Thirty-two days after the BP oil spill, President Obama signed an executive order for a bipartisan national commission to investigate the disaster to make certain it never happens again. There was a similar immediate commission for the Challenger explosion and the Twin Tower collapses.

But after five and a half years, there is still no comparable investigation, ordered by Congress or the White House, of the levee protection failures that drowned metro New Orleans and killed over 1,500 people.

Fifty-five percent of the American population lives in counties protected by levees. Clearly, there should be a truly independent analysis of the flood protection failures - and the decision making involved – that led to the devastation in metro New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005.

+ Sandy : With world climate already demonstrably more erratic than at any period in living memory , and undeniably due to continue accelerating to even greater extremes of wind and rain , good levee technology is more vital than ever ( The Netherlands is well on the way with a 200-year plan . ) . Every moment dithering is a similar disaster in the making . Even a tea-partyer might see the logic of this .

Citizen Dan, yes, I went to Holland in May 2009 with a Congressional Delegation and heard first hand about their 200 year plan. They are absolutely planning for sea level rise, and if the rise isn't as serious as feared, they are building with contingent plans as back ups.