YOUR DAILY BRIEFING
COMMENTARY
A Fight Worth Having
How Louisianians can organize to stop the hellish domino effect of the Alito draft decision
Losing Ground: How a Model of the Mississippi River Could Reshape the Future of...
A little-known building a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River has the potential to help people living in coastal communities across the globe.
Huey P. Long III
An excerpt from the book "Fishing for Kings: The Last Hurrah of Huey P. Long."
YOUR WEEKLY BRIEFING
I'm back with a non-Carnival related piece. It is, however, inspired by the theme of this year's Bacchus parade: Starring Louisiana. It was their best theme in years and got me pondering movies that were set in the Gret Stet of Louisiana. Hence this top 40 list.
I'm a big fan of Vulture's lists and decided it was high time to do my own. I learned to my chagrin...
Clay Higgins rose to power by telling a story about personal redemption, but his former boss, the sheriff of St. Landry Parish, now claims he would have never given him a second chance in law enforcement if he'd known what really happened before Higgins resigned from the police force in Opelousas.
Jim Sohr spent seven years at Angola for selling a few grams of marijuana, but while incarcerated, he honed his craft and found his voice as an artist.
Before he won his first election, a campaign for Louisiana's Third Congressional District in 2010, Jeff Landry's claim to fame was his victory, ten years prior, in the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival's 36th annual Crawfish Eating Competition. Landry, now in his second term as Louisiana attorney general, had a home-field advantage. He grew up right down the street from...
The Scoundrel: Clay Higgins Turned in His Badge, Twice, Before Campaigning for Congress as a Celebrity Cop.
Clay Higgins rose to power by telling a story about personal redemption, but his former boss, the sheriff of St. Landry Parish, now claims he would have never given him a second chance in law enforcement if he'd known what really happened before Higgins resigned from the police force in Opelousas.
Louisiana Redistricting: Awards Edition
"We’re saying we haven’t evolved at all. And that’s okay. We’ll continue to be dead last."--Rep. Barry Ivey
Get Out Your Red Crayons
It’s been nearly two years since I wrote to y’all, telling you I was done with observing and writing about the bullying that had...
State Rep. Ray Garofalo’s Proposed Ban On Teaching Critical Race Theory Becomes a Lost Cause After He Comments on “the Good” of Slavery
During Tuesday's nearly four-hour long discussion by members of the Louisiana state House Education Committee about a bill that sought to prohibit the teaching...
Starve the Budget, Feed the Business Interests
"We have to do something to keep this industry here. If we do not, the state of Louisiana will shrivel up and die!” -- Rep. Stuart Bishop, Ways and Means chairman
REGIONAL
OPINIONS AND COMMENTARY
Is Bob Mann the Zelig or Forrest Gump of Louisiana politics? Find out in Peter Athas' review of Mann's memoirs.
13th Ward Ramblings on former Mayor Chep Morrison, and Mayor Cantrell's proposal to relocate New Orleans City Hall to Treme.
On May 3, 1978, New Orleans experienced one of its worst flood events, with nearly nine inches of rain falling before noon, inundating the city with two to five feet of flooding, and leaving parents to pick up their schoolchildren in canoes. In the years since and as we...
WRECKED: HOW CAR INSURANCE TAKES LOUISIANA FOR A RIDE
Careless Operation: Tort Reform and the Fight Brought To You By...
It is impossible to separate the well-funded campaign for "tort reform" and the proposals in the Louisiana legislature to change state law, under the pretense of lowering auto insurance premiums, with the legacy of Big Tobacco.
Careless Operation: Part One
Following the defeat of a thinly-disguised series of so-called "tort reforms" that were marketed to the public as a way to decrease the price of car insurance in Louisiana, conservative lawmakers and their patrons at the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) are once again attempting to push through legislation that would bargain away the legal rights of innocent victims.
Deployment Penalty: How Big Auto Insurers Hike Premiums on Returning Vets
In what amounts to a deployment penalty, several large Louisiana car insurers raise rates, in some cases by nearly 30%, on National Guard members and other military...
Insurance Commissioner Donelon Accepts $20K from Man Indicted for Attempting to...
Since 2015, Donelon has received more than $680,000 in campaign donations from insurance companies and agents.
Major Insurers Charge Louisiana’s Blue-Collar Workers More for Basic Coverage Than...
The research highlights a problem that impacts a significant proportion of Louisiana drivers, yet one that was apparently unknown to Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon.
The Task Farce: What a Missing Report Reveals About the Insurance...
On April 15th, when state Rep. Kirk Talbot first introduced HB 372, a now-defeated proposal that had been known as the Omnibus Premium Reduction...
EDUCATION
Losing Ground: How a Model of the Mississippi River Could Reshape the Future of...
A little-known building a stone’s throw from the Mississippi River has the potential to help people living in coastal communities across the globe.
Aiding and Abetting
Part Two of our limited series on the "Dashing Despoiler"
The Valarie Hodges Show
Not long after Louisiana state Rep. Valarie Hodges joined the legislature in 2012, she began tweeting from a new account, presumably in an effort...
Books for Your Gift List
“A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind
Book Review | Nothing to Write Home About: Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House
In her debut memoir, Broom misapprehends the geography of the city and reveals a disorientation with the lived experiences of Black New Orleans.
Book Review | “Back in the Game” by U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise
A politician’s memoir that somehow avoids all mention of the politician’s politics.
ERECTOR SET
In Secret Recording, Eddie Rispone Claims High-Dollar Fundraisers “More Important” Than...
“... the time that it takes to get ready for those, when I need to be doing this,” Rispone said during a top-dollar fundraiser at the home of a Monroe oil and gas executive.
