The Associated Press reports that in New Orleans:

Police plan to set up checkpoints beginning Wednesday to help curb a crime wave that has claimed nine lives since the start of 2007, Mayor Ray Nagin said, stopping short of imposing a curfew on this tourism-dependent city.

Nagin acknowledged the criminal justice breakdown extended beyond the police force and said a corps of volunteers will be recruited to monitor homicide cases moving through the courts. “We’re sending a signal that the system that used to allow you to commit a murder and there were no consequences is over.”

It took nine murders in nine days for Nagin to figure out that murderers should be punished? It seems that what New Orleans needs is some adult supervision. It’s clearly not going to get that level of supervision from the Louisiana governor’s office. So, should the federal government intervene and force regime change?