Lakeview neighborhood - New Orleans - Six months after

House Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi were in New Orleans today, being disaster tourists. They actually got out of their buses in the Lower 9th Ward but, as you'll see below, they whisked right through the devastated Lakeview neighborhood, which ain't lookin' any better six months after the hurricane and cataclysmic flooding. (Click on a pic to make it bigger.)

Here come the congresscritters. Their buses managed to kick up a lot of toxic dust for us reporters to inhale.

And whoosh, right on by they went.

"I wish they'd stop!" the woman in the mask told me. She and her husband had dropped by to check on their destroyed house, visible behind them.

Mardi Gras was fun, but New Orleans is a long long way from being anything remotely resembling normal again.