Court filings exposed vendor-paid vacations for Mayor Ray Nagin and his former technology chief, Greg Meffert. That pushed U.S. Attorney Jim Letten into a rare public acknowledgment of a federal criminal investigation at City Hall; Meffert, in turn, announced he's a target of the probe. At least three potential witnesses invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, or signaled they would do so if forced to testify. And as Judge Rose Ledet watched, lawyers nearly came to blows in her courtroom.

And that was just the pretrial activity.

Today, it starts for real, and it could go on for the next three weeks.