9/11 Never Happened?

And the NY Times wonders why the courts have forgotten the Bush v. Gore 2000 Supreme Court decision.

Salon takes a look inside the fiasco that is the training of Iraqi forces, noting that "The U.S. effort to train Iraqi forces -- and bring our troops home -- is mired in bureaucratic mismanagement, inept recruits and astonishing shortages of equipment." Another look at the situation in Iraq/Afghanistan from Firedoglake.

Finally, the Israel/Lebanon ceasefire solidifies after a rough start.