Million More Conspiracies

Louis Farrakhan became the latest civil-rights demagogue to accuse government officials in charge of Katrina relief of saving whites at the expense of blacks. In a speech last weekend in Charlotte, NC, to promote his "Millions More March," Mr. Farrakhan said one of the New Orleans levees was intentionally "blown up" to divert flood waters from white to black neighborhoods. "I heard from a very reliable source who saw a 25 foot deep crater under the levee breach," he said.

Sounds like the minister's friend is Mr. Magoo. It's takes a lot of explosive power to make a crater that big, and the explosion would have knocked the levee and surrounding buildings sky-high. Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bomb left a crater 28 feet in diameter. He used the equivalent of 4,000 pounds of TNT. Blowing a 25-foot deep crater in solid earth would take a whopping 200,000 pounds of TNT, according to University of Washington explosive simulations. An IED that size gets noticed in an urban neighborhood, as does the caravan of trucks needed to haul it in.

Mr. Farrakhan spreads rumor in fertile ground. Gallup found that blacks overwhelmingly think race played a role in the slow rescue and blame President Bush -- not local, state and federal agencies -- for it. Whites don't share this view. This issue has the potential to live a long life as folklore among blacks, so the administration would be well advised to work hard showing it's not true.

Note also that along with racism accusations, the global warming boogeyman is getting traction. Environmentalists say it fed Katrina's fury. This disaster may be the first convergence of these two liberal favorites, which, summed up, make the delightful if wholly unsupported case that George W. Bush's policies promote human misery.