The Louisiana Legislature is not a place for the squeamish when it comes to rhetoric, but even lawmakers listening to state Sen. John Milkovich had qualms the other day.

For generations, Louisiana operated under the depressing assumption that its Legislature could not manage itself. Governors hand-picked top leaders of the House and Senate, with lawmakers generally acquiescing to the wishes of the chief executive.…

In the 2017 Legislature, passing the budget bills for the fiscal year beginning July 1 was supposed to be the easy part.

When you've got plastic paid for by friendly donors to your department, why not use it? For a major at Louisiana State Penitentiary, it appears to have been too tempting, given his urgent need for sunglasses and a couple of La-Z-Boy recliners.

In the adult world, if you don’t do your work when you’re supposed to, you don’t get to charge overtime to do what you should have done all along.

In the final week of a frustrating and largely fruitless legislative session, lawmakers adopted a symbolic resolution to “affirm the need for civility in political discourse.”

In response to the controversy surrounding the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans, the St. Tammany Republican Parish Executive Committee is urging veterans not to visit the city, including trips to the National World War II Museum.

In its short life, the Trump administration has received some criticism for its tendency to self-congratulation, to a degree unusual even in Washington. But the administration should be applauded for a pro-trade step involving China.

Most of the members of the Louisiana House of Representatives know that our state desperately needs relief in the form of better roads and bridges and all sorts of expensive infrastructure.

Regulars at Louisiana’s State Capitol often think of it as the house that Huey built, a legacy of the Depression-era governor who masterminded its construction.

The deaths of 11 workers and the devastation to offshore Louisiana following the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010 had many consequences for both the state and the nation.

A new bill before the Legislature would ban workplace discrimination against gay employees.

With the Legislature in session in Baton Rouge, it was a good time to show off one of LSU's prized assets, the Middleton Library.

Editor's note: This editorial, with variations, has been published on previous Memorial Days in The Advocate:

As Louisiana faces more than a billion dollars in red ink, state lawmakers are poised to spend even more money on yet another special session to do what they should have done already — agree on a solution to keep state government solvent.

With not a vote to spare, the state House has advanced a modest proposal to raise — four years from now — the grade-point average for students to win a TOPS tuition waiver.

During last year’s presidential campaign, Republican standard-bearer Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, came to Baton Rouge to survey damage from August’s catastrophic flood, their visit throwing a much-needed national spotlight on the…

In the midst of devastation, New Orleans had an election in 2006. With voters dispersed around the country and post-Katrina conditions in the city, the state's chief elections officer amazingly orchestrated the mayoral and council voting in a way …

With a decision of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a lawsuit brought by a New Orleans-area levee board appears to be at an end, but the legal issues involving the coast don’t end there.

In a key vote, the state House is looking at a significant increase in the tax on motor fuels. But it’s not as if the 17-cents-a-gallon increase proposed is really that much of a hike, given that the last time that tax went up was 28 years ago.

A sense of crisis would engulf a Legislature in a normal state with a situation like this: “The highest sales tax rates in the land, credit downgrades, critical infrastructure needs, and sliding tax climate rankings don’t provide the best optics t…

A weekend of tough negotiations has produced a compromise package of bills that represent a constructive effort to tackle Louisiana's bloated prison population.

With the state budget swimming in red ink, and no coherent plan afloat in the Legislature to resolve the crisis, Louisiana’s lawmakers nevertheless found time this week to weigh in on how local governments should handle Confederate monuments.

With a budget crisis in full bloom at the State Capitol, some lawmakers have sought to steer federal funds toward a diversion project. The Comite canal is only partly done, but is intended to mitigate, eventually, some of the flooding in the Amite…

Gov. John Bel Edwards appears to have a better grasp of today's economic reality than our billionaire president.

When Louisiana civil engineers rated infrastructure recently, their report gave state roads a "D" and bridges a "D-plus."