When Steve Carter called for a show of hands on the question, "Who likes paying taxes?," the Baton Rouge state representative got no takers.

From the vantage point of Louisiana, the stalemate on health care on Capitol Hill looks eerily familiar. In Baton Rouge this year, two legislative sessions billed as opportunities for meaningful tax and fiscal reform went nowhere. In many other st…

While Steve Scalise has reached the highest levels of American politics — third-ranking in the U.S. House of Representatives — he has remained the unpretentious Jefferson Parish resident that he has always been.

Let’s be real clear that the Louisiana Federation of Teachers has deep disagreements with John White, the state superintendent of education.

Discussions about flood-elevation mapping technology, replacement-cost value methodologies, and international reinsurance markets sound pretty obscure to most people.

With approval ratings low, at least for the moment, and with oil prices having crashed in the last few years, it might not seem the best time for President Donald Trump to push for exploration of oil and gas deposits off the East Coast of the Unit…

Earlier this summer, visitors to the LSU Museum of Art in Baton Rouge were greeted by one of the most famous photographs in the world — the portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill taken by Armenian-Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh i…

As Louisiana’s university students start their fall semester this month, parents footing the bill for their children’s education will naturally wonder what they’re getting for their money.

When Gov. John Bel Edwards and a delegation of state lawmakers toured LSU’s Middleton Library earlier this year, they found a leaky basement, ragged furniture, bubbled and cracked wallpaper, rooms that flood so often from the rain that a vacuum is…

“Credible.” That was the word chosen by Newell Normand to modestly describe his role as Jefferson Parish sheriff over the last decade.

Last year brought unwelcome and tragic attention to Baton Rouge, as the police-involved shooting of Alton Sterling Jr. in July sparked protests. Within days, a deeply troubled man named Gavin Long ambushed officers in the city, killing three and w…

Over many years, Louisiana teachers and school leaders have been focused on classroom performance, a laser-like focus that is paying off in long-term advances in graduation rates from public high schools.

Our reputation as prison capital of the United States preceded us, but Louisiana is getting more positive recognition for real changes in the way it approaches incarceration and its consequences.

In Louisiana, as in the nation, the Republican Party is at a high-water mark: It controls in Washington the White House and Capitol Hill, and most governors in the nation are from the GOP, as are the majorities in most statehouses.

If President Donald Trump can give an impression of grumpiness from his frequent comments on Twitter, he's also capable of a boyish charm even at 71. It was on display on July 14 in Paris, at the annual Bastille Day parade.

Change is in the air at New Orleans City Hall, as no fewer than 18 candidates seek to replace the term-limited Mayor Mitch Landrieu. And with campaign season, change is what candidates typically want to promise.

Of all President Donald Trump's ill-judged remarks, one has stood the test of legislative experience on Capitol Hill: "Now, I have to tell you, it's an unbelievably complex subject," he said. "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated."

The Mississippi River was called the father of waters. It is certainly the ancestor of Louisiana, depositing over the centuries the sediments that formed the river's delta where our state now stands.

Seniority isn’t what it used to be in many workplaces — even in one of the most august, the United States Senate.

One year ago, on Sunday, July 17, 2016 a troubled Missouri gunman shot six Baton Rouge law enforcement officers, killing three of them.

Dubious claims about privacy rights are justifying a cover-up by Southern University in Baton Rouge of a faculty member’s possible misdeeds.

Two out of three high school seniors are now applying, at least on paper, for financial aid for college or post-high school job training.

Overdose deaths across Louisiana — including in Baton Rouge and New Orleans — outnumbered homicides for the first time in 2016, a development that ought is rightly alarming the public and officials, who have watched a new wave of addictions to pre…

In all the reviews of the 2017 Legislature, the consensus is that the lawmakers failed to do the one thing they need to do: address the "fiscal cliff."

With due respect to the eloquence of Cory Booker, the senator from New Jersey is a little over the top when he explains to Louisiana folks about the dangers of industrial pollution.

Usually, when a tough political subject is tossed off to a committee that will meet in the interim between Louisiana legislative sessions, the maneuver is at least publicly portrayed as a step toward doing something, eventually, about the problem.

With so many bad reviews of action, or inaction, by the 2017 Legislature, there is at least some reason to be pleased with the state budget, the main task of lawmakers.

Between Tropical Storm Cindy and just regular Louisiana showers, it's been a wet spring and summer, but for too many households in our state, rains is a reminder of last year's unfinished business.

When voting fraud as a crime is almost vanishingly rare, but concern about the privacy of databases is rife, Louisiana is right to stand up to a sweeping federal request for personal data about our voters.

Although there have been no charges against officers involved in the shooting of Alton Sterling, who died one year ago today, the U.S. Department of Justice investigation appears to have been sharply critical of the actions of the two Baton Rouge …