Congratulations to Dambala at American Zombie for anticipating (if not scooping) the Times Picayune's Front Page story on Imagine Software and their controversial pleasure craft.

Here's the first few graphs from Gordon Russell's T-P article titled "Yachting by N.O. official raises questions":

To celebrate his 41st birthday, along with his recent decision to give up the drudgery of his job as the city's chief technology officer, Greg Meffert took a couple of dozen revelers out onto Lake Pontchartrain in early August for an evening cruise on a 53-foot yacht.

Many of those aboard, Mayor Ray Nagin among them, were under the impression that the party boat -- christened the Silicon Bayou, a nickname for New Orleans' tiny technology community -- belonged to Meffert. Indeed, at Meffert's invitation, they had cruised on it before during his tenure as chief technology officer.

But according to Coast Guard records, the vessel's owner is not Meffert but a group of partners in a computer programming and Web-managing company, Imagine Software LLC, that has enjoyed lucrative and continuing work at City Hall since Meffert's arrival there.

Free use of a vessel owned by a major city contractor would clearly violate state ethics laws, said Loyola Law School professor Dane Ciolino.

Back in July, Dambala "raised questions" about this boat, saying:

The Imagine crew has a company yacht named "Digital Bayou" anchored somewhere in Mississippi (apparently they were dumb enough to have it anchored in Ponchartrain at one time). Of course it's not illegal to have a yacht...but how the yacht was purchased is a question mark. Also....[Mayor Ray Nagin] has reportedly taken more than his fair share of cruises on the boat.

So, a big tip of the "skull cap" to New Orleans patriot Dambala, who has a slew of investigatory posts that will likely anticipate future front page news stories. I'll simply repeat what I said last month:

American Zombie is describing some very interesting "apparent conflicts of interest" which have occurred during Nagin's administration. An intrepid journalist would do well to investigate the claims made in AZ's last few posts. I bet there's something to them.