City councilman Oliver Thomas, widely known as a good guy to everyone down here, is the latest politician to be caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Sunday morning’s headline reads, “Thomas expected to plead guilty,” except it was in all caps. Underneath: “Alleged shakedown involved parking contracts,” and “Convicted restaurateur Stan ‘Pampy’ Barre’ tipped off the feds.’

The lead paragraph calls this “the most dramatic development to date in a sprawling probe of corruption in New Orleans city government.” The senior member of the City Council, Thomas has 13 years of service, and is in his second term as one of two ‘at large’ members. He has been vocal about the foolish statements of our mayor, about the crime problem in New Orleans, and about the need for better leadership. Most had speculated he would run for mayor next time around.

Turns out, any running he will do will be around the yard at the big house.

Pampy Barre’ has had his sentencing delayed while he cooperates with the local U.S. attorney’s office. Apparently when it became obvious he was going down, he decided to take some of the local hypocrites with him, particularly if it would ease his own time away from home. Barre’ owned a parking company which won the rights to manage three city-owned lots in the French Quarter, but with the understanding that Oliver Thomas would receive a kickback. No word yet as to the amount of money we’re talking about.

Sunday morning, I sent this “letter to the editor” of our newspaper: “Could we have a new law that says whenever a leader violates the public trust, the level of punishment he or she is given will be determined by the public outrage over their misdeeds. If we get such a law, we can safely predict that some of our crooked politicians will never see the light of day again.”

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With Freddie Arnold accompanying the “Unlimited Partnership” members on a get-acquainted trek to Jackson, MS, Nashville, TN, and Alpharetta, GA, the office was much less busy than normal. Freddie’s grandson, Zac, who was born with spinal bifida and is now perhaps 16 years old, had emergency surgery Tuesday night at Children’s Hospital, and was much on our hearts this week.

I spoke at Florida Boulevard Baptist Church in Baton Rouge on Thursday, was interviewed on Moody radio on Friday morning as a result of a recent blog titled “Tolerance and Faithfulness,” and Saturday afternoon, attended the rededication of Poydras Baptist Church, beautifully redone since Katrina. Seminary students are arriving in the city daily and many are calling for appointments to bring their resumes by, wanting to be considered by churches looking for pastors or staffers. Tuesday night, I “worked” at a neighborhood meeting as a part of the national “night out against crime,” and on Saturday night, attended the New Orleans Zephyrs Triple-A baseball game against the Roundrock Express, with my son and grandchildren.

Easily, the high point of my week was four prayers.

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“The thing to bear in mind,” I told him, “is that God doesn’t mind troubling you. Not at all.”

“Well,” he said, “there must be some good reason behind it. It sure doesn’t make sense to me.”

I said, “So, your neighbor is harassing you.”

“Persecuting is more like it. He throws beer cans into my yard. He has stood in his front yard cursing me, not 15 feet away. And I mean, bad cursing, of the worst kind. I was embarrassed for the other neighbors to hear it. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

“What do you think is behind it?”

“I’ve tried to find out. I even called the guy who owned my house before me, to see if he had acted that way with him. He hadn’t. In fact, he said the neighbor was always easy to get along with. Made me wonder if we were talking about the same person.”

“Are you sure you haven’t done something to set him off?”

“I’ve racked my brain. I’ve even asked another neighbor, Bob up the street. Bob’s known him for years and just says he’s weird and I shouldn’t take it personally. It’s hard not to, especially since it just seems to be me.”

“I may have an idea. It’s very possible that it’s all about God.”

“Say what?”

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“I thought it was over,” he said. “But they’ve made it worse.”

He had pastored in our town, then moved to another state. From the occasional reports he sent our way, it seemed a great match, him and that church. Once when I dropped by to visit him, on my way somewhere else, he told of record numbers of people coming to worship, joining the church, and being baptized. Then, abruptly, the church leadership turned on him and forced him out.

On this day, he sat in my office and told what happened.

“I’m a hugger,” he said. “And someone circulated the rumor that I had inappropriately hugged some lady. They wouldn’t even tell me who it was so I could defend myself. They just wanted me out.”

I said, “Who wanted you out?”

“A good number of the deacons and their wives. Not all of them. In fact, when I resigned, the chairman and vice-chairman resigned with me, in protest. They’ve joined another church in the next town.”

“That’s a good sign,” I said. “Of what?” he asked.

“That they thought you were being unfairly treated.”

“Oh, I was that. That’s the whole point of my coming to see you, to ask you what you think I ought to do. The entire thing was a put-up job from start to finish.”

“What do you think was behind it?”

He was quiet a moment, then said, “All you have to do is look at their record. This church has had 10 pastors in the last 25 years. Counting the months in between, that figures out to about 2 years each man. Barely time to get your bags unpacked and the pictures hung.”

“What’s the problem, do you think?”

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Nothing like an eight-year-old kid to put you in your place.

At Neil’s request, I was drawing people tonight, Tuesday, at the Delta neighborhood monthly meeting. I sketched people of all ages before, during, and after the session at which a police officer responded to questions about neighborhood safety. At one point, I was surrounded by a group of children from 8 to perhaps 12, basically entertaining them quietly in the rear of the room while the meeting went on.

Eight-year-old Matthew told me he loves to draw. “While you’re not doing anything,” he said, “can you teach me to cartoon?” Yeah, right. It takes years, kid. I gave him a pen and some paper, and sketched out a horse for him.

“Look at that,” he said. “I could never draw a horse. And here some old guy draws me a horse.”

I’m still smiling at that.

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The front page of Time for August 13, 2007, features what surely must be the simplest picture ever to adorn that celebrated magazine’s cover–a grassy levee atop which is something that looks like a concrete wall. “Special Report: Why New Orleans Still Isn’t Safe” crosses the top of the page. In the center, filling the sky, so to speak, we find this:

“Two years after Katrina, this floodwall is all that stands between New Orleans and the next hurricane. It’s pathetic. How a perfect storm of big money politics, shoddy engineering and environmental ignorance is setting up the city for another catastrophe.”

Pathetic? That’s putting it out there.

We reported here a few days ago that the August issue of the National Geographic deals with the same subject. One obvious difference is that the Geographic’s photographs were better, in color, and bigger, more striking. But they make the same point. This city faces big trouble.

The article, written by Michael Grunwald, establishes right off the bat something the people down here have been trying to get across to our friends in the nation’s Capitol:

“The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn’t a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city’s defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks.”

Grunwald says FEMA got the blame, but the culprit was the Corps of Engineers. He says American citizens were outraged by the government’s poor response to the disaster, but they have yet to deal with the government’s responsibility for the mess.

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“The former pastor is coming back to our church. He wants it back.”

I said, “Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. He wants to take over your church?”

“Right. He started the church 15 years ago. Then about 7 or 8 years ago, he left with a little group and began another church, more of a Pentecostal type, I suppose you would say.”

“And what happened?”

“The hurricane scattered his members and now he has only a small group, not enough to hold church with, so he has apparently decided he’ll just come back and take over our church.”

I said, “How long have you been the pastor?”

“Five years.” I said, “Do you know this man?”

He said, “A little. I’ve met him. A year or so ago, he showed up in our services and while I was making announcements, he walked to the front and snatched the microphone out of my hand and started speaking.”

“And you let him?”

“I didn’t think I had a choice. I didn’t want to create a disturbance.”

“He had already done that for you. How long did he speak?”

“It must have been 15 minutes.”

“And then what happened?”

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“All right, start at the beginning and tell me what happened.”

He fidgeted a little, leaned forward in the office chair, and said, “At first, we were excited about him becoming our pastor. We’re a small church, you know, and he was an outsider. He came in after the storm, seemed to have an unusual vision for what a little church like ours could do, and we bought it.”

I said, “You liked his preaching?”

“He’s a pretty good preacher. Not the greatest in the world, but we’re a small church and we’ve never been spoiled in that regard. But he was fresh and, I think the word is, driven.”

“Anyway,” he continued, “we called him as pastor.”

I said, “If I recall, you wanted him pretty badly. He kept turning you down and you kept calling him back and insisting that he consider becoming pastor of your church.”

Long silence. “We thought he would do our church so much good. The people really liked him.”

“And from where I sit, he has done the church a lot of good.”

He said, “From the outside, it would appear that way.” Another long silence. “But it’s like some families that look good to the neighbors but it’s another story inside the house.”

“So what happened?”

“He came in and started spending all that money to revamp the buildings to host outside church teams that were coming to help rebuild the city.”

I said, “Didn’t the church vote to do that? And someone in the congregation gave the money for it?”

“Yes, in a way. The congregation just didn’t realize what it was getting. He started acting like he was the construction boss or something. Giving orders. Making decisions on what wall to tear down, which rooms to install bunk beds in, choosing the stoves for the kitchen. We’re not used to that.”

“You’re not used to what?”

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