Before Moon Landrieu was mayor of New Orleans, he served on the local committee developing what was to become the Louisiana Superdome.
Being a television news anchor is an unusual job. Those who do it well inspire trust and comfort, enough to be invited into strangers’ homes day after day. Those who really shine manage to build close bonds not just with the people they cover but …
With the honesty of a woman facing a terminal diagnosis, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco recently told well-wishers that no one would have ever chosen to be governor of Louisiana when hurricanes Katrina and Rita savaged the state in 2005.
For decades, Louisiana has been ignoring the realities of transportation funding. Year after year, politicians at the state level have refused to increase the basic money for roads and bridges, which is provided by gasoline and diesel taxes.
As summer was about to begin this year, author Tony Horwitz dropped dead in Washington, D.C. while on a promotional tour for his new book.
Louisiana’s chief economic development officer, Don Pierson, was recently named to a national committee overseeing foreign investment in the United States.
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New Orleans drivers, consider yourselves warned: School’s back in, which means those always-controversial speeding cameras are back on.
The Mike Yenni era in Jefferson Parish unofficially ended last week, less than four years after voters promoted the former Kenner mayor to a parish presidency once held by his grandfather Joe and his uncle, who was also named Mike.
If there is one easy talking point that ought to illustrate shallow thinking about Louisiana’s finances, it is the notion that the state budget’s new annual surpluses are a sign of overly high taxes.
Jefferson Hughes III has won two elections to the state Supreme Court — most recently in 2018 when he ran unopposed.
In John Barry’s epic account of the Mississippi River flood of 1927, the devastation in the Delta regions of Louisiana and Mississippi forced a small U.S. government to mobilize to save lives and property in a way that changed the country.
The contest for governor is this fall’s big show, but this is also a good election season for voters to spend some considering the downballot races. Gov. John Bel Edwards may or may not return to the Capitol in January, but this much is certain: t…
If the calendar for big events is always going to be spotty — even in New Orleans, Super Bowls don’t come along every year — the future of the hospitality industry still is bright.
Since the Comite Diversion Canal has been 40 years coming, a last-minute snarl from Kansas City Southern Railway is frustrating the public. The newest dispute involves maintenance of a new and higher railroad bridge over the canal.
The New Orleans City Council, which regulates Entergy New Orleans, has spent much of its time lately contending with the company’s bad-faith hiring of paid actors to impersonate community activists in support of a new gas-fired plant. But that’s n…
Every summer, libraries in Louisiana and across the country offer special reading programs to help youngsters enjoy the power of books.
Some years ago, in an interview with this newspaper, a Bosnian refugee mentioned the mundane pleasure of grocery shopping in Baton Rouge. After the violence she’d experienced in her war-torn homeland, it was a relief to roam the supermarket aisles…
When Republican state Sen. Dan Claitor of Baton Rouge pushed a bill earlier this year to put a proposal on a statewide ballot letting voters decide whether to keep the death penalty, we supported the legislation, which ultimately failed, as a good…
The shooting of a Baton Rouge Police Department Sgt. Ralph Walker Monday night was a powerful reminder of the dangers law enforcement officers face on a daily basis.
New Orleans is a city of neighborhoods, and neighbors. Like any dynamic urban area, it’s also ripe for disruption and reinvention.
Ronald Reagan eventually became the leader of the free world, but the former president often seemed even prouder of what he’d done as a young lifeguard in Dixon, Illinois, fishing out swimmers when they got in trouble. Reagan had saved lives — acc…
It’s getting expensive to own property in New Orleans. So it’s incumbent upon the city to ask residents to pay more only as a last resort, and for needs that are genuinely dire — or at the least, fully vetted and backed by both the mayor and the C…
When a prominent coastal scientist decamped from the Water Institute of the Gulf in Baton Rouge to Tulane University, the standard human-resources interview did not touch on who — specifically, legally, or morally — owned the complex computer mode…
This month, as Baton Rouge officials took another step toward resolving the aftermath of a controversial police shooting three summers ago, law enforcement officers in nearby West Baton Rouge Parish confronted similar questions about a July 25 pol…
Later this year, Louisiana voters will elect a governor. It’s a decision that carries special weight because the state’s chief executive, by tradition and statute, is given more power than most of America’s governors in running the government.
We see more than our share of declarations of emergency in Louisiana because of hurricanes and tornadoes.
On the face of it, Louisiana is in a ridiculous legal position: The state requires hundreds of hours of training and an expensive license for hair braiders.
“Pavarotti,” director Ron Howard’s new documentary about the celebrated Italian tenor, has been playing in south Louisiana, and the people who’ve shown up to see it are a reminder that more than a decade after his passing, there’s still a lot of w…
Louisiana probably has more festivals per capita than any other place in America, maybe even the world. These local celebrations of regional culture are a great way to affirm civic bonds and celebrate what unites people from all walks of life.
Although Louisiana isn’t known for leading the pack when it comes to education, LSU officials did something forward-thinking in 2012 when they arranged for the university’s sports program to regularly share a portion of its wealth to help fund aca…
The prime candidates for enlarging Louisiana’s pool of college graduates aren’t just kids fresh from high school.
Just about everybody is a special interest.
With Louisiana starting behind many other states in educational achievement reform, getting into the game nationally was always going to be a slow and long process.
After the devastation visited on Louisiana in 2005, anyone named Katrina bore a special burden, inevitably associated with a storm that strained the levees of New Orleans and prompted a historic disaster.
It’s difficult, more times than veteran prosecutors can count, to get people to show up as witnesses in New Orleans criminal court. That doesn’t help law and order safety in the city.
While he is paid by the city, and it is part of his job, one has to feel something approaching sympathy for the guy trying to defend the city’s regulation of art works, before the undeniably crusty dean of U.S. District Court in New Orleans, Marti…
Only in Louisiana, perhaps, could advocates of smaller government set in motion a plan that would involve putting not less, but more, politicians on the public dime.
Our Views: Are we moving in the right direction? As LSU football thrives, Louisiana exodus continues
LSU officials are unveiling a newly renovated locker room for the university’s football program this week, and the $28 million price tag for the luxury digs, funded by private donors, has promoted a lively debate on social media about the school’s…
Freshman Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has her share of critics across the United States, including quite a few in deep-red Louisiana, where the congresswoman’s far-left views make her a frequent target of conservative wrath.
It takes a mighty music festival to attract seven presidential candidates and a popular former first lady, but then, the Essence Festival is much more than an opportunity to dance a summer night away in the Superdome.
Short-lived Hurricane Barry, already fading from memory, did bring at least one fringe benefit to those of us in its path. For about a week, as Louisianians prepared for the bad weather, almost no one here publicly discussed partisan politics — so…
On July 20, 1969, when American astronaut Neil Armstrong took the first human steps on the moon, he was fulfilling a mission in which Louisiana had played a memorable role.
The arrest of a suspect in the killing of Sadie Roberts-Joseph may be a large step forward in a criminal case, but it’s an event that the victim would be saddened about, more than angry.
By the time the Rolling Stones took the stage at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome Monday night, there was little doubt that the legendary British rockers would launch right into “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” which opens with Mick Jagger singing about a “crossf…
The arrest of a suspect in the killing of Sadie Roberts-Joseph may be a large step forward in a criminal case, but it’s an event that the victim would be saddened about, more than angry.
Louisiana’s history has been touched by the tragedy of banishment, as in the 18th century, when the British questioned the patriotism of Acadian residents of Canada and told them they weren’t welcome to stick around anymore.
Sometimes luck is better than skill in politics, and it even overcomes bad intentions and gross dereliction of sworn duties.
Politics right now can often seem like a constant exercise in juvenile behavior, so it’s heartening when elected officials act like grown-ups.
When a big industrial facility has been in the news as much as the Denka plant in St. John Parish, there are bound to be some questions when the pollution mitigation that company officials promised is delivered with a bit of an asterisk.
Right direction? Louisiana has a budget surplus and fully funds TOPS tuition vouchers and pays for health care.
Much of the discussion this week of the bad weather heading Louisiana’s way involved just when the storm would get an official name.