Ten Words from Today's NY Times - August 29, 2012

On the eve of the seventh anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which brought widespread devastation after the colossal failure of the system built to protect the city, New Orleans on Tuesday night once again found itself facing the impending arrival of a huge and deadly storm.

By all accounts, this storm is nowhere near as powerful as Katrina was, but its breadth is potentially wider, with pounding rains and surging waves expected from east of Morgan City, La., to the Mississippi-Alabama border, including New Orleans.

On Tuesday morning, with the blare of a warning buzzer and the rumble of big motors moving tons of steel, two halves of a massive butterfly gate started moving toward each other to close off New Orleans from the anticipated 12-foot storm surge — making history.

As the sun set, families turned out to enjoy the grandeur of the churning ocean between the bands of rain that had begun to blow sideways.

From his first summer as a Senate intern, a position he got thanks in part to the libertarian economist who was his college mentor, Mr. Ryan made an impression with his discipline, his command of supply-side economics and his uncanny ability to develop relationships with like-minded conservatives.

Newt Gingrich was rising in the House, with his sharp partisan edge, but he had not yet emerged triumphant over the conciliatory old bulls like Robert H. Michel of Illinois, the House minority leader.

Protruding from the truck’s bed was a steel pipe about three feet long and two and a half inches wide, resting on a simple frame.

Others, who have electricians’ skills, wire together the circuits for makeshift bombs.

Two days before Mustafa showed his mortar, a Sunni tribesman who used the name Abu Khaled arrived in a truck at a residential compound used as a rebel base.

“We will never enjoy eating,” he said, “or sleeping, or drinking, or living life like humans, until this regime falls.”