Can it get much worse?

Police kill army contractors The army corps of engineers says the five or six people shot dead by police in New Orleans were contractors on their way to repair a canal.

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I'm not sure why this is showing up first in the South African media, but I'll wager it's not a hoax. No, I'm afraid it's not a hoax. Here's another link, this one from ABC news.

Update

The story circling the blogiverse is: AP rushed to report the wrong story. Someone was shooting at the contractors; the police fired back, killing five of the shooters; none of the contractors was shot. Here's the alternate story. Hopefully by tomorrow, we'll have some sense of the facts. P.S.: Thanks, Kate, for shouting out my bleached anus story. Personally, I think bleached assholes are a fine metaphor for the flock of ignorant Americans content with The Way Things Are. (Wasn't that in Babe -- "the way things are is the way things are"? And if a pig didn't buy that logic, why should we? Ah, right. Babe was a smart pig.) D.