Trust but insure: After the Hurricane Katrina/New Orleans disaster, so thoroughly mucked up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, it seems FEMA assurances that government water projects are safe would be taken with a gallon of sea water, at best. Still, you can't blame the residents of Gulfport, Ill., for believing that a levee built to protect the town from Mississippi River floods would hold. FEMA had been so adamant about its strength that federal flood insurance was no longer required, and many people dropped their coverage. On Tuesday the levee burst, and Gulfport is under 10 feet of water. If the agency is ever to deserve our trust, it must come up with more accurate flood-assessment methods and more objective information. Even then, anyone living in a flood plain, near a dam or a levee should have insurance.

Put a sock in it: After first seeming to abandon a plan to manufacture a sock puppet called The Sock Obama, the toy's creators backtracked. People had rightly pointed out that the toy looked like a racist stereotype, because white racists have long compared black people to monkeys. Apparently, though, the outcry did not convince David and Elizabeth Lawson of West Jordan to give up on their creation. A rambling message on their Web site suggests they may be looking for another manufacturer. Our advice: Put this idea to bed. As the nation celebrates the nomination of the first black candidate for president by a major political party, itself a potent symbol in the nation's long struggle to overcome racial prejudice, creating a new toy that can be taken as an ugly racist slur, even if that was not intended, would be a cruel irony indeed.