As the daughter of legendary New Orleans lawmakers Hale and Lindy Boggs, Cokie Roberts had a front seat at history in the making.
The ancient Romans were a tough breed, but they exempted from war service soldiers who had injured their thumbs since the warriors could no longer grasp their weapons.
Summer temps in Louisiana can be brutal, but they’re the price we pay for typically mild winters, as the great showman P.T. Barnum, the subject of a new biography by Robert Wilson, seemed to understand.
If there is one decision from the eight years of former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s tenure that clearly stood out as penny-wise and pound-foolish, it was that of the governor and Republican-led Legislature to oppose expansion of the Medicaid insurance pro…
Public libraries are for everyone, but they can be especially pivotal in kids’ lives. Libraries are where children, regardless of their families’ means, can follow their interests and imaginations wherever they lead and find the resources to help …
The framers of the Bill of Rights thought the guarantees of free speech and assembly, the ability to petition the government and the existence of a free press so vital that they enumerated them in the nation’s very first constitutional amendment. …
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You sense it already — just days, really, since Hurricane Dorian devastated much of the Bahamas. Media attention is shifting elsewhere, pulled by other things to cover: the latest White House firing in Washington, the race for the presidency, the …
An attorney involved in litigation against the Baton Rouge Police Department has released some department emails from a few years ago that included the n-word, a racist slur that has no place among those pledged to protect and serve the public.
The terrorist attacks that struck America 18 years ago today – on September 11, 2001 — can now seem distant, despite bumper stickers after the attacks that urged citizens, “Never forget.”
“Wind is invisible,” author Lyall Watson once wrote, “which immediately puts it into a category of things like love, hate and politics that we find difficult to explain and impossible to ignore.”
When Louisiana does something differently from just about any other state, that may mean we are special.
The image is of the canary in the coal mine, a bird cage that was supposed to warn miners that dangerous gases were threatening them.
When Walmart speaks, people listen. So when executives at the giant retailer recently asked customers to no longer openly display their guns on the premises, lots of people took notice.
When a reporter from The New York Times wrote about the growing popularity of language immersion schools, particularly in the elementary grades, of course he’d come to Louisiana.
As those of us who endured the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina know, when analysts use the word “unprecedented” to describe a weather-related story, that’s inevitably a bad thing.
There might be a lull in hiring for construction workers in Louisiana, but just wait. The looming possibility remains that construction workers, particularly for big new petrochemical facilities, are going to be harder to find in future.
Editor's note: The Advocate has published this editorial, with variations, on previous holidays.
We hope Louisiana will need each and every one of the “I Voted” stickers this year, but the odds might be against it, even with a cool new design by Lafayette artist Tony Bernard.
Louisiana’s key role as an energy exporter, including both oil and natural gas, is a matter of record.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump raised hackles when his plan to raid the Pentagon budget to help build more barriers along the nation’s southern border appeared to put Louisiana flood control money at risk.
Former Gov. Kathleen Blanco didn’t want Hurricane Katrina to define her legacy, but it was, as newspaper people say, the first line of her obituary. That’s what happens when politicians and entire regions’ best-laid plans are overtaken by larger forces.
When Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Jeff Hughes was a district judge in Livingston Parish two decades ago, his handling of a child custody case came under fire after a grandmother claimed Hughes was biased because he dated a lawyer who participat…
News of low gasoline prices typically seems like a mixed blessing in Louisiana. It’s great for drivers, but the falling fuel prices usually mean that crude oil prices have dropped, too.
There’s nothing like a feel-good story to jolt us out of the late-August, back-to-school, height-of-hurricane season doldrums. And we defy anyone out there not to feel good about the Eastbank Little League team, the 13 talented 12-year-olds from t…
Our Views: Why 'sweat it out in New Orleans?' A city that makes summer bearable; just ask Rick Bragg
Louisiana’s high August temperatures are usually seen as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, as anyone who lives here already knows.
For a prime example of a politically popular program that embraces a fundamental flaw in Louisiana government, consider state supplemental pay for peace officers.
For sports fans, hope always springs eternal this time of year. Neither the Saints nor the Tigers has played a game that counts, so both remain officially undefeated. Disappointment may or may not lurk around the corner, but right now, optimism an…
When the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge was new, it was a scandal.
Children have returned to school, signaling the unofficial close of summer in Louisiana. But along with the muggy heat, another fixture of the season remains: the threat of West Nile virus, an illness transmitted by mosquitoes.
In a season touched by political division, the death of former Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco has been an occasion to briefly put such differences aside and honor a woman who served the state during some of darkest days in its history.
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.
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…