Freddy went ahead with an endorsement, but took a couple of questions about New Orleans, in which he kept his distance from the language coming out of the Congressional Black Caucus today, and the suggestion that New Orleans was forsaken by the federal government because its residents are black and poor.

Mike just sent out a release on a package of charity for New Orleans, and you have to expect a leak to the Times of personal philanthropy to the same end.

Local politics, appropriately, recedes.