Yesterday the Media Blog turned into a sort of bash-the-NYT forum, so I’ve got to give them credit for something. This editorial today is pretty spot-on:

The official explanation for the collapse of some of the flood walls protecting New Orleans has been that Hurricane Katrina simply overwhelmed the system. But reports yesterday in both The Washington Post and The New York Times suggested that Katrina might not have been as powerful as advertised and that the real culprit was the system itself – flood walls so poorly constructed that they were easily breached.
This points a finger at either the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversaw the design and construction of the flood walls, or Congress, which appears to have underfinanced the projects, or both.

The answer is both, but “underfinanced” doesn’t adequately explain the dynamic. Louisiana received more money for Army Corps of Engineers civil works projects than any state in the country — the problem was not underfunding, it was the total lack of prioritization that characterized the funding. Read all about it in the upcoming NRODT.